
Scenario: You attended a Hackathon, perhaps your first, perhaps your nth. The event went well, your problem and solution was on point, winning over the hearts and minds of judges, and earning your team a spot on the leaderboard.
The event is officially over but now that you have had a good night’s rest, added more stickers to your laptop, and ate enough free food (provided you’re not in lockdown) to last you all week, you suddenly ponder: "What now?"
Introduction
Being a self-diagnosed hackathon addict, I’ve asked myself (and have been asked) that question a lot! It inspired me to write this article in which:
I want to provide you and your team with a list of practical recommendations for what to do post-hackathon.
Let’s face it, there isn’t a right or a wrong. Oftentimes you’re in it for the exposure to new technologies or industry connections that might pose as your "foot-in-the-door" for an internship, graduate role, or simply a chance to showcase your skillset to the people around you by building something cool. If that’s you, the end result probably isn’t a startup but a growing GitHub portfolio.
In the end, it comes down to one question:
Does our team want to continue working on this project, or not?
1: The Must-Have: A README.md
This file needs to say it all, regardless of your answer to the above question! It’s the cover letter of your project, and perhaps even more important than any landing page you’ve built. Use it to tell everyone about the idea and the technologies that make it happen. If anyone wants to know about your team’s processes or learnings, they should find them here.. right next to your code.
In my experience, this is the simplest addition with the greatest impact. No matter how cool your project is or how well you know your own code, make it simple and concise for everyone.

What might you include?
- A picture tells a thousand words, capture everyone’s attention with a banner or screenshot of the homepage.
- A logo is a great addition if you are hosting the code in a personal repo, otherwise place it in the profile picture of your organisation.
- State your project name and update the repo’s description to sum up the solution in one sentence.
- Add keywords of implemented libraries or technologies to your repo.
- Include a link to your deployed solution (if applicable).
- Add status badges from your hosting provider or CI tool to indicate the status of your project or live website.
- If you won any prizes for your idea, mention them as well and prepend them with an emoji (if you’re comfortable with that).
- Briefly tell us why we should care about the problem / theme of the hackathon which your team was tackling.
- Briefly tell us how your team addresses the above and why your project is the best solution for the job.
- Give us screenshots! Hint: You can use HTML and CSS in your README to lay them out (or use a table).
- Give us a team photo! Surely you enjoyed yourselves, capture that moment in your README for all to see!
- Without too much complexity, tell us how we can get your code up and running locally (and don’t forget to link any relevant websites where we might have to apply for API keys).
✨ Pro Tip: Add as LinkedIn Project
Now that you have a beautiful README in place. Why not link to it on your LinkedIn profile? Go to the project section and add the GitHub URL along with the name of the project and short description. To show you’re a team player, add your team members as contributors.

2: The Bare Minimum: Clean Up
Having wrapped up the hack, you are probably stuck with a messy codebase on GitHub. While most Hackathons don’t judge the cleanliness of your code, you probably want to do your portfolio a favour…
- Spend a few minutes looking over the code as a whole and auto-format each file to remove undesirable whitespace and fix any confusing variable names. Now may also be a good time to provide a few comments on the use of your functions.
- Ensure you are not leaking your environment variables in your repo (ie. add your .
env
file to a.gitignore
so it is never checked in to your version control) and that any such keys are rotated now that the event is over. If applicable, provide a.env.example
file to document the required environment variables (without their values, of course). - If you have deployed your application to the cloud, let’s say to Heroku or Vercel (a popular choice for quick deployments at hackathons), you may have set up pipelines or Review Apps, which may cost you money over time. Leave only the production app remaining, and change it’s settings to auto-deploy your repo’s master branch. This will ensure that dependency alerts / security fixes in GitHub are automatically deployed too.
Make The Choice!
It’s simple:
if (you_want_to_grow_this_idea) {
Read On! In the next section we dive a little deeper.
} else {
Congrats! 🥳 You've attended a hackathon, built a cool solution,
make new connections, and added the new project to your GitHub /
LinkedIn portfolio to talk about in the future!
Ready for the next hackathon??
}
Next Steps: We Want To Keep Going (and Growing)
Awesome news! Hackathons are great catalysts for #innovation. If your team sees potential in the idea or has the desire to bring it to market, give yourselves a pat on the back for coming this far. 👏🏼👏🏼
This next section is for you!
3: Rally The Troops! It’s Time for a Retrospective!
Now that you’ve met each other and worked together, you’ll have to find a convenient location (preferably a physical space) that works for you all. It might be your university campus, a local cafe, or someone’s house.

Come together to talk about the success of the event, hear each other out, and take notes, you can use feedback and new Ideas (maybe the judges had great suggestions you hadn’t thought about) in the next steps.
- What worked well / could have been done better?
- Where does everyone see this idea heading?
- What’s the one thing everyone wished was implemented during the hackathon?
- What are the new ideas that came to mind since the event?
4: Identify your Executive Sponsor
Some hackathons are private company-wide innovation events. In contrast to their public equivalent, these typically come with the expectation of building something that will add value to a firm’s existing product or services.

What these events do have however, is a project sponsor. This is usually someone from the Senior Leadership Team who acts as a stakeholder to the project team. What do you need them for? Championing, of course! We want to make the biggest impact possible, but that’s easier said than done if we haven’t secured the emotional (and maybe financial) investment from the those with influence.
The first trick to securing executive support is showing that key benefits for the project sponsor (such as being associated with a successful project or passionate people / causes) can be repeatedly demonstrated.
- Meet them as early as possible to understand how your project might align to the company’s bigger goals, be it sustainability, diversity and inclusion, or similar values.
- Ask them to regularly update the company on your shared efforts. This is a great way to get free exposure, momentum, and be taken seriously with your endeavors.
5: Identify a Leader
Let’s face it, we’ve all been there.. sometimes its difficult to regain momentum after a tiring event. The thought of a clear leader might add undesirable hierarchies to the project but is necessary to keeping the team accountable (especially if remote)!

It’s not my place to tell you how to identify the leader in your team.. so think about who best articulates the problem and solution, who empathised and put the smile on the judges’ faces during the pitch, and who is great at people management. One quote sums it up nicely: "The only way to train for leadership is to attempt leadership."
Interesting insights: How to Be a Great Leader in a Startup and 8 Tips for Running a Startup Like a True Leader
6: Develop a Product Roadmap
As a team, let’s create some clarity and sense of direction. Here is an example of the Startup Product Roadmap, take a look at the full guide for more detailed explanations.

Typically, hackathons are great at covering off the first 4 steps in just enough detail to make a compelling case for the need of the solution you’re pitching. Your task now is to go back and revisit the early steps before moving on.
- Is there really a market for our solution?
- Is our solution really solving the core problem?
- Who is willing to pay to use the prototype right now? (Hint: this is your first customer so acquire them now!)
7: Keeping it Lean: Use Those Credits!
Assuming your team members are continuing to work for free (in their spare time of course); I challenge the need for fundraising this early on. Instead, I believe in the use of free trials to deliver your MVP on a shoestring budget.
Cloud platforms like Azure, AWS, or Google Cloud have never been cheaper and oftentimes someone from their organisation is associated with the hackathon and more than happy to throw some free credits your way. Use them and ask for more if they run out!
8: Develop a Feature Roadmap
I’m certain that most features you thought of were not able to be implemented by the team during the hackathon.
What to include in the MVP: Most teams struggle to define what’s urgent versus what creates the biggest impact early on. Let the following diagram be your guide to ruthlessly prioritising the MVP backlog.

9: Acquire Your First Paying Customer
It’s always great to bring the early adopter in at the earliest convenience. Sign them up as fast as possible and make them feel valued for believing in you!

Earlier, we asked ourselves "Who’s willing to pay for the prototype?" Now, we want to get their commitment locked in. This is our very first paying customer.
If they see a benefit in our solution, I bet they know someone else who they’re willing to refer!
Choose a payment model that works for your solution and focus on collecting recurring (eg. monthly) revenue. I’ve seen many early-stage startups handing out free trials to their initial customer base, but challenge you to consider discount pricing instead. 50%, even 25% of the original price is still better than no income at all.
We’re starting a business, so don’t be afraid to put a price tag on the MVP!
Finally, make those first customers feel valued by talking to them (in person) and listening to their feedback. Ask for examples of how your solution solved their problems. Also ask them where improvements could be made, then ship one of their feedback items (the one with the biggest overall impact of course).
10: Have FUN!
It goes without saying.. there is always room to learn (and nothing lost by saying: "I don’t know!") so don’t take yourself too seriously. You’ve got this!

What are your post-hackathon tips?
In recognising that all hackathons are different, this is by no means a comprehensive list, but rather practical actions to help regain momentum. That being said, I’d love to hear your post-hackathon Tips.
Best of luck to you and your team!