How to start a (big) hackathon, briefly

27 July 2026

This is not intended to be a comprehensive guide to running a hackathon. It is mostly a collection of things I learned while helping organise Hack Trinity, Hack Ireland and Hack Europe, particularly the things that were less obvious to me at the beginning or have become more clear over time.

1. Founding narrative matters

Why does this need to exist?

What gap does it fill? Why is it worth somebody’s time, money or attention? Why now?

When starting anything new, the founding narrative is this fluid but key thing. It is the story you’ll tell people to bring them along on the journey with you.

It helps potential team members, participants, volunteers and partners quickly understand what you’re trying to build, why it matters and why they should care. You’ll repeat some version of it in almost every important conversation, so it is worth getting clear early on.

2. Be specific

When you try to appeal to everyone, you’ll often end up appealing to no one.

Be clear about what you’re building and who this event is for. This should come through in the website, the branding, the messaging and sometimes even the name of the event.

Put up a clear bat signal and keep it shining.

3. Start bigger than you think

Sam Altman has this essay on hard startups, making the somewhat counterintuitive point that harder startups are often easier to make successful than easy ones.

This is especially true with hackathons. The main determinant of a hackathon going well is getting people excited about a thing, and then delivering on that thing. A big ambitious hackathon is inherently easier to get people excited about than your median hackathon. This gives you a tailwind in finding supporters, team members and participants rather than a headwind.

And this includes you! The best work comes from a root of joy and excitement. Make things easier for yourself in finding the most interesting version of the hackathon you want to make happen.

4. Plant the flag and work towards it

Once you’ve figured out this most exciting version, firmly plant your flag there.

Say the thing out loud, and then say it again. Buy the domain. Tell your friends. Commit yourself to it.

You don’t need to have everything figured out. Just make sure there’s always a pragmatic next step, and keep working towards it.

5. Early believers are disproportionately important

Be intentional about who you approach to partner with early on.

Your first believers help set the slope of your momentum. Beyond providing you with advice, money, a venue or another resource, they’ll lend you credibility. Once respected people and organisations have backed you, every conversation afterwards becomes easier if it includes “we’re working with …”.

Momentum of this kind can compound very quickly.

6. Actively recruit and curate the participants

Most people approach recruiting for hackathons by advertising, posting on Instagram and sharing things in group chats. This is good, but you can do much better.

If you care about the hackathon, you should be excited to find the best talent to take part in it. This is one of those places where doing things that don’t scale pays off enormously.

Reach out to people directly! Ask relevant professors who their smartest students are. Ask student society leads who their most energetic volunteers are. Use the Github API to find the most popular open source developers near you. Use Google Scholar to find the most innovative researchers near you. Always be listening for talent!

Once you find one node (a talented person), you’ve often unlocked a whole new social graph which might be fractal if you’re lucky! Ask them who their friends are. Repeat.

The incentives when organising a hackathon can often push you towards focusing on the number of applicants and how eager they are to attend. While those are important, I strongly encourage you to focus on the quality. A tangible sense of a high talent bar will create a qualitatively different atmosphere and vibe, and everyone will take the hackathon more seriously.

Do all the normal social media posting and advertising, so people see the event often, but don’t stop there. Actively go and curate the people you want to see in the room.

7. Understand what partners actually want

Different partners will have different reasons for supporting you, and you should try your best to understand what those reasons are.

A recruiter probably cares about talent. A growth lead may want a big pump of new people onboarded and building with their product. An ecosystem builder may simply want to see more cool ambitious technical events happening in their city.

Just as importantly, think about the person you’re actually talking to. What are their incentives? In many cases, they won’t hold the chequebook themselves and may need to convince someone else or justify their support internally. Make this easy for them!

8. Building something sustainable

If this is a student hackathon, you’ll likely graduate eventually! And the torch will need to be passed on. Keep this salient at all times.

Give the younger team members the confidence and experience to hold the torch. Give them meaningful opportunities to take on responsibility early. Suggest things to them directly; the ones who will be good will usually rise and take them on.

Document what you learn. Share relationships with partners. Make sure important knowledge and relationships don’t sit with just one or two people.

You should also think carefully about how the culture and vibe of the event can be maintained over time.

9. And finally, some pragmatic things

• Have a caffeine partner (i.e. Red Bull, Celsius, etc.).
• Ensure the Wi-Fi is good.
• Start fundraising earlier than you think.
• Allow for much more time than you expect between confirming sponsorship and the money actually hitting your bank account.
• Leverage existing communities (i.e. student societies) for distribution.
• Make the event easy to share.
• Gamify things for the participants where possible (i.e. optional CTF in the application process, live leaderboard tracking git commits during the hackathon, etc.).
• Recruit more volunteers than you think you’ll need for the hackathon itself. More hands are almost always useful.
• Be clear and transparent about the judging process and what you are hoping to see.
• Be conscious of the incentives created by your judging process. Participants may otherwise optimise for polished presentations over interesting underlying technology and projects. Github repos should be inspected!
• Thank everyone afterwards properly.
• Have fun with it!