Hackathons used to be cool. But now with AI, hackathons are so back.
I grew up going to hackathons. And the new hackathons I'm going to are shorter, and a lot more ambitious. These new hackathons are in fact so different, a new category is emerging. They are "half-hackathons".

Why? Participants can build something impressive in half as much time. And this has implications:

First, the bar is getting higher. In one prompt and 3 minutes, you can build a working software in Lovable. So why not try to shoot higher? Make something you can actually use by the end of the 6 hours? Try launching dozens of parallel agents and make novel scientific discoveries. An arrogant claim? No, this is now possible.

A month ago, I went to the most impressive hackathon of my life. I flew to San Francisco, and participated in a hackathon organized by Anthropic and Exa. Here was the pitch: "​Can AI agents discover new science? We believe these systems are now smart enough to legitimately make novel discoveries. Join the challenge and get to be the first in human history to demonstrate something new." (Full version). An arrogant claim? No, it worked. And I left the hackathon realizing we had entered a new era.

Second, this now means hackathons are becoming the best way to explore new ideas quickly, from -1 to 0. For testing an idea, you don't need 3 month incubators or 24h hackathons anymore, a half-hackathon is all you need. They give us a time to explore in favorable conditions, with a deadline, peer pressure for demos and builder energy.

What sets half-hackathons as an entirely new category?

• Shorter time frames: half-hackathons are shorter than hackathons. Between 4 to 8 hours. From experience, 6 hours seems to be a good length and gives time to chat with others before kickoff and after demos. They can fit in an evening (after work), or an afternoon. Smaller time commitments means more potential talents can participate. Yay!

• Less code, more code: Teams focus on their "Plan.md" written in plain text, in markdown format (PRDs, etc), delivered to agents that write the code. This is an important distinction. Time spent actually coding is reduced. Participants actually talk more than in normal hackathons. Why? Because we have more time to chat in between agent requests sent.

• Parallelization of thought: the point above also means for teams to be able to explore multiple paths in parallels. This is a powerful mindset shift. AI power users launch multiple experiments instead of building sequentially.

• Templates and boilerplates: It's now easy to grab a boilerplate from a public repository and get started with a fast proof of concept. And the good news: these templates have exploded in number in the last decade. They're perfect for half-hackathons.

• Smaller team sizes: Teams of 4 or 5 people used to be necessary to get impressive results. But they're slower. Now tiny teams of 1 to 3 people can ship more.

• Better for building product and pitch skills: AI-powered development workflows require builders to clearly state what they have in mind. They need to have a clear intention and communicate it to the machine (prompting), and to others (pitching). So the quality of demo presentations is higher (especially when LLMs can give you pre-feedback, or help you find a great pitch for your demo).

• Democratization beyond coders: just like half-marathons attract more people than full marathons, the same seems true with half-hackathons. Shorter time-frame, with no-code AI tools, means a lot more semi-technical people can benefit from hackathons. Designers, marketers and product managers can now contribute, widening the talent aperture.

Joining a half-hackathon

Lu.ma is now the new default website to find interesting hackathons in your city. No hackathons in your location? See the section below. Once you found one, I built this GPT guide to help you make the most of it. Below is a quick preview.

Making the most of your 6 hours is finding a good equilibrium between diverging on different ideas, then converging on the most promising one. Diverging and converging in short loops. This is a suggestion for how to best ship in 6:
![[Team Collaboration Guide on Chalkboard.png]]

Forming a team

Half-hackathons are the easiest way to test a collaboration with some of the most talented technical people in your city. Make use of it!

Tiny teams that learn from other’s rhythms can spin up a project faster than individuals. If you find great teammates, keep them across events; that continuity builds compound skill.
Have your own group chat, brainstorm, meet after hackathons, have a drink.

Aim for one half-hackathon per month. Every quarter, join bigger/longer hackathons. Regular gathering will help you bond faster and iterate quicker towards your ideas.

Organizing your own hackathon

I highly encourage you to participate in a half-hackathon ([[Hackathons and AI - a new paradigm]]), and then organize one yourself. Why this is worth it:

• First, selfishly, organizing an event like this is a pretext to meet top people, invited as jury. Invite people you admire to join, network and be the nexus of innovation and dynamism in your city. Organizing recurring IRL events is a huge underrated hack to gain visibility in your domain.

• Many types of organizations can benefit from organizing or sponsoring half-hackathons: tech companies, early VCs, incubators, hiring companies, think tanks, research labs. Big corporations can boost their employer brand and employee retention too. Hackathons are an easy opportunity to get in touch with all of them.

• Third, and for the broader benefit of society, organizing hackathons is a beautiful way to encourage talented people to build amazing ideas, meet friends, make lasting relationships and give others energy. These events can help others find movement and meaning in their lives again.

Finally, organizing an event might seem daunting, but I've done some of the boring work for you. I'm working on a "playbook", in a GPT format you can easily follow. It guides you step by step with the decision making, the ops, the assets to generate, etc to organize your own half-hackathon. The GPT is linked to an open repo with lists of venues and sponsors you can contact for every city. Anyone can contribute to these lists. My hope is that that it gets much easier to organize these short hackathons without prior experience of event management.

For starting out, don't wait for other's permissions. You don't need a big venue, sponsors, jury, prizes. You can have people come to your place, to a large public space. Be scrappy. What matters is having smart people eager to build a project together - with their computers and wifi.

Want to get to the next level? it's time to be more ambitious. First, as a marketing play: Define a bolder theme. Find a crazy venue (a castle, a train, a boat). Create a punchy 60 seconds trailer video to get top participants in. Invite leading entrepreneurs, investors and researchers. Frame your hackathon as a top collab "Mistral x LVMH". Send emails and get intros to get a large pool prize. Edit a post-video like it was a TV show. You name it.
Second, and more profoundly, try to have the smartest/dynamic people come and build something. Find these technical people anywhere you can.

I'm taking time in the coming months to try to restore the dignity of hackathons, and amplify their impact with their 'half' format. I can't find a better way right now to be helpful to others than promoting these types of events.