The document provides tips for presenting at a hackathon. It recommends identifying customers and problems, forming a team with clear roles, setting expectations, creating milestones and timelines, focusing on delivery speed, validating assumptions, choosing what to prioritize, asking for help when needed, focusing on people's needs, and enjoying the process. It also offers tips for the presentation, including choosing a presenter, practicing, managing time well, and being prepared to answer questions about the problem, solution, uniqueness, traction, business model, investments, risks, timeline, and team. The overall message is to thoroughly prepare your presentation by focusing on the problem and solution, validating your assumptions, and demonstrating what makes your idea unique and how it will

1. Hackathon Tips
Michael Kalika

2. 1. Before You Begin
➔ Know your customers whom you are solving for
Even if your project is a pure technology innovation or research - think about
those who would use or benefit from it.
➔ Form a team and assign clear roles
Ideally you need someone who is in a role of PM, UX... You also need a leader who
will make sure that you are meeting timelines and schedule for this day.
➔ Make sure you don’t have skill gaps in the team
Maybe you need Front-End, Mobile or Data Engineer? Or Data Scientist?
➔ Set expectations for this day
Agree with a team what you want to demonstrate at the end of this day and what
will you work after that? Define your critical path and priorities.

3. 2. Before You Begin
➔ Set expectations with your team members
regarding their availability to continue working after the Hackathon (if relevant)
➔ Create milestones and timeline
Together with a team create major milestones and timeline for this week and tasks
for people.
➔ Consider continuity
Think about how you will support and operate your project after Hackathon?
Consider Open Sourcing so others could help you.

4. 1. During the Hackathon
➔ Know your customers
Interview your customers and get their quotes or short videos which you could
embed in your final pitch to emphasize what you are solving for and for whom.
➔ Validate assumptions
Validate any critical assumptions with customers and stakeholders.
➔ Final Pitch
Assign a team member to start working on a final pitch presentation and Demo
from the beginning. For example, someone in a PM role for this week could be
responsible for the pitch presentation.
➔ Collaborate and Communicate
Collaborate and communicate with a team on the progress and barriers /
challenges.

5. 2. During the Hackathon
➔ Choose your battles
This day is short, so choose your battles right and prioritize what you will or won’t
be able to solve perfectly if you are stuck.
➔ Ask for help
Ask for help if/when needed. That will save your time.
➔ Prototype
Prototype complex / expensive / risky areas. Think about mocks if/when needed.
Mocks are not necessarily UX/UI mockup screens. You can also mock APIs or
async event-driven services to demonstrate your vision.
➔ Optimize for speed of delivery
Consider no-code tools (Airtable, Zapier, Google Forms, Typeform, Wix etc.)

6. 3. During the Hackathon
➔ Focus on people’s needs
➔ Stay focused on the mission
➔ Optimize for the impact
➔ Think about uniqueness
Think about other possible solutions and why your solution is unique?
➔ Think about idea scaling
Think how to scale or apply your idea into different areas, teams, products etc.
➔ Take Risks, Be Bold, Be Courageous, Be Your Best!
➔ Most important - Enjoy!

7. Before and during the Demo
➔ Don’t skip this part! Come and share what you’ve done!
➔ Chose a presenter (ideally one person).
➔ Train few times before you actually present
You can do dry runs with a team or just in front of Zoom and record yourself. Make
sure your speech and demo are fluent, and you respect the allocated time.
➔ Practice tough questions and tech explanations
Usually about problem validation/fit, scaling of the solution, business model or
growth etc. Practice explaining something complex in technology (if there is) in a
short time for non-technical people.
➔ Manage time
Manage your time during presentation and leave some time for questions.

8. Customer Probing
Interview Questions

9. General
➔ Can you tell me more about that?
➔ Why is that good? (if customer mentions something good)
➔ Why is that bad? (if customer mentions something bad) How does that happen?
➔ Tell me the steps you went through.
➔ How did this start?
➔ What else did you try?
➔ Can you go back to the part about X?
➔ What exactly did you mean by that?
➔ What was going through your mind when you did X? What were you hoping to see?
➔ What exactly did you see?

10. Goal Related
➔ What were you trying to achieve?
➔ What’s the outcome you’d wish for?
➔ What was your intention?
➔ What was your expectation?
➔ How will you know when your goal is reached?
➔ Why solve this? Why else? What is your biggest or broader pain?
➔ What’s stopping you? What else? What are your smaller or narrower challenges
that if solved, then the broader or the original pain is resolved?

11. Root Cause
➔ Why is that? And why is that? etc...
➔ So what caused that to happen?
➔ What was behind that decision?
➔ What was your reasoning there?

12. Confirm
➔ Can you say that again to make sure I got it?
➔ Let me recount what you said to make sure I got it...

13. Problem Statement &
Ideal State

14. Customer Interview Debrief
➔ What surprised you?
➔ What did you observe that was unexpected?
➔ What was an anomaly?
➔ What did you see that was different from your life experiences? What were the
biggest pain points you observed?
➔ Where did you see the biggest areas of negative emotion? Where did you see
folks investing time/effort in a work around?

15. Problem Statement
I am narrow
description of
the customer
Ukrainian refugee
I am trying to desired
outcome
Find a job in new country
but this stands in
my way
I don’t know where to look for
because root cause I am new to this place
which makes me feel emotion Frustrated, useless and helpless

16. Problem Statement
I am narrow
description of
the customer
I am trying to desired
outcome
but this stands in
my way
because root cause
which makes me feel emotion

17. Ideal State
In a perfect world bold statement
of the future
that is
borderline
unachievable
I know where to look for jobs
The biggest benefit
to me is
most important
improvement in
the customer’s
life
I am completely confident that I can find a workplace
based on my skills and situation I am in
which makes me feel emotion Happy, fulfilled, confident and waiting to tell others
who are in the same situation

18. Ideal State
In a perfect world bold statement
of the future
that is
borderline
unachievable
The biggest benefit
to me is
most important
improvement in
the customer’s
life
which makes me feel emotion

19. Presentation Checklist

20. Problem
➔ Who are your customers?
➔ What problem are you solving for your customers?
➔ What does the pain result in?
➔ What opportunities do you provide for people to be faster, more cost-effective,
more efficient, happier, secure or smarter?
➔ How many people need this problem solved - market size?
➔ If relevant, have you validated that people will pay to have it solved?
➔ Have you validated that people will they invest their time and allocate
resources to work with you on experiments, acceptance tests and supply
required data/info?

21. Solution
TIP: Be sure not to let the solution dominate the pitch
➔ As simply as possible: what does your solution or product do for customers?
➔ How does it work? (think about flows, architecture, UI mockups or algorithms)
➔ How have you tested it with customers?

22. Uniqueness
TIP: Show you have researched the market or possible solutions and know what the
competition is or alternatives are. Are there other teams or companies who do
something similar in this or a different way?
➔ What’s unique in the solution? Think about Technology/ Methodology /
Patents / Knowledge/ Experience/ Partnerships (if 3rd party involved).
➔ How do you help your customers get results differently to the competition, or
other alternatives?

23. Customer Traction
TIP: Use data and facts to strengthen your case. Try getting customer and advisor
feedbacks and quote them if possible.
➔ Success so far?
➔ Pilot customers?
➔ Progression in usage? Think about some KPIs if any
➔ Customer reference quotes or movies?
➔ Some coverage in media? Think about Articles / Blog Posts / Research
Publications / News Mentions / Conference or Webinar Talks etc.
➔ Competition or Alternative wins?

24. Business Model
➔ If relevant, how do you get paid and for what ?
➔ If relevant, how do you generate a “revenue” or “value”?
➔ What are the opportunities for growth?
➔ How can you scale beyond your current scope: new industries, domains, teams,
territories, or any other applications of partnerships and technology?

25. Investment, Barriers and Help
➔ What investment is needed? Think about money, human resources, 3rd party
products or services?
➔ What barriers do you have?
➔ What help do you need? Think about skills or experience for the team, budget
etc.
➔ What big steps will you use the investment for?

26. Assumptions, Risks and Mitigation Plan
➔ Any specific assumptions you have made in this project?
➔ What are the major and probable risks in this project?
➔ What is your mitigation plan?

27. Timeline
➔ What are your major milestones and deliverables?

28. Team
➔ Who is the team?
➔ What relevant experience and skills does your team have that supports your
story?
➔ Achievements?
➔ What binds you together as team members to fix this problem?

29. Good luck!
We hope you’ll use these tips to go out and
create a product, idea or service that helps
Ukrainian Refugees!