This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Vee Khuu
Six weeks before the world’s largest online hackathon started, I was already planning. Following Bolt.new’s post on X, getting hyped, joining communities. I had zero ideas on what to build but maximum excitement.
Then I started telling people about it, and magic happened.
First, someone who used to work at a top-5 SEO SaaS company joined me. A growth marketer, product guru, wore every hat you can imagine. Then a product manager from Disney. We had our first call and I pitched this idea: an all-in-one hub with memory for screenshots because, let’s be honest, we all take way too many and lose track of them.
Everyone got SO excited. We were like, “This is it. This is our winning idea.”
Then we brought in a fourth team member, a full-stack engineer who used to work at Google. I literally thought we’d assembled the Avengers.
The hackathon started on a Friday. We didn’t meet until the following Monday or Tuesday because, you know, life. Already a few days behind, but whatever, we had the dream team, right?
One week goes by. We did… nothing. Just had a PRD sitting there while I’m internally screaming because I wanted to dive in and build.
One teammate built a prototype, but Bolt.new was completely unusable that first week because of all the traffic from the hackathon. Errors everywhere, it was just pure frustration for everyone trying to code.
Then we discovered another product during one of our calls that was way better than what we wanted to build. Honestly, it made sense – why reinvent the wheel?
Plot twist #1: We pivoted. A little over a third of the hackathon had already passed and we had nothing.
One teammate pitched a travel app for cultural events. I suggested we go after the ElevenLabs sponsorship track and grab the $25,000 prize money for AI audio apps. Kids’ audiobooks seemed like our shot.
Everyone loved it. We split up tasks. I worked on naming, others on UI and prompts.
We came up with what felt like the perfect name. After hours of brainstorming calls and Slack debates, we landed on something clever. Really clever. The whole team was proud.
Plot twist #2: Three weeks in, one week left, I’m scrolling X and see another person had already built the exact same thing. Same name. Same color scheme. Already submitted to the App Store. And guess what? They already had their first customer.
I felt like someone punched me in the gut. I had to walk away from my computer.
I shared the news with our team. With six days left, I basically said thanks for the journey, but I didn’t think we could ship in time.
But two teammates weren’t ready to quit. They rallied the team for one final push. When I joined their call, they asked if I was still in.
“I’m in if you think we have enough time.”
Final push time. I took our Figma designs that another team member made, and built the landing page, sign-up flow, parent profiles. Didn’t sleep for over 36 hours… not because I was coding the whole time, but because I decided to stay up and work instead of sleeping when I couldn’t sleep anyway.
Another teammate was working until 4-5 AM too. We were all really trying to make it happen.
But something wasn’t clicking. Maybe it was the disconnect between traditional development and vibe coding approaches. Maybe we had too many brilliant minds and not enough focus. Maybe I wasn’t assertive enough when I naturally fell into coordinating things, because this was volunteer work and I didn’t want to push people.
Sunday night, the day before submissions were due, one teammate wrote a thoughtful message thanking everyone and acknowledging we didn’t ship but learned a lot.
I was frustrated. Not at the team, but at the situation and myself.
But here’s the thing: That weekend, Bolt.new gave everyone free credits for a one-shot prompt challenge. So late Sunday evening, I’m sitting at my desk with just my desk lamp on, everything warm and quiet, and I built a typing game. Recorded a demo video. Posted it on social media. Checked the rules one last time.
And I freaking submitted it.
When I hit that submit button, I felt this wave of relief. After weeks of preparation and all that chaos, I’d actually finished something.
You know what I realized? I always thought I needed more time, more runway. And yeah, it would’ve been nice. But when push came to shove, I could still whip something up, something good to accomplish my goal.
I used to give up on personal projects when things got tough. I never failed other people – when investors put money in or business partners depended on me, I always delivered. But when it was just me? I didn’t hold myself accountable.
This hackathon taught me I could set a goal and actually finish it, even when everything fell apart around us.
My real estate background helped me approach team coordination like any other project I’d run. The only difference was I couldn’t pay people to listen to me – everyone was volunteering their time, which made keeping everyone aligned much trickier.
One teammate and I had a good conversation afterward about how life doesn’t stop for hackathons. Everyone has their own stuff going on. You do your best, adapt, and give what you can. Sometimes that’s enough.
We all processed the experience differently, and that’s okay.
I still think we had a dream team. We just had too many bright minds working on a volunteer timeline. But I proved something to myself that night when I submitted that typing game.
Sometimes the most important finish line isn’t the one you originally planned to cross.
This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Vee Khuu