Sako

Platform & Security Engineer | Hackathon & Basketball Lover

[Sako @sakows]

Here are my 51 learnings from 50 hackathons in 2024!

Endless shoutout to all the organizers, sponsors and hackers for driving the pace of innovation in a region where it’s already sky-high. 🙌 🚢

After reflecting on this journey, I’ve grouped my learnings into these key themes:

✅ 1/10 Hackathons: The Heartbeat of Innovation
1. Definition of hackathon: With ideas you don't have, with people you don't know, with tools you haven't worked with: SHIP USEFUL THINGS FAST!
2. Hackathons are the freestyle dance of innovation, unlike the routine exercises of gyms or corporate life. They keep your engineering and entrepreneurial skills razor-sharp.
3. Hackathons are a great way to challenge yourself, step out of your comfort zone, and embrace creativity.
4. Hackathons unleash collective intelligence that can ripple into positive impacts beyond the event.
5. Hackathons are the perfect environment to collaborate in non-corporate, non-academic settings, enabling individuals to bring out their best.

[Sako @sakows]

Engineering was never about writing the perfect code. Real engineering is when people come to you with problem or you face it:
✅ Ask the right questions
✅ Understand the environment
✅ Guide them
✅ Share resources
✅ Connect with right people
✅ Help package effective solution

[Sako @sakows]

Do you remember when you joined X? I do! #MyXAnniversary

[Daniel Svonava @svonava]

🚨LAUNCH NEWS🚨

We are about to experience a golden age of open source AI as a response to many companies losing access to AI APIs and the combined inference bills hitting tens of billions of dollars.

There are now more than 100,000 models uploaded to huggingface every month, but small task specific models are still hard to discover and running a mixed model workload across pipelines and real-time queries is a challenge.

Building on our heritage of search & document processing across e-com and enterprise, we decided to *BET OUR WHOLE COMPANY* on a new product that launches today: a self-hostable open source cluster we call the Superlinked Inference Engine.

Help us make open source AI viable by starring, contributing and using SIE on your own hardware in the safety of your own cloud *for free* 🙏

Repo link and more info: https://t.co/KQAwYsc5NY

Onwards!

PS: We would not be able to do this without our wonderful partners @trychroma @lancedb @qdrant_engine @weaviate_io - more on this coming soon!

[Sako @sakows]

@frontiertower @Superherohotel love it!!

[Frontier Tower @frontiertower]

The real reason founders move to SF isn’t the capital.
It’s the hallway conversations.

So we built a hallway.

Launching @superherohotel: 6 floors in a historic 1920 Nob Hill building.
10-min walk from @frontiertower.
Members have raised $150M.
Events have pulled 70K.

Sleep at the hotel. Build at the Tower.
Come for 4 weeks. Ship, raise, break through 👇

[Sako @sakows]

@rpoo enjoy it Ross!!! try also cold plunge in Bay🙂👌

[Sahil Bloom @SahilBloom]

The older I get, the more I realize intelligence is overrated. Intelligent people are more likely to overthink, overplan, and overanalyze. They hide behind motion that doesn't create progress. They fear the judgment of others if they're proven wrong.

The truth is that intelligence is abundant. Courage is not. The people you admire are the ones who had the courage to act. They aren’t more talented than you. They aren’t smarter than you. They just took action when you didn’t.

I often wonder how many extraordinary people wasted their entire lives waiting for permission that never came. Permission isn't granted. It's taken. You get to tap yourself in whenever you want. You can just do things.

Courage beats intelligence.

[Sako @sakows]

@meh_agarwal 🔥

[Sako @sakows]

@marianebekker 🔥🚢

[Sako @sakows]

Get $100 in free credits (no card required) and try it here: https://t.co/teCnBy7d1V

Thanks to https://t.co/wtOClBn4GX for sponsoring!

PS: My favorite search tool at hackathons! AND my first sponsored post, let me know how i did :)

#AI #BuildInPublic #ResearchAPI

[Sako @sakows]

I just ran a complex policy research question through https://t.co/wtOClBn4GX Research API! 🚢

Agentic search, exhaustive mode, 45 seconds, cited sources. This is what search should have always been!

[Michelle Fang 🌁 @michelleefang]

Saturday 2/14

‣ The Board Walks https://t.co/risBeXVzLQ

@theboardtalks

‣ Build What You Love - Women in Tech Hackathon https://t.co/NM9GCMm7L4

@aivalleyio @courtneythko @victorsuortiz

‣ AI Meets Robotics – Launch & Fund Your Own Startup (Edition 1) https://t.co/E96ObtE348

@lablabai @GoogleDeepMind @theaievangelist @Robotcom @gokiwibot @Marianebekker @sakows

[Sako @sakows]

@GeorgeKurdin @usemonk @zhou_squared ❤️🚢

[Sako @sakows]

Demos are no longer impressive.

As LLMs mature and the surrounding tooling accelerates, the vibes at hackathons change as well:

In 2024, we were using AI.
In 2025, we started building with AI, and “buildathons” and “build days” replaced traditional hackathons.

Now we’re entering a new wave and the bar needs to rise again. A polished UI, a working POC, and a good story are no longer enough.

By 2026, I’m personally setting a new goal to ship:
✅ product that generates revenue.
✅ research-level breakthrough.

Let’s call it payathon for now, where customers are the judges to decide if they are seeing immediate value and willing to pay. What is a formula to charge? Output should be 10x of input. Building products and services that leads to revenue, which in-turn leads to win.

Btw, I have pitched the idea to @AndrewYNg , he liked it as well, now we need to see it in action next year🙂 Really, excited to try it out!

[Sako @sakows]

@MammadKarim @andrewchen :)

[Sako @sakows]

Here are my 51 learnings from 50 hackathons in 2024!

Endless shoutout to all the organizers, sponsors and hackers for driving the pace of innovation in a region where it’s already sky-high. 🙌 🚢

After reflecting on this journey, I’ve grouped my learnings into these key themes:

✅ 1/10 Hackathons: The Heartbeat of Innovation
1. Definition of hackathon: With ideas you don't have, with people you don't know, with tools you haven't worked with: SHIP USEFUL THINGS FAST!
2. Hackathons are the freestyle dance of innovation, unlike the routine exercises of gyms or corporate life. They keep your engineering and entrepreneurial skills razor-sharp.
3. Hackathons are a great way to challenge yourself, step out of your comfort zone, and embrace creativity.
4. Hackathons unleash collective intelligence that can ripple into positive impacts beyond the event.
5. Hackathons are the perfect environment to collaborate in non-corporate, non-academic settings, enabling individuals to bring out their best.

[Sako @sakows]

🎯 Next Time: The Fix
1. Branch chaos | One person owns deployment
2. Feature creep | One feature, executed perfectly
3. “update” commits | Commit messages that aren’t garbage
4. Integration hell | Merge early, merge often |
5. Demo panic | Stop coding 2 hours before demo to practice

[Sako @sakows]

When You ask AI to evaluate why you lost at hackathon.

Loud and clear: You Lost Because You Couldn’t Execute

[Sako @sakows]

💀 The Harsh Truth

You had the right idea (egg music was perfectly useless) but couldn’t ship it. Your git history looks like a team that panicked, thrashed, and gave up.

Winners ship broken demos that work.
You shipped nothing that worked.