How did Hackathons help me grow as a Product Manager?
Disclaimer: All the stories I share are my own hypothesis. I do not intend to harm or object any person, product, job, or community; intentionally or otherwise. Hope you enjoy a good read!
Hackathon? What the hack?
If you have stumbled upon this article and do not have a fair bit of an idea of what a hackathon is, you might as well check this article on Wikipedia which explains Hackathon in detail. If you still don’t understand, let me try explaining it in a simple sentence:
Hackathon is an event where like-minded people come together and demonstrate innovation, creativity, problem solving skills in a stipulated time (usually 24–48 hours) to solve real world problems.
Hackathon can be very competitive in nature with multiple teams striving hard to stay in the competition, but I have always considered them the best innovation and networking source. If you’re a college student studying Computer Science, then you must participate in at least 2–3 good hackathons like https://hackcbs.tech, https://hackinout.co/ etc. Join Hackathon Hackers FB group to stay updated on all the hackathon news.
I can write an entire book on Hackathon and its benefits but today I decided to write on a very underrated and peculiar topic, Hackathons and Product Management.
I have participated, mentored and judged numerous hackathons and SoC during my college and continued to do so even after college ended. Some notable mentions include:
- hackCBS (Founder, Mentor, Judge)
- Smart India Hackathon (Youngest Mentor)
- Wikimania Hackathon (Participant, Mentor)
- GirlScript Foundation (Mentor, Project Admin)
You must be wondering why I am writing about Hackathons and Product Management. There’s more to it than you might think.
Hackathons use technology and innovation to solve real-world problems. Hackathons allow you to understand your users’ problems, decide what to build, and build a quick prototype to validate your idea.
This is something that you will find in the job description of any Product Manager profile. Product Managers work on real problems faced by the user. They spend a lot of time researching on the problem to develop a better understanding of it. They work with engineering and build a MVP out of it, release it and gather early feedback from the users and stakeholders. Although, Product Managers work on various other areas but you get the gist.
Lessons learnt from hackathons
- Hack the problem, not the solution
This is perhaps by far the most important lesson you can learn through hackathons. In my earlier hackathons, I focused too much on the technology, programming language, latest frameworks and the design. Gradually, I realised that it’s not about the solution most of all but the problem that you’re trying to solve. To this date, I try to focus more on the problem and only when I find it worth solving, I tend to go towards the solution. This is an important PM lesson because you’ll want to solve every problem but later on realise it’s too much of an effort for very less impact.
2. Build the prototype, not the product
There’s a famous saying in Product Management:
If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.
It still holds true today. There are a bunch of resources to help you learn the skill of building an MVP such as The $100 Startup, The Lean Startup, The Lean Product Playbook etc. It is true that these are amazing resources to learn the art of MVP, but hackathons are one of the underrated resources for learning prototyping skills. During my initial hackathons, I focused too much building too many features rather than building a single feature correctly that solved the problem. During my first mentoring sessions, I focused on the features that were developed. At any hackathon, I often hear participants complaining about login and signup. As a mentor, every time I attend a hackathon, I specifically tell them to not build login/signup if they cannot complete it in 5 minutes (Yes, there are ton of frameworks which can build the authentication scaffolding for you in a single command). Rather focus on the most important feature which will make the user use your product. Teams that used this mantra have gone to win a lot of hackathons. Even today, most of the Product Managers fail to scope out the MVP and end up making the finished product only to realise 6 months later that it can’t achieve Product-Market fit.
3. Your tech is only as good as your solution
This is my favorite one because I can relate to it the most. I always thought using the latest technologies is the way to build any product and win any hackathon. Even today, most teams just add fancy, trending tech like AI/ML, Blockchain, AR/VR/MR etc. just to awe the judges with the tech. Well, neither it works at the hackathon nor in building a product. Most Product Managers who transition from engineering always focus too much on using the latest technologies. They will use AI where it’s not needed. They will try to use decentralization in their products and don’t even try to understand its use cases. In any hackathon I mentor, I no longer ask the participants about their tech stack, instead I focus on the problem they’re solving and what solutions they have in mind. Needless to say, if you are a PM, you should never ask engineering to choose a framework or technology just because your friend used it to get seed funding. :D
4. Fail fast, if you should
I’ve never won 1st place at any hackathon and it used to make me sad that even after sleepless nights, I wasn’t able to make it. Sometimes, I never even made it to the finals. But now when I look at it, I think this lesson has been indispensable for my role as a PM. Every PM fail once in a while, even the most experienced ones. Twitter sunset the Fleets feature recently. Wouldn’t you think Twitter PMs would have done their due diligence before building it? They absolutely did but it’s part of the job and failure is often tied with the PM role and it should be gracefully accepted.
The good thing is I don’t fear failure now, thanks to the various hackathons and rejections I got early in college life. At a hackathon, normally you have got max of 48 hours to build, test and fail. In just 48 hours, I learnt what works and what doesn’t. Even today, a lot of PMs spend months to fail. Well, just like any other person, I try to avoid failure but if I have to, I make sure I fail fast and move on.
Why Product Managers should mentor/judge at hackathons?
Most hackathon organisers try to get mentors and judges who are SDE II/III or EMs at notable companies. It is natural because everything is tied with technology but we’ve evolved beyond tech. I say it out loud that PMs should jump in at hackathons more often. This not only helps participants learn the core skills of problem solving but also helps the PMs explore and learn life-long skills.
There are brilliant innovative minds working with technology to solve real world problems in just 48 hours. I’d say it’s a paradise for any Product Manager. When you mentor the young minds and listen to their ideas, you learn more than you think. It’ll be no surprise if you get your next inspiration from a hackathon.
If you’re still not convinced, you’ll at least get a good cover photo. :P
