I was part of a startup that put on a hackathon with a 10K first prize many, many years ago. We had a group of presenters who had a polished product and were l

I was part of a startup that put on a hackathon with a 10K first prize many, many years ago. We had a group of presenters who had a polished product and were looking to put our API/whatever into their product so that they could be eligible for the prize, and you could tell that this was all that they did. I also know that there's a group of people who attend as many hackathons as possible in the bay area for no other reason than living is expensive, and there is generally free food at the hackathons. Honestly, I'd be a part of one of these again in a heartbeat -- the hours were crazy, but, it was a great way to get your developers, your API consumers, and everyone else in the same room, to validate if it will burst/scale up, and you can solve a lot of really interesting challenges that weekend.