I've never won 1st, but I've won a ton of sponsor prizes at hackathons. My strategy: 0. Try to recruit a diverse team, you really only need 1, max 2 engineers

I've never won 1st, but I've won a ton of sponsor prizes at hackathons. My strategy: 0. Try to recruit a diverse team, you really only need 1, max 2 engineers. If it's an industry hackathon, try to get an industry expert/insider. 1. Try to identify competitions that less people will compete for. For example, everyone does the fun crypto/AI/ML competitions. Without knowing anything about the space, I'm 2 for 2 at supply chain industry focused competitions. 2. Focus on the business solution and your presentation before the code. 3. Focus on frontend/visual code and sponsor APIs before backend code, the backend can almost always be hardcoded. 4. Save time to do a good writeup, readme, take pictures and videos, etc. Explain what you built clearly using multiple forms of media.