This exact thing happened to me. I was the backend guy on a winning hackathon team and decided it was pointless to build a real server for the proposed idea. It

This exact thing happened to me. I was the backend guy on a winning hackathon team and decided it was pointless to build a real server for the proposed idea. It was essentially a single page app, v nicely designed etc, kind of a half-baked concept but kind of fine. Definitely aligned with the business. It won with the entire backend being mocked. It didn't really matter if there there was actual business logic underneath. I just advised on API design and made sure the idea hung together technically speaking. It beat some much cooler, technically innovative concepts. It made me not want to participate in another hackathon though. All the fun, nerdiness and actual hacking were replaced by basically building a sensible product demo.