There was a series of "hackathons" I enjoyed called Startup Weekend. They put much more focus on the business validation by talking to people than they did on t

There was a series of "hackathons" I enjoyed called Startup Weekend. They put much more focus on the business validation by talking to people than they did on the actual hacking portion, but the presentations always had a tech demo component as well. But the overall judging weighed the market validation quite highly. It was an interesting change from the hackathons where you just build a cool tech demo. https://www.techstars.com/communities/startup-weekend https://www.techstars.com/communities/startup-weekend