I disagree with this - I've been to several hackathons/API hack days, and like anything I guess you could be exploited, but I don't really see it. What's nice

I disagree with this - I've been to several hackathons/API hack days, and like anything I guess you could be exploited, but I don't really see it. What's nice is not only did I get to focus on building one thing straight out from start to finish in the alloted time, but it's mine - I get to commercialize it, market it, etc. I definitely wasn't exploited - for all three of the ones where I've won a prize, I was the driving force/sole developer/whatever, so there wasn't some evil "business guy" getting me to work for free :) For Startup Weekend, I pitched, no one wanted to build what I wanted to build, so I joined another team. No big deal. One of the best ones I went to was simply a "you hack all night on your own thing, no distractions, we're just keeping the lights on and ordering pizza." I think it might have cost $10 for the space.