What happened
At the Six Hackathon in Zurich, our developer was on the team that in 48 hours built a working iPhone app prototype and took first place.
The key word is "working". The jury didn't look at slides, but at an app on a phone that did what the pitch promised.
What it taught us
A hackathon is an extremely compressed project, but the rules are the same as in normal work. We still apply them to every MVP:
- One path, end to end. One scenario working from start to finish on a real device beats five screens where nothing works.
- A demo from the first hours. A showable build exists from the start and only grows. No "gluing everything together at the end".
- Ready-made building blocks where possible. Custom code goes only where the idea's value is. Proven libraries and services cover the rest.
- Small team, quick decisions. A few people at one table decide in a minute, not in a meeting next week.
- Different skills at one table. Someone knows the problem, someone the technology, someone how to present it. That combination wins, not the number of lines of code.
How it looks today
We work the same way on client projects: a working build every 1–2 weeks, shown on real hardware, and direct contact with the developer. A prototype in 48 hours is the extreme case. The rule "first something that works, then the rest" always holds.
Have an idea you want to test quickly with real users? We start with the smallest version that works.
Facing a similar problem?
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