My first hackathon, and what it taught me about building under pressure

June 22, 2026

I had never done a hackathon before.

So naturally, I went straight for the deep end: MEGATHON 2026 in Amsterdam. 700 builders, 48 hours, one weekend, no idea what to expect.

We almost built the wrong thing.

We came in through the DAY42 community with an idea we'd already brainstormed. It felt solid, until Andrea looked at it through a VC lens almost immediately and started asking the questions an investor would actually ask. Where does this break. Who already owns this space. Why would someone fund it, and why wouldn't they.

Some of those questions didn't have good answers.

So we went back to the whiteboard instead of forcing it through. Two days is short. Building the wrong thing for two days is shorter.

What we actually built.

Saturday morning we started building for real. Souso: an AI that plans your family's weekly meals and adds every ingredient straight to your grocery basket. No list. No "what's for dinner" every single night. No mental tax for figuring out groceries on top of everything else you're already carrying.

The world is getting more agentic by the month. AI that doesn't just suggest a recipe, but actually does the shopping for you, that's not a gimmick anymore. The rails for it already exist.

Our dev and design team worked through the night and wrapped around 6am. I genuinely don't know how they did it.

What actually stuck with me.

Sunday morning it was my turn, together with Philip, to get the pitch right. We wrote and rewrote it more times than I'd like to admit, until Stijn pulled it together into something with an actual edge.

We didn't make the finale.

What stuck with me instead was simpler. The energy in that team never dropped, not once, across 48 hours with almost no sleep. And somewhere in between pitching, building, and a quick Pickleball break, I met some of the smartest, warmst people I've crossed paths with in a long time.

What I'm taking with me.

This wasn't about winning a track. It was about discovering what it actually feels like to build something real with strangers turned teammates, under a deadline that doesn't care how tired you are.

I went in not knowing what to expect. I came out wanting to do it again.

If you've done a hackathon before, what's the one thing that surprised you most? I'd genuinely love to know if my experience was the rule or the exception.

To be continued.