My Hackathon Mentoring Experience 🚀
What it's like mentoring developers at a hackathon — guiding teams, reviewing ideas, and helping build solutions under time pressure.
2 min read • 26 Nov, 2022
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A few weeks ago I got the chance to mentor at the CentuRITon Hackathon, a 72-hour event organized by the Ramaiah Institute of Technology. I had 10 teams under me. I’d built and shipped at hackathons before, but being on the other side — helping teams shape ideas and unblock themselves under the clock — was a different kind of rush. Here’s what it was like.
Why mentor at a hackathon?
Hackathons are intense. At CentuRITon, teams had 72 hours to go from idea to demo. That pressure is great for learning, but it’s easy to get stuck on scope, architecture, or “how do I even start?” As a mentor, you get to step in at those moments: clarify the problem, suggest a simpler first version, or point them to the right docs or pattern. You’re not building their project for them — you’re helping them build it themselves.
What I actually did
Most of my time went into:
- Reviewing ideas — Helping teams narrow down to something buildable in 72 hours. A lot of “we want to do X, Y, and Z” turned into “let’s nail X first, then see.”
- Guiding technical choices — Stack decisions, APIs, and where to cut scope so the demo still tells a clear story.
- Unblocking — Debugging, explaining concepts, and sometimes just being a sounding board when they were stuck.
It’s less about having all the answers and more about asking the right questions and sharing what you’ve learned from shipping under similar constraints.
Offline hackathons are back
After a long stretch of online-only events, being in a room full of people building things was a big deal. You could walk up to a team, look at their screen, sketch on a whiteboard, and feel the energy in the room. The next generation of college grads isn’t just talking about ideas — they’re putting together real projects, learning in public, and helping each other. That’s the kind of thing that keeps the ecosystem alive.
The people
Beyond the projects, the best part was meeting folks who care about the same things. I got to connect with Ananya and Ashutosh — knowledgeable, driven people who were there to build and to help others build. Those conversations are what I remember most: not just the tech, but the people behind it.
If you’ve only ever participated as a hacker, I’d recommend trying mentorship at least once. You’ll see familiar problems from a new angle, and you might leave with new connections and a bit more clarity on what you actually know. And if you were at CentuRITon and we crossed paths — thanks for the 72 hours; it was a blast.
You can also find my shorter take on the same event on LinkedIn.