How I kicked off the world's largest hackathon 🤯

The one tweet that started a movement [full story inside]

June 20, 2025 Update: The hackathon now officially crossed 105,000 participants!

Hey everyone,

I’ve been meaning to share a mind-blowing story that feels like it fell out of a movie script. Sometimes, reality is more entertaining than fiction and this episode in my life feels like one of those for sure.

So here you go:

It was mid March 2025. I stepped out of a cardiac unit to get some coffee in the children’s hospital in Atlanta. What was I doing there?

Our 7 month old son (baby) Liam had been recovering at the unit for a few weeks after his latest heart surgery. Some of you might know that he has HLHS. The surgery was a success and his resilience kept (and smiles) our spirits high.

I stepped out to get coffee and was walking through a hallway. It was here that I suddenly had a flash of an idea. It was related to something that has been weighing on me from the night before. What was it?

A bit more context: The night before I was tinkering with vibe coding tools.

The likes of Bolt, Lovable, Replit etc. which are a new wave of AI coding agents that can help ANYONE (developers or non-developers like me) create software by just “prompting”. No coding knowledge required.

In fact, that entire week I’ve been quietly awe-struck by the sheer capability of these AI tools. By just tinkering over a couple nights, I built my 1st vibe-coded tool called File Forge that allows you to convert or compress any file instantly. Mind you, I’m non-technical. So this felt like was magic to me.

I *felt* the urge to share this magic and spread the gospel to everyone about this unique period in history where we can build software by just prompting. As I was walking in that hallway, I was mentally reflecting on how this power to build can help us all across the world. So many interesting ideas that were previously written off due to coding limitations can come to life with no barriers.

With that context, I couldn’t resist making this below simple tweet.

There was no deep thinking or 25 point PowerPoint slide deck. It felt like a fun and ambitious idea. Just a gut feeling and I shot my shot on Twitter and I moved on to grab coffee.

Nothing happened initially for a few minutes.

But then suddenly, I saw likes and replies accumulating rapidly. Lots of people were commenting that this is such a great idea. Many of them tagged the respective CEOs and brand accounts I mentioned in the original post. My tweet was getting INSANE traction and quickly became my most viewed post of the year.

Then the craziest thing happened. The CEO of Bolt, Eric made this below tweet:

Just like that the idea took wings and our timeline started blowing up as Bolt’s customers, our mutual vibe coding community members and developers rallied around the idea.

Within hours, companies like Supabase, Netlify, Cloudflare, Clickup, Loops etc started showing interest in being a sponsor.

Whatever I felt deep down was reverberated around the world in hours. The idea clearly struck a nerve.

Hundreds of people started leaving comments expressing their desire to be hackathon participants. Bolt team put out a submission form to collect interest. It EXPLODED!

It was so unbelievable watching all of this unfold on X in real time.

And within a day, Bolt announced that they secured funding of $1m+ for the hackathon in total prizes. ONE MILLION DOLLARS. Whaaaat?!!!

I kept thinking to myself.. “Is this really happening?”

Then tweets from the community started pouring in asking me to get involved.

Eric (CEO of Bolt) both publicly and privately asked me to be a judge for the hackathon. Such a gracious move. I was incredibly honored and said YES!

It doesn’t stop there.

I promised you that this feels like an entertaining movie script.

Suddenly, a day later I noticed The Chainsmokers followed me on X.

Yes, the real “The Chainsmokers” .. the Grammy award winning artists and DJ duo.

I was like “Surely, that must be a mistake. What’s happening?”

It turns out The Chainsmokers invested in Bolt through their VC fund (Mantis) based in SF and the hyper ambitious Bolt team *somehow* convinced them to agree to perform at an exclusive Kickoff party for the hackathon. The world’s largest hackathon had to have an epic opening party. What a cool move!

And a few days later, one of the most prolific creators in tech, Greg Isenberg (who was chosen to be the host of the hackathon) has made this tweet and made things official.

The plan was to host the worldwide hackathon virtually but bring people together for the Kickoff party in real life in San Fransisco.

This felt like such a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity all around.

Meanwhile, I messaged our team at Paddle and suggested this would be an incredible fit for us to be involved in as it helps us get closer to more founders in the US and worldwide.

So we became one of the official sponsors too. Here’s the announcement:

A few days later, the stunning website was revealed to the world. Here it is. (s/o Fons for the epic design work).

Meanwhile, the hackathon’s publicity was gaining traction all across startup circles through both organic and paid media.

Nearly 90million people saw this tweet. Are you kidding me?!!!

Then came May 6th when I hopped on a plane from Atlanta to SF and got to meet the organizing team in person. The Kickoff party happened the next day and it was EPIC.

I met many brilliant students, PMs, designers, non-technical founders, community builders who all were proudly calling themselves “vibe coders” and prompting ideas to life.

Here’s one of them: Dhanush

What a great time to be alive! What’s even more energizing is that.. tools like Bolt will only get better from here as models and compute gets more powerful. So technically, it’s like we’re at the “dial up Internet” stage with the current state of AI in the grand scheme of things. Imagine the evolution in the next 5-10 years. Just wow!

Btw, here are some event recap posts from the participants and community → (0, 0.5, 1, 1.5, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8)

It was a truly profound experience and I came back to Atlanta feeling fully recharged. Vibe coding is going to be a transformative experience for everyone. I highly encourage you to give it a try one weekend.

Anyway, I woke up today and had to pinch myself.

I still can’t believe this MONUMENTAL event + an iconic kickoff event featuring Grammy award DJs “The Chainsmokers” with roughly 1000 people attending … all of this unfolding because of a simple tweet I made in the hallways of a hospital.

Eric is a legend in my books and the definition of a high agency CEO so shoutout to him.

My overall reflection is that when you put out a bat signal earnestly, the Universe finds a way to answer it!

Truth is.. 9 out of 10 times these ideas or tweets don’t go anywhere. I’ve accepted that long time ago. But don’t stop making fun and interesting tweets. The upside is 100x more powerful and can alter your career.

The lesson for me (and you!):

Don’t be limited by “rational thinking”. Have the guts to dream big and tie it to a larger than life cause.

And most importantly, don’t bottle up your best ideas. Share them with the world!

Finally, go check out https://hackathon.dev/ and sign up by May 30 to be part of the hackathon here.

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Other related posts and references:

• Thanks to Sukh for creating and publishing this carousel about me

• S/o to Dhanush for the love

• Shoutout to Peter Yang for the gracious mention

• Thanks to Matt and Andy and many more friends

• Another highlight was meeting Garry Tan in SF, CEO of Y Combinator 🤯

• Also, below’s a fun ad where the hackathon took over Product Hunt

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PS: I’d love to THANK my little warrior baby Liam Pavan whose grit to keep smiling even after 2 heart surgeries in 7 months. We all often underestimate the power of human spirit. He inspires me daily! I want to find a way to support young babies like him who have HLHS. I will find a way! Anyway - thanks for reading and being a part of this amazing global movement.