An unusual hackathon that competes only on "sales" has opened to buzz. THE Hackathon, co-hosted by Unbound Lab, will run for eight days from Mar. 21 to 28.
The hallmark of this hackathon is that rankings are determined solely by "actual sales," with no judges or presentation evaluations. Performance is assessed based on the payment amount generated by each team during the event. The organizers said they "focused on whether money can actually be made in the market, not on ideas or presentations."
The lineup of participants also draws attention. Lee Taeyang, Toss co-founder; Ryu Gibaek, Fountain CEO; Kim In-gi, Code States CEO; and Sung Jae-yong, Nari Labs CEO and a student entrepreneur who hit No. 1 on HuggingFace Trending, have joined as participants. Lawmaker Lee Jun-seok also entered the competition directly as a participant, not a judge.
A total of about 400 people applied for this competition, and 80 were selected to begin hackathon development offline. The selection process was handled by the startup hiring platform Candid, which conducted interviews and team matching over about two weeks.
Various corporations are also joining. OpenAI is an infrastructure partner, FLock.io and Upstage are track partners, and venture capital firms such as Kakao Ventures and Mashup Ventures are participating as partners.
THE Hackathon is run as a nonprofit. The operations team is a volunteer organization made up of college students and working professionals. The total prize pool is 10 million won. The event features offline development on the 21st-22nd, followed by market validation through the 27th, and concludes with an awards ceremony on the 28th. For more information, visit the website (thehackathon.org).