This was my first hackathon. I signed up without a team and without a clear idea of what I wanted to build. I just knew I wanted to be in the room.
I ended up working with five amazing guys I met there on Jarvan AI, an agentic AI model that reimagines how businesses validate demand for new products and services.
But the real takeaway wasn’t the project itself. It was the people. I found myself surrounded by builders from Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial, and UCL, all of them sharp, driven, and genuinely excited about what they were working on. It was the first time I got a real taste of London’s startup scene, and it was one of the reasons I fell in love with it.
The hackathon also taught me something I keep coming back to: ideas mean nothing without execution. The teams that stood out weren’t just the ones with the best concepts. They were the ones that could actually ship something in 24 hours.
I walked out knowing I wanted to do more of this.
