ETHAccra is Ethereum’s flagship chapter event in Accra, held once every year. This year, I spoke with hackers and builders about the frameworks that consistently win hackathons—not just coding faster, but thinking smarter about problem selection and execution.
Most teams lose hackathons before writing a single line of code. They pick brilliant ideas they can’t execute in 48 hours, or worse, low-value problems that don’t matter to users. I walked through a complete design thinking process: As-Is Scenario Mapping to find pain points, Empathy Mapping to deeply understand users, and the Prioritization Grid to evaluate ideas on two critical axes—user value versus team feasibility. The sweet spot? High impact to users, mid-level technical complexity. A genius idea you can’t ship is worthless; a focused idea you can execute wins every time.
The most compelling pitches don’t lead with technology, they lead with the user’s painful journey. Paint the scenario vividly, make judges feel the problem, then show how your solution eliminates that entire struggle. Winning validates everything: it opens grant programs, ecosystem access, and VC conversations. Every hackathon project I’ve won, I’ve leveraged to raise funding. Hackathons are validation engines, win first, then build further.
