The Art of Presentation: how a well-written pitch can win you a hackathon!
Written by Arnav Tripathi, JAMHacks V Organizer
A great presentation gives smart ideas an advantage.
This quote by Nancy Duarte illustrates how important it is to market your product in the most optimal way possible.
At JAMHacks, there is no doubt that we are going to see some stellar projects, with hackers using a variety of technologies, languages, and frameworks to formulate technical masterpieces. These projects may have the potential to solve problems that we struggle with on a daily basis, or even add convenience that we did not even know we needed.
However, no matter how spectacular and useful your work is, unless you can showcase that to our judges, your chances of winning our coveted prizes are going to be slim. This is where the pitch comes into play.
All About the Hackathon Pitch
The pitch is, arguably, the most important part of your overall project. Think about it: all the hours of work you have spent brainstorming, planning, and coding away at accomplishing this one goal, and now you are being asked to summarize that in the span of 3 minutes or less. Doesn’t it seem, a bit insulting? You might be demanding, “How dare you expect me to explain my weekend’s work in 180 seconds for your goldfish attention span?”
However, due to time constraints and everyday life in general, this is just how it has to be, and you just have to figure out a way to highlight all the important details of your project within this allotted time. Fortunately, I have a template that should work with most kinds, if not every kind of project; this structure, when executed properly, can win you a prize at JAMHacks V!
The Hook
At the start of your pitch, you have to hook your audience in and lead into what type of problem your project aims to solve.
For example, back in May of 2020, my group and I participated in a virtual hackathon and created a web app that would help hospitals manage their PPE supply for the pandemic. Since I wanted to highlight the problem of COVID-19 in my hook, I stated:
Currently, we are seeing COVID-19 do immense damage to the health of our country. As it was just reported on April 12, 2020, the American death toll has exceeded 20,200, surpassing Italy as the country with the most deaths caused by COVID, and it is only projected to get worse. However, not only is coronavirus destroying the livelihood of our people, but it is also putting a heavy strain on our available resources.
This three-sentence hook introduces the problem and pinpoints the exact area that our solution aims to address. I also added articles as a form of visual aid for my presentation. I also mentioned how part of the problem lies within the government, as their lackluster attempts to handle PPE equipment resulted in shortages and misuse. This leads into the next part of the presentation.
Introducing the Solution
After your hook, a criteria or outline of what your solution aims to address would be helpful for the audience to understand what specific issues need to be targeted.
So far, all I have done is explain that COVID-19 has become a rampant problem, and that the government is failing to handle medical equipment distribution objectively. Now, I must explain what a potential solution should be able to do, and so I continued:
All of this subjectivity has only caused nuisances for the American healthcare system, and points to the importance of an objective, trusted system where the government can easily monitor medical demands and direct supply chain efforts to fit said demands.
These statements, alongside the slide displayed below, clarify for the viewers of the presentation what exactly a system should be able to accomplish in order to solve the current issues in play.
Explaining Your Project In-Depth
Next, you should discuss your project’s title and what it does. However, only keep the most important details: don’t talk about the frameworks you used, or the steps a user has to take to actually use the website… At least not yet. In this section, you should only talk about what your application fundamentally allows a user to accomplish, and how it meets the criterion you have set for yourself.
To continue with my example, I described our application like this:
MEDTRAK is a blockchain-based web application that tracks hospital supplies as they are transported throughout the nation. Different hospitals are members of this blockchain, and they provide information regarding their stock of medical supply, as well as how much supplies they need to receive to effectively care for their patients. This information is then stored on the blockchain, and various suppliers —government bodies or charitable organizations — can see this information and perform transactions based on observing certain shortages or large demands.
This small paragraph fully explains the basic gist of our application, and everything that has been said so far only takes approximately a minute and a half. The final part should take up the rest of the time.
The Demo
Finally, you should perform an application demo. If you are able to successfully showcase your project’s functionality and relate it back to the criteria that you set up for yourself, you can seal the deal on winning a prize.
The demo is super important, so make sure to not waste any time with filler information. Just talk about the what’s, why’s, and how’s of the different features of your project, as well as its success in meeting your criteria. The demo of our website wasn’t scripted, but this is the exact approach we took.
Finish it off with a conclusion that reiterates the need for your project, and would you look at that—you have successfully created a 3-minute pitch!
Never overlook the pitch portion of your project. It is a vital and necessary part of the work you accomplish at JAMHacks, and it can make or break your submission. By following this template I outlined here, my team was fortunate enough to win first place at the aforementioned virtual hackathon, and I have continued to use it to excel at other hackathons. I hope that this post can help you do the same!
