Lightning Lessons

How I Won First Places in the YC and OpenAI Hackathons?

Hosted by Riley Shu

Fri, Oct 17, 2025

11:00 PM UTC (30 minutes)

Virtual (Zoom)

Free to join

Invite your network

Go deeper with a course

From Users to Builders: A Practical Path to Real AI Expertise
Yuzheng Sun, PhD and Yan Wang, PhD
View syllabus

What you'll learn

Strong idea = useful + unexpected solution

To win a world class hachaton, you need good ideas that came from real problems. Pre-hackathon preparation is crucial

Small teams outperform large ones

Don't waste time on communication or coding conflicts. Ideal structor is one coder, one generalist, and one support.

Demo-frist development approach

Avoid slides. Focus on live demo. Design for "wow effect" and clear user experience. Present impact clearly.

More practical tips

AI tool integration. How to manage expectations and randomness. And more!

Why this topic matters

Winning a top hackathon is a powerful way to gain visibility and kickstart your ideas. Riley has done this time and again, and her projects are thriving: Shoya.ai, Oreo.dev, and Overeasy.dev. It’s not often you get someone with this kind of experience to share so openly. Don’t miss this insight-packed session!

You'll learn from

Riley Shu

YC/OpenAI Hackathon Winner | PM @ Fortnite

With a track record of winning top-tier hackathons, including first place at events hosted by Y Combinator and OpenAI (awarded by Andrej Karpathy), we thrive on the cutting edge of technology. Our projects have not only secured significant funding—like the $64,000 prize for Overeasy at the Cognition Hackathon—but have also been showcased at premier builder communities like San Francisco's AI Tinkerers.

Our work focuses on two core passions: making code more intuitive and enhancing cybersecurity. Through projects like Oreo, We're exploring "Vibe Coding"—the potential of using human language as code. With Overeasy, We've developed an agent that automatically uncovers security vulnerabilities, demonstrating the critical importance of building secure applications from the ground up.

I'm excited to share my expertise because my work has been recognized by leaders at YC, Vercel, and Auth0, and I want to pass those industry-relevant insights on. Students will learn how to build innovative projects and gain the practical security knowledge needed to avoid common pitfalls and create truly robust applications.

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