My worst hackathon experience: rate limits, chaos, and broken judging

I recently participated in a hackathon hosted alongside Advertising Week, using twelvelabs’ API as a requirement.

The experience was… rough. The API had a hard 50-request limit with no visible counter. Every time we hit the limit during testing, we had to create a new account and swap API keys just to keep working. It slowed everyone down massively.

But the real pain came during judging. The rules said: 3-minute demo, 2-minute pitch, 2-minute Q&A. We followed that. But many teams went on for 20–30 minutes, showing entire company decks instead of hackathon projects. Presentations ran from 1:30 PM until nearly 5 PM; the venue was closing, so later teams got cut short or skipped Q&A completely.

The winning team didn’t even address the given prompt, and several others clearly presented pre-built company products.

I’m not mad we didn’t win — I’m frustrated at the inconsistency and lack of fairness. If time limits and problem statements don’t matter, what’s the point of running it as a hackathon?

Curious if others have seen this pattern: hackathons becoming more like unpaid product showcases than actual creative sprints.