🧠 Hackathon Journey

30 Days of Innovation: From Ideation to AI-Powered Marketing Platform

30
Days of Development
4
Core Team Members
51M
Target Market Size

Phase 1: Exploration & Ideation

Resource discovery, team formation, and strategic planning

1

Kickoff & Resource Exploration

  • Explored free resources and perks from hackathon
  • Free domain (Entri), API credits (Algorand/IPFS, Dappier)
  • Platform credits (RevenueCat, Bolt.new, Pica, Sentry, Expo, Lingo, Tavus)
  • Realized Bolt.new requirement for final product
2

Team Formation & Ideation

  • Richard Constantine joined as Product Manager
  • Explored multiple concepts: meeting consultant platform, OCR invoice processor
  • Investigated due diligence automation and CTO services platform
3

Strategy Inspiration

  • Reviewed marketing strategy via FigJam
  • Studied River co-founder insights
  • Analyzed one-week product case study and "35 Playbook"
4

Team Alignment

  • First full-team sync with complete roster
  • Muhammad Qasim (Frontend), Richard Constantine (PM)
  • Timothy Adetunji (Frontend), Piotr Żak (Backend)
  • Analyzed 36 hackathon judges for strategic alignment
  • HR tech and cold outreach identified as go-to-market strategy
5

Prioritization & Market Fit

  • Validated ideas with marketing/sales expert R N
  • Explored monetization potential vs. social impact
  • Shortlisted: AI-driven cost optimization, regulatory tools, collaborative storytelling
  • Emphasized feasibility, scalability, and post-hackathon monetization
6

Solution Chosen 🎯

  • Created comprehensive idea-exploration page
  • Team vote selected: Marketing automation platform for social influencers & YouTubers
  • Meeting recap documented on Otter
  • Market analysis: 51M influencers, 26% YoY growth
  • Addressed feasibility and market saturation concerns

Phase 2: Development & Foundation

Engineering begins, architecture decisions, and core development

7

Engineering Begins

  • Developed first code: Multi-Agent System API for YouTube agents
  • Automated video aggregation by author
  • Initial deployments and team role alignment
8

Sales Funnel + PRD

  • Discussed sales funnel and automation via n8n
  • Richard prepared Product Requirement Document (PRD)
  • Identified early competitors (e.g., Aspire.io)
  • Defined AI stack: NLP, CLIP, GPT, sentiment detection, forecasting
9

Backend Foundation

  • Created GitHub repo and onboarded developers
  • Developed API endpoints using Clean Architecture
  • Agreed to use Kaggle datasets for MVP
  • Finalized tech stack: Firebase, Next.js, Python, BigQuery
10

Feature Breakdown

  • Created GitHub board with three modules:
  • • AI Matching Engine
  • • Campaign Setup & Brief Generation
  • • Content Ideation Assistant
  • Continued implementation and dataset integration
11

Frontend Setup

  • Built early frontend with Lovable, v0.dev, Bolt
  • Aligned data scientist processes with BigQuery
  • Setup cloud deployment
  • Defined backend-frontend contracts
12

Infrastructure Issues & Team Changes ⚠️

  • Time zone differences created communication delays
  • Significant backend progress (brand models, matching)
  • BigQuery tables disappeared - global outage (DownDetector)
  • Timothy left team, recruitment initiated
  • New marketing/sales expert from U.S. joined
13

Data Modeling

  • Created seed data for fictional brand ecosystem:
  • • Authentic Scope, Quality Care, Synthapse
  • Used nested JSON in BigQuery for scalable modeling
  • Finalized contract interface for frontend integration
14

Frontend Progress

  • Frontend deployed: https://ai-creater-app.vercel.app/
  • Functional components: Brand onboarding, Campaign editing, AI Clones
  • Conducted alignment meeting and ticketed key tasks
  • Strengthened team cohesion despite recent changes
15

MVP Functionality 🚀

  • Sunday light work session (~2h)
  • MVP of AI Matching Engine completed (vector embeddings-based)
  • User email handling added to brand data model
  • Pull requests submitted for review
  • Improved workflow and team process maturity

Phase 3: MVP & Integration

Advanced features, video analysis, and system integration

16

Planning & Ticket Assignment

  • No code committed - strategic planning day
  • Assigned Ticket #11: Generate AI-driven campaign brief via Raport.API
  • Set objective to generate campaign summaries based on brief inputs
17

Core Modules Advancing

  • Refactored and optimized AI Matching Engine
  • Implemented backend for AI-powered brief generation
  • Started AI Insights / Trend Detection implementation
  • Architecture remains clean and modular under Synthapse ecosystem
18

Video Analysis Exploration

  • Focused on Video Analysis pipeline using TikTok videos
  • Encountered OpenCV installation challenges (MacOS arm64 vs x86_64)
  • Resolved using Rosetta
  • Began testing frame extraction from videos via URL input
19

New Deployment & MVP Scope Set

  • Deployed new system version with working modules
  • Processed first batch of 100 TikTok influencers
  • Team aligned that 1,000 influencers suffice for MVP scope
  • Added "Refinement" column to ticket board for clarification
20

Scoring & Virtual Influencers

  • Added scoring logic to Matching Engine (match %)
  • Started Virtual Influencer Module for brand campaigns
  • Merged large frontend/backend branches after review
  • Scheduled refinement meeting to address mismatches
21

Refinement & Planning

  • Held full-team refinement meeting
  • Walked through UI components
  • Identified backend/UX areas needing attention
  • Clarified engineering priorities and simplified brand campaign logic
22

Rest Day

  • No hackathon work today (Sunday)
23

LinkedIn Integration

  • Integrated LinkedIn OAuth login - working locally with callback
  • Discussed redirecting domain DNS to Cloudflare
  • Decided to store LinkedIn user data in Firebase
  • Considering frontend work for LinkedIn onboarding next
24

Frontend Progress & Backend Alignment

  • Significant progress on frontend-backend integration
  • Successfully receiving brand onboarding data
  • Displaying influencer information
  • Addressed deployment pipeline issues
25

Frontend User Profile

  • Running frontend project locally and added Redux
  • Managing global React state for user brand
  • LinkedIn Integration research
  • Understanding CSRF attack prevention

Phase 4: Refinement & Deployment

Final integration, deployment, and project completion

26

Frontend LinkedIn Integration

  • Refinement meeting with team
  • Decided Sunday is final deployment + code freeze
  • LinkedIn Integration complexity discovered
  • DNS repointing from Cloudflare to Vercel
27

Brief Generation

  • Frontend work around campaign and brief generator
  • Need to rewrite from .jsx to .tsx for better maintainability
  • Writing PR for another programmer
  • LinkedIn Integration issues due to developer platform access
28

Organize Code/Deployment

  • Organizing repository and strengthening processes
  • Resolving deployment errors
29

Integrating Developer Work

  • Rest day - minimal hackathon work
  • Merging dev into main branch
30

Future Possibility of Expanding 🎉

  • Team gathering and detailed discussions
  • Recording demos for submission
  • Preparing sales pitch
  • Project submission completed
  • Discussing future opportunities