One of the biggest lessons I learned in college did not come from a classroom or while writing code. It came from a startup hackathon in Bengaluru.
During the summer after my third year, I was working as a Google Summer of Code contributor when I got invited to an in-person startup hackathon. The goal was very different from a normal hackathon. It was designed to simulate the early days of a startup. You had to find a co-founder, work together for 24 hours, and pitch a product the next day. It was less about building software and more about how you think.
As soon as the event started, the room became chaotic. Everyone was pitching ideas, switching teammates, talking to mentors, and trying to build something as quickly as possible. The atmosphere made it feel like every minute mattered.
I teamed up with someone who was surprisingly calm. While everyone else rushed to build, we spent hours just talking. We discussed the future, different markets, and possible ideas. We walked outside the venue, kept asking questions, and challenged our assumptions. We had not written a single line of code.
At one point, he said something that completely changed the way I think.
"We have 24 hours. We are engineers. We can build the product in the last hour if we know exactly what we want to build. We should spend most of our time thinking."
That sentence stayed with me.
Everyone else was reacting to the pressure around them. We chose to ignore the noise and focus on understanding the problem first. We talked to mentors, changed our ideas multiple times, and kept refining our thinking instead of rushing into execution.
That experience taught me that clarity is often more valuable than speed. Before doing anything, understand the rules of the game. Ask whether the pressure is real or whether you are simply following the crowd. Once you understand the situation, trust yourself enough to think independently.
As engineers, we often believe that execution is everything. But execution without direction only makes you move faster in the wrong direction. Good thinking is what gives execution its value.
Looking back, that hackathon was the first time I moved beyond the mindset of simply building things. It taught me to slow down, think clearly, and make decisions with intention.
The next day, we presented our idea, and both of us were selected. Of course, getting selected felt great, but that was not the biggest win. The real reward was learning a way of thinking that has stayed with me ever since.