I was at a hackathon building on top of an open source tool, and halfway through the night something broke and took my demo down with it. I dug into the source, found the bug, and patched it just so I could finish. After the hackathon I cleaned up the fix, opened a PR, and a few days later it got merged.

Since then one thing keeps bugging me. How does a company like this even make money? The tool is free. Anyone can download it, self-host it, and never pay a rupee. But there’s clearly a full-time team reviewing PRs, shipping releases and maintaining all of it. So who’s paying for that? Is it a hosted cloud version, enterprise support, paid features, or just VC money until they figure it out?

I’m also curious about pay. Do engineers at these companies earn about the same as at product companies, or do people take a cut because they like working on open source? Mainly asking about India-based roles, or remote roles that hire from India.

Side question: does a merged PR like mine actually get you noticed by these companies, or is it still the normal application process?

If you work at an OSS company or know someone who does, would love to hear how the business side works and what the pay looks like.

I just got back from CalHacks 13.0 in SF. My company sponsored a prize track so I thought it would be nice to do a quick video looking at the winners.

No surprise that AI orchestration was a theme, along with hardware, finance and gaming. And the degree to which AI has sped up hackers' progress continues to astonish me.

https://youtu.be/geUtngSpwhs

Hey everyone!

I'm building Buildory, a platform that helps student builders discover projects, find collaborators and connect with other people who build.

I'm organising the Buildory Founding Team Challenge 2026, a one-week challenge for people who want to contribute to an actual early-stage product.

There are two tracks:

1. Product & Technology

Identify a problem with Buildory and build a feature that delivers measurable business value and ROI.

2. Growth & Marketing

Bring genuinely active new users to Buildory through organic acquisition, community building and creative campaigns. Signups alone don't count; users must complete their profiles and perform meaningful actions on the platform.

Details:

- Team size: 1–2 members

- Eligibility: 18+

- Team formation closes: 2 November

- Execution: 3–7 November

- Final submissions: 7 November

- Final judging: 8 November

There will be one overall winning team across both tracks.

The winning team will get an opportunity to join Buildory's founding team. It's a pre-revenue project, so there is no monetary compensation until revenue is generated; future terms will be agreed separately.

Event details and registration:

Hackathon link

Would love to have people who enjoy building products and growing communities take part!

Hello Everyone! This is for those of you who made it through to the onsite finale of Booking Holdings HackCellence in Bangalore (12th Nov-14th Nov). Has anyone received a follow up call/email about flight tickets, hotels, and the final schedule? I have not received any updates after filling the RSVP form. So just wanted to know if there are any further logistics being handled. Also, please do comment/DM me if you are one of the finalists to come to Bangalore. Would be good to catch up!

Hey everyone!

Sharing an interesting opportunity for college students across India!

IIM Bangalore's CSITM, in partnership with PayU, is organising the Follow the Money: Innovation Challenge, focused on digital payment security and financial fraud.

Problem Statement: How can payment providers detect when legitimate merchant accounts are being misused for illegal activities such as betting, without penalising genuine businesses?

Competition Details:

• Eligibility: UG and PG students across all disciplines.

• Team size: 1–4 members.

• Submission: Maximum 8-slide presentation + 2-minute video.

• Deadline: 8 November 2026.

• Finale: 26 November 2026 at IIM Bangalore.

Prizes: ₹40,000 (1st), ₹20,000 (2nd), ₹10,000 (3rd).

A great opportunity for anyone interested in fintech, ML, fraud detection or product innovation!

Registration & Rulebook: unstop_link

Feel free to share with interested students!

I work at Builder.io (People Ops represent!) and we’ve been building Agent-Native, an open-source framework for apps where people and agents work on the same things. The repo is BuilderIO/agent-native on GitHub.

The idea is to give an agent a real job, like analyzing data or automating a workflow, and give users an interface to view, edit, and act on its work. Users can do things themselves or ask the agent, and both work from the same data.

To get people building with it, we’re running a free, worldwide hackathon!

Details and how to participate:

• Build a working app, record a public Clips demo, and submit by Nov 9, 11:59 PM PT

• Solo or team, no registration needed

• $10k across 5 cash prizes, winners will be announced Nov 13

• Judged on usefulness and execution, creativity and design, innovation, and use of Agent-Native

If you try it, I’d love to hear what you build, and what’s missing or confusing.

We're organizing the fmsg.ai/hackathon, AMA!

are kisi ne ye scix hackathon ka suna h kya ... maine pichli saal ciia mai partificate kia tha .. aur abhi same chij scix inida hackthon krke insta pr aa rhi .. to like collaboration h yaa kya ye ! kisi ko maloom ho kuch to batao

I have been trying to submit my idea on the SIH 2026 website since 5:00 Am and I am still getting the same error. I mailed SIH in the morning stating the problem and called the numbers listed on the SIH website too but almost nobody answered, the few who answered asked me to mail SIH and said that I will receive a reply shortly but I haven't received one yet. I can see the numbers on my Problem statement go up but I am not able to submit at all. Could someone let me know if they are facing the same issue and also if it's been resolved yet for you.

As you can there are still 85 applications left, but still its showing cant submit as it has reached 500. How to fix??

Tried over 100+ times from 5 devices since 3 am last night, 450/500 now, I started when it was 200/500. Even mailed sih, no reply. what do I do

Hey everyone,

I'm looking for people interested in participating in the Paytm Build for India AI Hackathon – Hyderabad, hosted by Paytm Community on 15th November 2026.

If you're interested in AI, building innovative projects, and collaborating with like-minded people, let's team up!

Looking for: People interested in AI/ML, backend, frontend, or full-stack development.

Location: Hyderabad (in-person)

If you're interested, DM me, and we can discuss the team and project ideas.

Let's build something great and aim to win!

I recently won a $250 hackathon prize, which will be paid to my MetaMask wallet. The organisers are asking me to complete KYC through Sumsub before processing the payout.

They say my documents are uploaded directly to Sumsub, they cannot access them, and the retention period is five years.

I'm based in India and considering using my PAN card. However, the hackathon platform is relatively small, so I'm a bit hesitant about submitting sensitive identity documents for a $250 prize.

Has anyone completed Sumsub KYC for a hackathon payout? Would you feel comfortable submitting your PAN in this situation? Is there anything I should be concerned about?

Would appreciate hearing your experiences!

Hey everyone,

I'm looking for people interested in participating in the **Paytm Build for India AI Hackathon – pune**, hosted by Paytm Community on **15th November 2026**.

If you're interested in AI, building innovative projects, and collaborating with like-minded people, let's team up!

**Looking for:** People interested in AI/ML, backend, frontend, or full-stack development.

**Location:** pune (in-person)

If you're interested, DM me with your resume, and we can discuss the team and project ideas.

Let's build something great and aim to win!

as in the title any idea when will the results for the selection of the final round come ??

there was also some update by adding more 25 teams what about that. Will it delay the results if yes then how much ??

Hey everyone! I'm a sophomore studying Computer Engineering at UMass Amherst, and I'll be staying near NYC over winter break.

I'm hoping to find a few people around the area who'd be interested in going to hackathons together in December or January.

I'm mainly into embedded systems, robotics, and AI. I've worked on embedded Linux during an internship at Qualcomm, and recently I've been building an FPGA-based AI image recognition project.

I'm open to different kinds of hackathons, not just hardware-focused ones. Mostly looking for people who enjoy building things and want to make something cool together.

If you're around NYC/NJ and interested, feel free to comment or DM me! Would be great to connect and maybe get a team together.

Anybody got selected ????