The $0 Hackathon: official rules

01Organizer, contact, and the price

The $0 Hackathon (the "Hackathon") is organized by Justinas Rolando, an individual (solo maker) based in Valencia, Spain (the "Organizer", "we", "us"). [Legal entity, if one is used: full name / trading name, registration number, registered address].

Contact for anything about these rules: hello@zerohackathon.com. A human replies.

1.1 The price

Entry is free. No purchase is necessary to enter or to win, and no payment of any kind will ever be required by the Organizer to participate, stay in, be judged, or collect a prize. Buying a sponsor's product does not improve your chances. If anyone asks you for money in the Hackathon's name, it isn't us; please tell us.

The Hackathon is a skill contest: winners are decided by verified business results (Section 6), not by chance.

02Dates

All times are UTC. Your local time zone does not change the deadlines, sorry.

Nov 14, 2026

Follower-count snapshot for brackets (Section 4).

Nov 15, 00:00

Building starts. First sales count from this moment.

Dec 15, 23:59

Building ends. From this point you connect your payment provider with a read-only key for verification.

Dec 22, 2026

The 7-day refund window closes. Refunds and chargebacks up to this date are subtracted from your result.

Dec 23, 2026

Results and verified numbers are published.

By Jan 5, 2027

Winners are paid (Section 8).

You can sign up any time before Dec 15, 23:59 UTC. Joining late is allowed, costs the same ($0), and gives you fewer days. Sales made before Nov 15 never count, whenever you joined.

If we have to move a date (for example because a payment provider's API is down on verification day), we will announce it on the homepage and by email, and record it in the changelog at the bottom of this page.

03Who can enter

You can enter if all of the following are true:

• You are at least 18 years old, or the age of majority where you live if that is higher.
• Taking part is legal where you live. The Hackathon is void where prohibited by law.
• You are not located in, or a resident of, a country or territory subject to comprehensive sanctions ([e.g. as listed by the EU, the UN, and OFAC at the time of entry]), and you are not on a sanctions list. We may be unable to pay prizes to some countries even where entry is allowed; we will tell you before results if that affects you.
• You are not the Organizer, a judge, a reviewer, or anyone else working on running the Hackathon, nor an employee or contractor of a sponsor who works on the sponsorship, nor an immediate family or household member of any of those people. Sponsors' employees are welcome to build along for fun, just not to compete for prizes.

3.1 Teams

• Solo or team, your choice. A team has at most 3 people, each of whom must be eligible.
• A team enters one business and competes in the bracket of its member with the biggest account (Section 4). Three small accounts don't add up; one big account pulls the team up.
• A person can be in only one entry (solo or team). A team names one member to receive any prize; splitting it is between you.

3.2 One account per person

One signup per person, with your real email and the handle of your biggest account. Duplicate or fake signups are removed.

04Brackets

Judging on money alone tends to reward whoever already has an audience. So you compete only against people your own size. Your bracket is set by the follower count of your biggest public account on X, YouTube, TikTok, LinkedIn, Instagram, or an email newsletter (subscriber count).

• Snapshot date: Nov 14, 2026. We take your follower count on that day (or on the day you sign up, if later) and that's your bracket for the whole Hackathon, even if you blow up on day 12. Good for you, by the way.
• You tell us your biggest account at signup. We check the top 10 of each bracket by hand before results. Picking a smaller account to land in a smaller bracket moves you to the right bracket at best and gets you disqualified at worst.
• "Biggest account" means the account you personally control with the most followers, including accounts for other projects or brands you run.
• Teams use the biggest account among all members.

05What counts as a new business

The point is to start from zero, so your entry must be brand new:

• A new product on a new domain (or a new app-store listing), not a rebrand, relaunch, or "v2" of something that already sold.
• Its first sale happens on or after Nov 15, 2026, 00:00 UTC. Pre-orders, waitlists and "founding member" payments taken before that don't count and make the business not new.
• Existing code is fine. Reuse your boilerplate, your components, your side project that never shipped. Open-source and third-party tools are fine.
• Existing customers are not fine. Migrating paying users from another product, or selling to a customer list from an existing business, isn't a new business. Announcing to your followers is, of course, allowed; that's what the brackets are for.
• Any digital product sold online qualifies: SaaS, app, directory, template, newsletter, info product, service with online checkout. It must take real payments through a supported provider (Section 6.1).
• You may enter the same new business in another hackathon at the same time. We don't mind. We even give you a stamp.

06Judging

Winners are ranked by verified profit, highest in each bracket. No screenshots, no vibes.

6.1 Verification

From Dec 15 you connect your payment provider, Stripe, Lemon Squeezy, Polar or Paddle, using a read-only / restricted key. We (or a neutral verification partner we name on the homepage) read transactions for the Hackathon period and nothing else. Other providers may be accepted if we can verify them read-only; ask before Dec 1. Keys are stored encrypted and deleted after payouts (see the privacy policy).

6.2 Profit, not revenue

Declared costs are self-reported on your honour and must be for this business. We may ask for receipts. Under-declaring costs can lead to disqualification; over-declaring only hurts you. All amounts are converted to US dollars at the provider's reported rate or, failing that, the ECB rate on Dec 15.

6.3 Strangers only

• Only payments from real, unrelated customers count. Your own cards, your teammates, other participants, your household, and anyone who shares a payout account with you don't count. Your mom's card doesn't count either, with love.
• You need at least 5 unique paying customers to be ranked.
• No single customer may account for more than 20% of your verified profit. Anything above 20% from one customer is capped at 20% for ranking.
• Self-dealing is excluded: paying yourself, circular payments between participants, "I buy yours, you buy mine", bought traffic that converts into fake accounts, and similar arrangements. If it looks engineered, we treat it as engineered.

6.4 Review and publication

• The top 10 in each bracket are checked by hand: provider data, the product itself, the public build log, customer patterns.
• Ties go to the builder with more unique paying customers.
• Final verified numbers for ranked builders are published on Dec 23 (Section 11).
• Participants are asked to post one public build-log update a week. Missing updates don't disqualify you from bracket prizes, but a missing log makes review harder and rules you out of the Best Build Log quest.

6.5 Disputes

If you think a number is wrong, email hello@zerohackathon.com within [7 days] of results with what you think is wrong and why. We will look again. The Organizer's decisions on eligibility, verification, ranking and disputes are final. We will explain them, but we won't relitigate them forever.

07Prizes

7.1 Where the money comes from

• Prizes are funded only by sponsors and community backers. Builders never pay in.
• The prize pool is whatever cash is actually received into the dedicated prize account by [Dec 15, 2026]. It is not guaranteed, and no minimum is promised. Pledges that don't arrive are not in the pool. The live counter on the homepage shows the current figure; the public ledger shows every dollar in and out.
• 100% of cash goes to builders. The Organizer takes 0% and pays running costs separately.
• Sponsor perks and credits (API credits, hosting, subscriptions) are listed separately, are never counted as cash, and are subject to the sponsor's own terms. We can't guarantee a sponsor will honour a perk, but we will chase them with you.

7.2 How the pool is split

7.3 Inside each cash bracket: 10 winners

• To place you must qualify (Section 6.3). If fewer than 10 builders qualify in a bracket, unclaimed money rolls down to the next smaller bracket: Grove to Sprout to Seed. It never goes back to the Organizer or to sponsors. If Seed itself has unclaimed money, it is split equally among all qualified Seed winners.
• Each person (and each team) can win at most one bracket prize. Side quests can stack on top.
• Ties go to more unique paying customers (Section 6.4).

7.4 Side quests (10% of the pool)

Side-quest winners must meet the eligibility rules but don't need 5 customers, except Most Customers, which obviously does.

7.5 Forest bracket

Builders with 50,000+ followers are welcome to play, get the same perks, and are ranked the same way. The top 3 receive sponsor credits and the trophy, not cash. Nobody smaller loses money to them.

08Getting paid

• Cash prizes are paid in US dollars (or your currency at our bank's rate) by bank transfer, Wise or PayPal, your choice where available, by Jan 5, 2027. We cover standard transfer fees; your bank's receiving fees are yours.
• Before paying we run a basic identity check: a government ID matching the name on the payout account, and proof that you control the handle and the payment-provider account you entered with. Teams: the named recipient is verified.
• We may need tax information from you (for example a tax ID or a residency declaration) and may have to withhold or report where the law requires it. [Confirm withholding and reporting obligations for an individual organizer in Spain].
• Winners are responsible for their own taxes on prizes, wherever they live.
• If we can't verify you, can't legally pay you, or you don't respond within 30 days of results, the prize is forfeited and rolls down like unclaimed bracket money (Section 7.3).
• Prizes are not transferable and can't be swapped for anything else. There is nothing else.

09Disqualification

We can remove an entry, before or after results, and claw back a paid prize if we find:

• Fraud or misrepresentation: fake transactions, self-dealing, stolen cards, laundering sales through another business, lying about your bracket, team size, costs, or the age of your business.
• Harassment, threats, hate, or spam towards other participants, customers, sponsors, or the Organizer, anywhere.
• Infringement: selling something you don't have the rights to (code, content, trademarks, other people's products), or a product that is illegal where it is sold.
• Breaking a payment provider's or platform's terms in a way that affects verification.
• Trying to manipulate the Builders' Pick vote, the chat, or the verification process.

Disqualified builders are told why, by email. Their place is taken by the next qualified builder.

10Who owns what you build

You do. All of it. The Organizer and sponsors take no equity, no revenue share, no licence to your code, brand, content, or customer list, and no rights over your business after the Hackathon.

The only thing we ask for is the right described in Section 11: to publish your handle, product name, and verified numbers in the results, and to link to your public build log.

11Publicity

• By entering, you agree that if you place in the top 10 of a bracket or win a side quest, we may publish your handle, product name, bracket, and verified numbers (revenue, refunds, profit, customer count) on the homepage, in the results, and on our social accounts.
• Your signup also creates a public receipt page at an unguessable link showing your handle and bracket. Share it or don't.
• We won't publish your email, legal name, or payout details. We won't use your name or product in sponsor advertising without asking first.
• If you'd rather not be named, tell us before Dec 15. We can list you by product name only, but numbers for ranked builders are always published; open review is the whole point.

12Chat and community conduct

The live chat on the homepage, and anywhere else the Hackathon gathers, runs on a short list:

• Be kind to builders, including people who paid to enter other hackathons. Amnesty, not gotchas.
• No harassment, hate, doxxing, or threats. No spam, no unsolicited promotion of things unrelated to your entry. Sharing your own build is encouraged.
• Don't post other people's personal data, or payment or login details (yours either).
• Messages reported by 3 people are hidden automatically pending review. The Organizer can hide messages, pin announcements, and block abusers, and doesn't have to explain each one.
• Never name or attack other events or their organizers in our spaces. Factual prices only. We'd rather be the free one than the mean one.

13Liability, changes to the rules, governing law

13.1 What we're responsible for, and what we aren't

• The Hackathon is provided as is, by one person, for free. We will do our honest best, but we can't promise the site, chat, verification tooling, or any third-party service (payment providers, email, hosting, sponsors' perks) will work without interruption or error.
• Your business is yours: its legal compliance, taxes, customers, refunds, and liabilities are your responsibility, not ours.
• To the fullest extent the law allows, the Organizer is not liable for indirect, consequential, or lost-profit damages arising from the Hackathon, and total liability to any participant is limited to the cash prize that participant was due, if any. Nothing here limits liability for fraud, gross negligence, wilful misconduct, or anything that can't be limited by law (including your statutory consumer rights in the EU).
• If the Hackathon can't run fairly for reasons outside our control (fraud at scale, a provider outage on verification day, legal order), we may pause, extend, or adjust it. Any cash already received still goes 100% to builders, by the fairest method available, and never back to the Organizer.

13.2 Changes to these rules

We may update these rules to fix mistakes, close loopholes, or respond to how the Hackathon actually unfolds. Every change is listed in the dated changelog below, and material changes are announced on the homepage and by email. Changes won't reduce a prize you have already been awarded. Continuing to participate after a change means you accept it; if you don't, you can withdraw at any time at no cost (there was no cost).

13.3 Governing law

These rules are governed by the laws of [Spain], and disputes go to the courts of [Valencia, Spain], except where mandatory consumer law gives you the right to use the courts of your own country. Before any of that: email us. Almost everything is fixable with an email.

13.4 Acceptance

By signing up you confirm you have read these rules, that you're eligible (Section 3), and that you agree to all of the above. Thanks for reading to the end. Most people don't, and you just got a small, unfair, perfectly legal advantage.

→Changelog

Nov 11, 2026

v0.1: first public draft, published before kickoff for review. Placeholders marked in yellow.