My Mad Adventure at the HackForHire Hackathon

An unexpected opportunity

Sometimes the best opportunities come when you least expect them. I was in the middle of actively job hunting, navigating through LinkedIn, Indeed, and other platforms, when my childhood friend (yes, the one from the first blog post) forwarded me a post on X from someone named Alekos Filini. I didn't know him, although I might have glimpsed him at the Lugano's Plan B.

The post was about a hackathon: "HackForHire 2025". Looking at the event page, the idea immediately intrigued me: 24 hours to develop a mobile app, with a job offer as the prize. Cool! But also... terrifying. I talked to my friend about it, expressing all my doubts: "But will I be able to make a decent app in just 24 hours?". He, as always, encouraged me. So, while continuing with interviews, I decided to start experimenting a bit with Expo and React Native the week before.

A Taste of Expo: VaultFactor App

To get familiar, I sketched out an app draft: a completely offline 2FA manager with a retrofuturistic aesthetic. The goal wasn't to finish it, but to understand Expo's dynamics, test some native APIs, and basically "warm up". The result was a fairly simple UI mockup, but it gave me the necessary confidence.

March 22, 2025: The Adventure Begins

The fateful day arrives. The hackathon officially started at 12:00, but I was already connected on Discord from 9:00 for Alekos's presentation. At 12:00, the theme was revealed: an expense tracker.

It was my first hackathon. I was super excited, but also had no idea what to expect. I knew that using AI was allowed and, having a Pro subscription to Claude, I decided that would be my secret weapon. I prepared Claude Projects and immediately started bootstrapping the repo (which, by the way, was running on a remote mount provided by the organizers to monitor activity).

Thanks to Claude and very detailed prompts, I managed to produce a really solid initial mockup in relatively little time. It was probably around 17:00, the first energy drink was already gone, and that's when the real marathon began.

The Night of Code: Between Giant Refactors and Energy Drinks

I worked like a robot: VSCodium on the left, Claude on the right. I implemented the homepage with the transaction list, navbar, budget management, settings... Then, the revelation (or madness?): why limit myself to expenses? I needed to support income too! A massive refactor began, from the SQLite schema to retouching dozens of frontend components.

It was already evening. Quick pizza break with my girlfriend (who had come to provide moral support) and then back to it. The hours passed quickly. At 23:00, second energy drink. My girlfriend fell asleep in the bed behind me, while I was glued to the screen, in a kind of competitive trance, hammering on the keyboard in the silence of the night.

During THE ENTIRE night, I continued adding features, pushing myself further and further. The result? An app, which I later named Expensify, with a set of features that I myself could hardly believe I had implemented:

• Tracking Expenses and Income
• Monthly Budget Management with progressive visualization
• Notifications for upcoming Recurring Payments
• Programmable Recurring Transactions Management
• Categorized and Editable Transactions
• Customizable Categories
• Analysis Charts (pie and linear)
• Export Analytics in JSON
• Biometric Support (Face ID/Fingerprint) for app protection
• Backup and Import of app data
• Multi-Currency Support (including Bitcoin!)
• Offline-First Architecture with SQLite database

It was 5:30 in the morning. A trip to the kitchen to remember that a three-dimensional world existed, and I ran into my sister, just returned, shocked to see me still awake and operational. I polished the final details and at 6:30, completely mentally drained, I collapsed into bed for barely 3 hours of sleep.

At 9:30, alarm. I told everything to my girlfriend, reread some of the code and decided that the bulk was done. Until 11:30 I dedicated myself to finding and fixing the most obvious bugs. Then enough. I compiled the APK, quickly recorded a demonstration video from my phone and sent everything, announcing the end of my battle on Discord. I had finished 30 minutes ahead of the 12:00 deadline.

Disbelief, Pride and... an Unexpected Email

I showed the app to my girlfriend, friends, and especially to my childhood friend who had pushed me to participate: all amazed by the result. Only after some rest, with a clear mind, did I realize: I had created the most complex application of my life in about 20 hours of effective work. More complex than any previous personal project. For a first React Native/Expo app, it wasn't bad at all!

In the following days, something else happened: I signed a contract with a small LLC from Naples where I had interviewed. I needed to work and took the opportunity. I started this new adventure and, on March 24, while on a video call with my girlfriend, I received an email. I looked at the preview: "You are one of the 5 finalists of HackForHire, congratulations!".

My face must have said it all. I told her the news, we celebrated in disbelief, I notified my friends. I scheduled the call with the organizers as requested. The day of the call arrived: they complimented me, saying my app was the one with the most features, on par with another participant. I was on cloud nine, but prepared myself to wait for further communications.

More days of normal work passed, the disbelief at being among the finalists was still great. Then, another email: they wanted to have another call to proceed with the collaboration. I discovered that they had decided to hire both me and the other guy! They told me I could already start organizing my trip to Brescia to meet the team and see the office.

Victory! And Some Reflections on AI

It took almost two weeks to fully realize: I HAD WON! And not alone, which made it even better. It was an incredible experience, I never thought I could do it. I jumped in, gave it my all and used every tool at my disposal.

And here I want to make a small note on the use of AI. I firmly believe that, at least today, thinking of creating complex applications "only with AI", without solid programming foundations and without understanding what happens "under the hood", is very difficult. For me, coming from 3 years of web development mainly with JavaScript, Claude was a force multiplier, a co-pilot that allowed me to go faster and overcome obstacles. But without my previous experience, without the ability to guide it, correct it and integrate its output into the project, I would never have been able to build Expensify in 20 hours. AI is a very powerful tool that can make us "super human", but it requires mastery to be fully exploited.

I'm really happy to have participated. It was an incredible confidence boost and proof that sometimes, throwing yourself into the biggest challenges leads to the most unexpected results.

I also invite you to check out the portfolio page of Expensify!