48 hours, one radical constraint, one hackathon win.

How it started — my first hackathon win

MindShift started as the scrappiest possible build: one theme, one lens, a single Gemini call held together with duct tape. The bet was speed-to-signal — does "shift your perspective by borrowing a great mind" even land in a stranger's chest before you've built anything real? It did. That 48-hour cut won its hackathon — my first.

Then the honest part: most of that build got thrown away. What survived wasn't the code — it was the feeling, and the conviction that the idea was worth the un-fun months of stack and schemas that came after. The win wasn't the trophy; it was permission to keep going.

Field notes