Shipyard: From Zero to Early Traction in Hackathon Software
Kareem Amin
Department of Computer Science
Faculty Supervisor: Shahrukh Humayoun
Shipyard started because I kept running into the same problem at hackathons: submissions, judging, and organizer workflows were way messier than they should have been, and a lot of it was still being managed through spreadsheets. I built Shipyard to make that process easier, and over time it grew from a simple idea into a real software product with more than 1,000 users and early profitability. This presentation is not just about what the platform does, but about the process of building something from scratch that people actually want to use. I’ll talk about how I found the problem, built the product, got my first users and customers, improved it through real feedback, and what I learned from getting early traction in a niche market.