One gem that stood out to me from the article was the author's take on hackathons: "The prizes were nice, but the knowledge, soft skills, and connections were prizes in themselves" - which seems like the right way of approaching a hackathon.
To me that kind of points to something I don't like about hackathons: if I want to really dig deep and hack on something, I don't want to be terribly social. On the other hand, I have a lot of fun meeting people and talking, and so on, but at that point, having to go code something is kind of distracting from the social part.
Finding the balance is tough, but that's why going to these sorts of things was so important to me. Helps you learn how to filter out noise, talk to the right people, etc. If you know what you're looking you can be quite efficient when talking to people.
(meaning didn't exist before, hackathon happened where it was built, then it existed and continued as a startup company around that exact code.)
GroupMe started at the Disrupt Hackathon. But also startups don't just happen over night and the code will probably change drastically once you scale haha. Scalability isn't the primary focus at most hackathons :)
by the by do you have some contact info for a quick followup? your profile doesn't list any.