Trying to win a hackathon with a product nobody wants. Lessons on validation.

3 weeks ago I saw the Polar x Lovable hackathon on X. $10k prize for whoever gets the highest MRR by April 7. I thought "how hard can it be?". I had a product idea in mind that I wanted to validate first, but I jumped straight into building (again)

Built an MVP in 3-4 days with Lovable. A profit dashboard for founders, you put in your income and expenses and it shows what you actually keep, called it Saveyond. Felt good about it, classic mistake.

Then I spent almost 2 weeks trying to get verified by Polar. Identity verification kept rejecting me. During this whole time I had a live product with no way to take payments.

Couldn't market a paid product that can't accept money.

Once payments finally worked, I started posting to validate. Here's what happened:

• Discord: 2 people told me they don't need it.
• Reddit: mixed results across a few subs. Got 50+ comments and 30k+ views but most said "just use QuickBooks" or "a spreadsheet takes 15 minutes."
• Indie Hackers: zero engagement.

I tried pivoting. Maybe a SaaS pricing directory? Validated that too. Same result, no demand. Shareable stats cards? Not compelling enough. Different audience? Maybe, but running out of time to test.

Current state: $0 MRR. 0 paying users. 12 days left.

The funny part is that I sell a distribution framework that teaches founders how to find customers. And I still fell into the exact same trap. Built first then tried to validate later.

This is the first time I actually tried to validate before fully committing. And the validation is telling me pretty clearly that people think this problem is already solved (by spreadsheets, QuickBooks, or just not caring about profit).

I think I would have killed this product weeks ago if the hackathon wasn't still running. The sunk cost is real even when you know it's sunk cost.

Biggest takeaway so far: the feedback you get depends entirely on where you post. r/Entrepreneur told me the idea is dead. r/startups told me the pain is real but the audience is different. Picking the wrong community to validate in can kill a good idea or keep a bad one alive.

Has anyone else been in a hackathon where you realized that the product doesn't have any chance of winning?

Curious how you handled it.