Introduction
Most first year students are still figuring out which IDE to use. I built a product that reached 1,000+ users across 10+ countries in its first month. I'm not saying that to brag — a year ago, I wouldn't have believed it was possible either.
I am not saying that to brag. I am saying it because a year ago, I would not have believed it was possible either. But here we are — and the journey of building HACK-MATE has been one of the most exciting, humbling, and educational experiences of my life.
This is the story of what it is, how it grew, and what building in public as a first year student actually looks like.
What is HACK-MATE?
HACK-MATE is an AI-powered hackathon co-pilot built with React and TypeScript, designed to help teams build projects faster, collaborate better, and simplify the workflows that every hackathon team struggles with.
If you have ever competed in a hackathon, you know the pain points intimately. Ideas that are hard to structure quickly. Team communication that gets chaotic under pressure. Workflows that break down at 3 AM when everyone is exhausted. Time slipping away on things that should be simple.
HACK-MATE was built to solve exactly those problems — not as a class project, not as a homework assignment, but as a real product that real teams could use in real competitions.
The idea came from personal experience. After competing in multiple hackathons myself, I knew what was missing. So I decided to build it.
The Numbers: One Month In
When I first launched HACK-MATE, I genuinely did not know what to expect. Would anyone use it? Would developers care enough to contribute? Would it matter beyond our immediate circle?
The first month answered all of those questions loudly:
- 1,000+ users reached globally
- Users from 10+ countries across the world
- 1,280 Git clones in just the last 14 days
- 360 unique developers cloned the repository
- 10+ open-source contributors actively building the platform
These are not vanity metrics. Each clone represents a developer who found the project interesting enough to pull it down and explore it. Each contributor represents someone who believed in what we were building enough to give their time and skills to it. Each user from a different country represents HACK-MATE crossing a border it was never specifically designed to cross.
That is what real traction looks like — and seeing it happen in month one was something I am still processing.
Building It: The Stack and the Philosophy
HACK-MATE is built on React and TypeScript — a deliberate choice for a project aimed at the developer community. The stack is modern, widely understood, and approachable for contributors across skill levels. Whether you are a seasoned frontend engineer or a student just getting comfortable with React, the codebase is designed to be welcoming.
But beyond the technical stack, the philosophy behind HACK-MATE was clear from day one: build it in public, build it open source, and build it with the community.
Open source was not an afterthought. It was the foundation. I wanted HACK-MATE to be something that developers could inspect, contribute to, improve, and make their own. The goal was never to build a closed product — it was to build a platform that the hackathon community could own collectively.
That decision changed everything about how the project grew.
The Open Source Community: What It Actually Means
One of the things I am most proud of about HACK-MATE is not a metric — it is the community of 10+ active contributors who are building alongside us right now.
These are developers from different backgrounds, different countries, and different skill levels, who looked at what we were building and said — I want to be part of this. They are writing code, reviewing pull requests, suggesting features, reporting bugs, and pushing the project forward every single day.
That is not something you can manufacture. It is something you earn by building something worth contributing to and treating your contributors like the valuable collaborators they are.
A huge part of why this community exists and thrives is because of my teammates Dhanush Shenoy H and Dinesh, who have been invaluable in maintaining the project, managing contributions, and continuously guiding contributors throughout the journey. Building a product is one thing. Building and sustaining a contributor community around it is another level entirely — and they have done it with remarkable dedication.
What It Feels Like to Have Users in 10+ Countries
There is a specific moment I remember when I first saw that HACK-MATE had users from countries I had never expected. It was a quiet kind of shock — the realization that something I built in my first year of college, on my laptop, was being used by people on the other side of the world who had no idea who I was.
That is the magic of open source and the internet. Geography becomes irrelevant. If you build something useful and put it out there, the right people will find it.
It also raised the bar for me immediately. When people from 10+ countries are using your product, you start thinking about it differently. You think about accessibility, about documentation, about onboarding, about the experience of someone who has never spoken to you and has only the product itself to guide them.
That shift in thinking — from builder to product owner — happened very fast once real users arrived.
What Building HACK-MATE Taught Me
Ship Early, Iterate Always
The version of HACK-MATE that launched was not perfect. It was functional, thoughtful, and genuinely useful — but there was so much more to build. Shipping early and letting real users and contributors shape the direction was far more valuable than waiting for perfection that never comes.
Open Source is a Superpower
Making HACK-MATE open source from day one multiplied the project's growth in ways I could not have achieved alone. Contributors brought skills, perspectives, and ideas I did not have. The project is better because of every person who opened a pull request.
Community is a Product Decision
How you treat your contributors, how you document your codebase, how welcoming your project is to newcomers — these are product decisions, not afterthoughts. The health of an open source community is a direct reflection of the intentionality behind it.
Real Problems Make Real Products
HACK-MATE grew because it solved a real problem that real people experience. The best products are always born from genuine frustration and a genuine desire to fix it. I knew the pain of hackathon workflows because I had lived it. That knowledge made the product better from the very first commit.
First Year is Not Too Early to Build Something Real
I cannot say this enough. If you are a first year student waiting for the right moment to start building — this is it. You do not need more semesters. You do not need a perfect idea. You need to start, ship, learn, and iterate. The rest follows.
What's Next for HACK-MATE
We are just getting started. The roadmap ahead includes deeper AI integrations, more powerful collaboration features, and an even more robust contributor experience. The goal is to make HACK-MATE the go-to tool for every hackathon team in the world — and with the community we are building, that goal feels closer every day.
If you are interested in AI tools, React, TypeScript, backend systems, UI/UX, or open-source collaboration — contributions are always welcome. Come build with us.
Thank You
To Dhanush Shenoy H and Dinesh — HACK-MATE would not be what it is without you. Thank you for the late nights, the leadership, and the genuine care you bring to this project every single day.
To every contributor who has opened a pull request, filed an issue, or shared the project — you are the reason this community exists. This is yours as much as it is mine.
To every user across 10+ countries who tried HACK-MATE and found it useful — thank you for trusting something built by a first year student. We will not let you down.
And to Yenepoya University — thank you for being the kind of environment where a first year student feels empowered to build, ship, and grow something real.
— Anand Mahadev First Year Student | Yenepoya University Creator of HACK-MATE — 1,000+ Users | 10+ Countries | 360+ Developers | Open Source
🔗 link: www.hackmate.anandmahadev.in