$1 Hack: The First Dollar Sprint
What is $1 Hack?
Most hackathons optimize for demos.
This one optimizes for money entering the system.
$1 Hack is a 36-hour build sprint with a single success condition:
By the end of 36 hours, your project must collect $1 of real online revenue.
No pitch decks.
No fake traction.
No “we’ll monetize later”.
Just: identify a buyer → ship something → charge → get paid.
🕒 36 hours total
👤 Solo builders only
💰 $1 from a real, non-participant user
🔗 Public checkout required
😴 8 hours of sleep is mandatory
What Counts as “$1”
To qualify, revenue must be:
Paid by someone who is not participating
In exchange for access to a real product or service
Collected through a public checkout (Stripe, PayPal, Gumroad, etc.)
Does not count:
Friends “helping you out”
Self-payments
Donations without a product
Fake or private checkouts
If you can’t explain why the person paid — it doesn’t count.
What You Can Build
Anything that can reasonably collect money in 24 hours:
Micro-tools
Paid Notion templates
One-page SaaS
Scripts & APIs
Gumroad products
Paid waitlists
Services with a clear scope
How the Day Runs
We’ll do public check-ins, not constant streaming:
Kickoff
What are you building?
Who will pay?
Why would they pay today?
Midpoint
First user contact
Pricing decision
What changed?
End
Proof of payment
Demo of what was sold
Short post-mortem
What You Walk Away With
Every participant submits:
Proof of payment (or failure)
A short demo
A 1-page teardown:
Who you tried to sell to
What worked
What failed
What you’d do next
If this works, we’ll publish the learnings.
If it doesn’t, we’ll still publish the learnings.
Who This Is For
Builders who want to get better at charging
Indie hackers tired of fake traction
Founders who’ve never made their first dollar
People who want signal, not vibes
If you just want to demo — this isn’t for you.
Why We’re Doing This
Building is cheap now.
Monetization is still hard.
$1 Hack exists to compress that lesson into 24 hours —
without burning people out.