$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 build sprint with a single success condition:
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.
👤 Solo builders only
💰 $1 from a real, non-participant user
🔗 Public checkout required
😴 8 hours of sleep is mandatory
Location: ASB Ground Floor, Demo Lab 1
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 Use to Build
TRAE, an AI-first development platform, participants will create intelligent applications, AI agents, and high-impact prompt workflows—faster and smarter. TRAE helps you go from idea to execution with AI-native development, prompt workflows, and agentic capabilities.
v0. Ship real apps and not just prototypes by planning your prompts and project plans.
What You Can Build
Anything that can reasonably collect money in 24 hours:
Apify Agents
Micro-tools
Paid Notion templates
One-page SaaS
Scripts & APIs
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?
Introduction to TRAE AI (15 mins)
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
Prizes sponsored by TRAE AI, v0, and Apify!
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.
$1 Hack exists to compress that lesson into 24 hours —
without burning people out.
NOTE: To be eligible for TRAE AI, v0, or Apify prizes, you must use either TRAE AI, or v0, or Apify services in your solution - codes will be shared on the day
How judging works:
v0 track:
Submit to be considered for a prize to each track which includes:
Marketing
Go-to-market
Dev
Design
Product
Practical Agents
After the event, the community votes on the best builds via the Community Showcase page.
We'll have builds going on all week (Jan 31- Feb 8), so be sure to keep voting for your favorites.
Winners per track get featured on v0's social channels. So the more compelling the build + the public post, the better!
Apify track:
Apify is giving US$ 1500 cash prizes for the winner of the track.
You have to build Apify Actors in order to be eligible for the challenge.
Use PPE monetization method and publish it on Apify store to put it in front of 25K+ monthly active customers.
Learn more in the presentation by Apify on the day of hackathon.