I built HackerMate because finding a hackathon team still sucks in 2026

Yash Shah — Sat, 18 Jul 2026 08:26:09 +0000

If you've ever hacked solo because you couldn't find teammates in time, or ended up in a mismatched team because Discord servers move too fast to actually vet anyone — this one's for you.
I've been building HackerMate, a full-stack platform designed to fix the two most painful parts of hackathons:

Before the hackathon: finding the right team Instead of scrolling through chaotic Discord/WhatsApp threads, HackerMate lets you:

Browse and create teams
Search for teammates by skill, role, or college
Apply to join a team or invite people directly

During the hackathon: actually staying organized Once your team is formed, HackerMate becomes your mini project OS:

Task management
Daily standups
A shared project board

The stack:

Next.js (App Router)
Supabase for auth + database
Tailwind CSS with a custom dark design system
TypeScript throughout

It started life as "HackOS" before I rebranded, and it's now live at hackermate.in. Right now it has ~35 early users, mostly friends and people from my network — which has been super useful for feedback, but I'm now trying to get real hackathon teams using it in the wild.
If you're participating in any upcoming hackathons, I'd genuinely love for you to try forming a team on HackerMate and tell me what breaks. Feedback — good or brutal — welcome in the comments.
What's the most annoying part of finding a hackathon team for you?

DEV Community: Yash Shah

I built HackerMate because finding a hackathon team still sucks in 2026