Codie SanchezFounder @ Contrarian Thinking

The Real Winner Won’t be AI, It’ll be those of us Who Master How To Use it.

21 Jul 2026 · 1 min

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Codie Sanchez walks through how to run an AI hackathon in a few hours instead of weeks. Her team built five working tools in three hours by skipping slides and meetings, letting small teams attack real problems. Speed in building becomes your edge.

Chapters

I just learned how to use AI in one weekend and all my team learned it too. Let me show you how to host a hackathon like I had one of our smartest guys do. So basically you host this short intense sprint where small teams build real tools in real time. No slides, no meetings. You actually bring a problem and then you fix it the same day. Here's a quick schedule. All you have to bring: an open mind, some crazy ideas, your laptop charged—important—ChatGPT or Claude and Replit. So what do you learn from this? First, this compresses weeks of potential ideas for coding into hours. Second, signal over talk. You immediately see who can turn ideas into reality. So you find 3 hidden talent. You figure out who's really good at this and you figure out what you actually want to code. And then most importantly, instead of guessing what tools you need to build, you actually build them in real time like we did. We built 5 of them. Now, the goal isn't perfect. They're not totally ready, all the things we built, but in 3 hours on a weekend, we've built more than people build in their entire lives. Because companies and people who build faster, they make more money and they win.