Have you entered a HACKATHON before?

First hackathon. Finals. 4th place. 🏆 Huge congrats to our TechRise student Xavier Hernandez, a Kennesaw State University student! About 450 people applied to HackATL 2026 at Emory. 30 teams got in, and only 6 made the finals. Xavier's team was one of them. The theme was "Designing the World After AI." Their question: if AI can do the assignment, how do we protect real understanding? Their answer was Xplain-it, a tool where students explain their code out loud so they can show what they actually learned. Xavier helped build it and opened the pitch as lead speaker. Then the tech broke mid-pitch. Instead of letting that be the story, he asked experienced competitors how they pivot, and he's taking it into the next one. That's the mindset we love to see. 🤎 This is exactly why you should be subscribed to the Opportunity Drop and join TechRise. Xavier found HackATL through us, and look what happened when he said yes. There is literally no experience like hands on. PERIOD. Companies and partners: our network is full of brilliant, ready-to-work students like Xavier. If you can offer an internship, mentorship, or a seat at the table, we want to connect you. DM us or reach out at wecreatetech.org. 🔗 Subscribe to the Opportunity Drop and apply to TechRise at the link in bio. #WeCreateTech #TechRise #OpportunityDrop #HackATL #KennesawState @hackatl @kennesawstateuniversity