#5 - Adrian Humphrey - Winning $100k at the World's Largest Hackathon

Adrian Humphrey beat thousands of developers to win $100K at the Bolt Hackathon—here's how he did it.

His approach to vibe coding: strategic debugging, knowing when AI isn't ready, and building for real pain points. We dive into how he built Tailored Labs (an AI video editor) using Bolt and Google's Gemini 2.5 Pro, why his 2018 startup was "too forward thinking," and his framework for turning hackathon wins into fundable companies.

Key topics

• Debugging strategies for vibe coding tools that save time and money
• Building production-ready apps vs. hackathon prototypes
• Competing with established players like CapCut and Adobe

Takeaways

• Start with a PRD and user stories: map out use cases before building, then write tests
• Debug strategically: don't let AI iterate blindly—investigate first, then fix
• Timing matters more than tech: great ideas can fail if the market isn't ready
• Production is the real bottleneck: vibe coding makes building easy, but deployment and scaling are still hard
• Solve time, not features: focus on the biggest pain point (time) rather than flashy AI capabilities

Links

• • Tailored Labs
  • Follow Adrian

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Vibe Coding is a podcast about building software and reality with AI. We dive into what actually works, share practical techniques, and talk to the people building these tools.  

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