TreeHacks: Silicon Valley’s Largest Hackathon

Over the course of 36 hours, more than a thousand students compete to invent the next “big idea”.

Each year, more than 1,200 students from colleges and universities around the world travel to Stanford University for TreeHacks–the largest collegiate hackathon held each year in Silicon Valley. The term hackathon comes from a mash-up of the words hack and marathon. Hack, referring, to exploratory computer programing, and marathon, referring to a race. The purpose of a hackathon is to create the hyper-focused, creative environment that produces the technical innovation and products that Silicon Valley is known for. If that sounds like trying to catch lightning in a bottle, that’s exactly what it is.