Beyond Prompting: hosting our third hackathon with Shaakk, COLABS and Lovable

A few months ago Alexander and Sourav started Shaakk. Between business and travel the founders were stretched thin, and step by step I came in alongside Numan — today I'm a co-founder of Shaakk (shaakk.com).

We began with one hackathon, then a second, and then the third: Beyond Prompting — Build with Lovable, hosted at COLABS Nordic in Riyadh with Lovable and payment partners including EdfaPay on board.

Around sixty to seventy people showed up. The room was packed and honestly it got hot, but everyone stayed and built. Teams shipped working products in a few hours, and a lot of people touched AI tooling seriously for the first time — including a few families who came together.

Hosting it with Sourav and Numan was the best part. The next one should be bigger: more partners, hopefully names like Replit and government-backed programs, and more room for the people who keep showing up.

If you're a company, a community, or a sponsor who wants to run something like this in Saudi Arabia, message me — I'd rather build the next one with you than around you.