-- HackerNoon, the independent technology publishing platform, announced the launch of the #Shipaton Writing Contest, a global build-in-public competition created in partnership with RevenueCat for developers participating in Shipaton 2026.
The writing contest will award $2,500 in cash prizes to builders who document the development, launch and growth of mobile applications created for Shipaton 2026. The contest will run from August 1 through September 30, 2026, alongside the official Shipaton competition.
Shipaton challenges developers, founders, designers and student builders worldwide to create and release a brand-new mobile application on the Apple App Store, Google Play Store or Samsung Galaxy Store.
As an official Shipaton Build-in-Public partner, HackerNoon will provide participants with a platform to publish build logs, technical deep dives, product decisions, RevenueCat integrations, growth experiments, launch stories and postmortems.
The $2,500 HackerNoon writing prize pool is separate from Shipaton’s official prizes and awards, allowing eligible participants to compete in both programs.
“Building an app involves far more than the final product users see in an app store,” said David Smooke, Founder & CEO of HackerNoon. “The technical trade-offs, failed experiments, product decisions and lessons learned along the way are often just as valuable as the finished app. Through this contest, we want builders to document that process and share practical knowledge with the wider technology community.”
Documenting the Work Behind the App
The #Shipaton Writing Contest is designed to highlight the full development journey behind new mobile applications.
Participants may publish stories explaining the problem their app addresses, the audience it serves and the reasoning behind the original product idea. They may also document individual development sprints, technical milestones, architecture decisions, frameworks, APIs, infrastructure choices and engineering trade-offs.
Builders using RevenueCat may write about implementing subscriptions, in-app purchases, pricing models, free trials, paywalls, entitlements or advertising monetization.
Other eligible topics include onboarding, accessibility, user experience, navigation, feature prioritization, app-store presentation, growth experiments and changes made in response to user feedback.
Participants may also publish postmortems covering what worked, what failed, the metrics they tracked and what they would do differently in a future build.
The contest is not limited to the most commercially successful or technically polished applications. A difficult integration, failed experiment, intelligent pivot, documented mistake or meaningful technical breakthrough may also form the basis of a winning submission.
Writing Contest Prize Pool
The #Shipaton Writing Contest prize pool includes:
- First Place — $1,200
- Second Place — $800
- Third Place — $500
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- Total Writing Contest Prize Pool — $2,500
These prizes are separate from Shipaton’s official awards, which include more than $1,000,000 in cash prizes and other opportunities for participating builders.
Shipaton awards and benefits may include Times Square billboard features, travel to New York for the Shippies and RevenueCat App Growth Annual, coverage from 9to5Mac and 9to5Google, and investor exposure through the Shipaton Growth Fund.
How to Participate
Developers, founders, designers and student builders interested in entering the writing contest must first register for Shipaton 2026 through its official Devpost page.
Participants should review the official Shipaton participation requirements, project categories and submission rules before beginning their builds.
Builders must also create or log in to a HackerNoon account and publish eligible stories between August 1 and September 30, 2026.
Every contest submission must include the official #shipaton tag to be considered.
Participants are encouraged to publish multiple stories throughout the contest period rather than waiting until their apps are complete. Eligible entries may cover meaningful milestones, development challenges, technical discoveries, experiments, pivots or launch results.
Publishing a story on HackerNoon does not replace the official Shipaton submission process. Participants must still submit their completed applications through Shipaton’s official Devpost process before the hackathon deadline.
For more information and to register for Shipaton 2026, visit the following website.
Create a HackerNoon account here and begin a contest submission here using the #shipaton tag.
Media Contact
For media inquiries, interviews or collaboration opportunities, please contact:
Sheharyar Khan
sheharyar@hackernoon.com
About HackerNoon
How hackers start their afternoons. HackerNoon is built for technologists to read, write and publish. It is an open and international community of more than 50,000 contributing writers publishing stories and expertise for more than 4 million curious and insightful monthly readers.
Founded in 2016, HackerNoon is an independent technology publishing platform run by David Smooke and Linh Dao Smooke. Start blogging about technology today.
About RevenueCat
RevenueCat is a leading platform for building, managing and growing in-app purchase and subscription businesses. Its cross-platform infrastructure helps developers implement purchases, validate transactions, manage customer entitlements, analyze subscription performance and optimize monetization across iOS, Android and the web. Learn more at RevenueCat.com.
Contact Info:
Name: Sheharyar Khan
Email: Send Email
Organization: HackerNoon
Website: https://hackernoon.com/
Release ID: 89199444
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