Rene Turcios has attended over 200 hackathons and doesn’t know how to code

10 months ago

Rene Turcios, a former professional Yu-Gi-Oh! player, is known as the 'hackathon king' of San Francisco.
Despite not knowing how to code, Turcios has won over 200 hackathons using AI to generate code, a practice known as 'vibe coding'.
Turcios' unconventional background includes growing up in a circus family and becoming a pro Yu-Gi-Oh! player before moving to San Francisco.
He started attending hackathons after his metaverse infrastructure company failed due to his engineers' reluctance to use AI.
Turcios now builds projects quickly for businesses and teaches others how to use AI for coding, running workshops for both non-technical and experienced engineers.
He has scaled back his hackathon participation to focus on his AI agents startup, where he is the sole founder and uses AI for all coding tasks.
Turcios demonstrated his AI coding skills by building a resale site for Labubu dolls in just 15 minutes during the interview.

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