That's kind of nitpicky. My point was that if there is a hackathon with a highly desirable prize, and you know about it in advance, there is a direct incentive for you to spend time between the time you learn of the hack and the time when the hack officially begins working on ideas, designs, business strategy, and even code, and that that effect is the reason that it's not a good idea, or in the spirit of hacking, to offer high stakes prizes in hackathon style situations.

Apologies for the very long sentence, I love commas and am the arch-nemesis of conciseness.