Stepping Up

I ended up leading the team—dividing tasks, hyping everyone up, and trying to build something out of nothing but imagination. No roadmap. No prior prep. Just pure guts and good friends.

Somehow, we made it.

On August 31, the Top 50 qualifiers were announced. We made it. We got our laptops. We celebrated like we won the whole thing already. But as we scanned the list of other teams, we found one called SOCA.AI—a literal startup with international students and pros on board.

That's when the celebration stopped and reality hit.

When People Start Leaving

The next day, we had "the talk." You know, the serious one: Are we really going to keep doing this?

Some of my teammates said no. Two left.

Only my closest friends stayed. I told them: "If you'll give 100%, I'll give 200%."

We had one week left. No turning back. Every single hour counted. And until the last hour—we were still coding.

Plot Twist: We Got In (Somehow)

Then… boom. An email.

We were selected for the online screening.
Second to present. Two days to prepare. No time to panic.

But we had problems. Big ones:

• The app wasn't even fully working yet
• The business model was kind of... not realistic
• And oh yeah—we were total noobs at AI

So We Flipped the Script

Here's the truth. We knew others had better apps. Cooler features. Better funding. But I had a wild idea.

What if we stop trying to "out-feature" them?

What if we sell something they can't ignore?

Instead of just showing what our app can do, we showed what it could become—with the right exposure.

So we leaned into our roots:

• We showcased the 63 STI campuses backing us.
• We emphasized our full integration with Huawei Cloud.
• We made it clear: if you choose us, you get exposure too.

We weren't just an app.
We were a platform built on your brand.
We weren't selling the product—we were selling the trajectory.

The Crazy Part?

It worked.
We won the national leg.
Team IC was going to China.

Hello, Shenzhen China

On November 16, we flew to Shenzhen for the finals.

Let me just say… we were expecting fellow students. Maybe other undergrads. But we walked into a room full of PHDs,Tech startups and Big school representatives.

It was wild. I was both intimidated and excited.

Language barrier? Yeah, I don't speak Chinese yet, so that was a funny challenge during networking—but we made the most of it.

The Final Result

2nd Runner-Up.
First Filipinos to win at the Huawei APAC Developer Competition.
That moment? Unreal.

We brought home: $3,000 in cash, Huawei MatePads, Medals And the title of Huawei Cloud Campus Ambassadors

Looking Back

We weren't the most skilled. We weren't the most prepared.
But we had each other. We had grit. And we had faith.

To everyone who doubted us—and even to those who didn't—thank you. Because this journey was about proving something: You don't need to be perfect. You just need to show up with heart, strategy, and belief.

God doesn't call the qualified; He qualifies the called. To God be all the glory.