$5K
Sales-to-install handoff tracker
Keep sales engineers, sales and install crews in sync on customer hardware. An internal tool for one team.
Hackathon factory · Edmonton
Smash it
across the line.
Hacktory runs hackathons on real problems from companies, cities and labs. Grab a team, load up on AI credits and ship something by Sunday night. The best builds win cash and contracts, and some turn into companies.
Code shipped✦Bounties paid✦Teams formed✦Demos delivered✦Builders hired✦Contracts signed✦Companies started✦Credits burned✦Code shipped✦Bounties paid✦Teams formed✦Demos delivered✦Builders hired✦Contracts signed✦Companies started✦Credits burned✦
A batch on the floor
One weekend, from punch-in to ship.
Friday
Punch in
Hear the briefs from the people who own the problems. Form a team or join one, and load up your AI credits.
Saturday
Build
Heads down all day. Mentors walk the floor to unblock you while your agents grind through the boilerplate.
Sunday
Ship
Smash it across the line and demo to judges who deal with the problem at work. Sponsors award bounties and line up the people they want to hire.
On the line
Problems waiting for a team
Construction & building codesIn the pipeline
Code Path
Help builders get alternative solutions through review on the first try, and help code officers review them the same way from town to town.
Sustainability & embodied carbonIn the pipeline
Carbon Takeoff
Feed in a design drawing, pull out the quantities and swap materials to see embodied carbon at the design stage, before anyone builds.
Bounty board
Ship it to spec, get paid.
$10K
Company in a week
Build a startup in seven days and land five paying customers.
$10K
Permit PDF quantity takeoff
Pull wall, floor and roof quantities from a permit drawing within 5% of a manual takeoff.
Pick your door
Find your reason to show up.
Corporate
Post a problem and watch dozens of people work on it.
- Solve the problem. Sponsor a themed event with others in your industry, or run an exclusive sprint on one problem.
- Recruit from the work. A headhunter charges $80–100K per hire. At a hackathon you watch dozens of candidates work on your problem first.
- Hire on contract. Bring the winning team in for 3–6 months to build the solution out.
- Post a bounty. Name an outcome and a price. The first team to ship it to spec gets paid.
Entrepreneurs & talent
Ship something real in a weekend and get paid for it.
- Win bounties. Sponsors attach cash to specific problems. Ship to spec and you get paid.
- Get noticed. Sponsors and investors come to scout, and they judge you on what you built.
- Land a contract. Many sponsors want a 3–6 month build-out more than a full-time hire.
- Build with good kit. Our partners supply cloud and AI credits, APIs and mentors.
Investor
Meet founders before they write a pitch deck.
- Get the first look. Meet builders while they form their ideas and their teams.
- See the work. Judge what a team built in a weekend. Skip the slides.
- Back the spin-outs. Strong teams can keep going as companies, with a corporate sponsor attached from day one.
- Sit on the panel. Judge, mentor or sponsor a prize track in a sector you invest in.
University
Put students and researchers on live industry problems.
- Champion a track. Own a theme in your area of strength and bring your people.
- Hands-on learning. Students ship work for real sponsors and present it to industry judges.
- Research to market. Your faculty meet companies that have the problem and the budget.
- Career pipeline. Sponsors who scout talent meet your students while they work.
Government
Open public problems to the people who can fix them.
- Prototype before you procure. See working approaches after one weekend, months before an RFP would deliver.
- Bring your experts. Your officers and reviewers serve as mentors and judges.
- Grow the local ecosystem. Each event puts builders, sponsors and investors in one room in your city.
- Put open data to work. Hand datasets and APIs to people who will build with them.
Ecosystem
Lend a venue, credits or a community to keep events running.
- Venue. A recurring space lets us run events back to back without booking from scratch.
- Credits & kit. Cloud, AI and GPU credits, APIs and hardware give teams what they need for a weekend build.
- Community. Developer communities and ecosystem groups bring the people and the reach.
- Showcase your platform. Put builders on your platform and see what they make with it.
Expertise
Judge, mentor or host a hackathon in your field.
- Judge. Score final demos against criteria you help write.
- Mentor. Drop in for an hour or the whole weekend to unblock teams.
- Host. Join the roster of people who want to run a hackathon in their area. We supply the playbook.
- Meet the talent. You see who's good before anyone else does.
For sponsors
You bring the problem. We run the floor.
We've built the playbook, so a company, a city or a lab can sponsor a batch without building an event team.
$80–100K
is what a company pays a headhunter per hire. At a hackathon you watch dozens of candidates do the work first.
6
stations on our line, from your problem coming in to a demo going out.
5
pillars at the table: university, corporate, government, investor and entrepreneur.
Good to know
Before you punch in.
What does it cost?
Nothing for builders. Sponsors pay for the floor, the food and the prizes.
Do I need a team?
No. Come solo and we'll help you find a team on Friday night, or bring your own crew.
Do I need to code?
No. Some batches run on construction, energy or policy problems, and designers, tradespeople and domain experts make any team stronger.
Who owns what I build?
Each brief spells out ownership before kickoff, so you know the terms before you pick a problem.
When's the next batch?
We're booking it now. Join the roster and you'll hear first.