First thing I learned? AI hackathons are definitely not just for engineers.
This surprised even me — some of our most impressive projects came from the least technical team members. Yoni, a producer at Aleph with no technical background, used Cursor to build a Chrome extension that crawls LinkedIn to find relevant people to interview for our podcast. Erica, our Chief Communications Officer, built a custom GPT that perfectly captures her writing style and can generate social media posts based on our podcast transcripts.
Ron, who filmed everything, used AI tools to create an incredibly creative recap video of the hackathon; he even used an AI replica of me to spare me from filming and re-filming myself (a lifesaver)! See here:
The non-engineers did need some help, though. That’s where having “floating” engineers who can assist with choosing the right tools, debugging, and deployment made a huge difference.
For example….
Our Finance team wanted AI to automate emails, bank statements, and legacy systems. Within hours, we hit a wall.
I had one mission during our hackathon: help our Finance team build something real. I promised two hours of my time, but ended up embedding with them for the entire event.
Noa and Shani (both non-technical) came prepared with ideas for coordinating emails, processing bank statements, and updating legacy systems without APIs. Perfect candidates for automation, right? “This is simple,” they thought. “Doesn’t even require any real intelligence.”
Well, turns out these problems are still not realistically solvable within a 24-hour timeframe.
Your first idea is (probably) wrong. AI isn’t magic. Be ready to pivot fast.
By mid-afternoon, we pivoted to something game-changing-yet-achievable: AI agents that monitor Gmail and draft responses automatically based on configurable prompts. The agents could be customized to handle specific types of emails and access our CRM when needed. Specifically, we wanted to automate away the task of handling an investor asking to change their bank details, or their listed address. These are not as rare as you may think, and involve endless back and forth emails to obtain all the necessary documentation required by regulation to facilitate that — such as proof of address, proof of banking, personal details, etc.
The lesson? Most projects fail before they start — because the idea is just not a good fit for a hackathon. Have engineers available to guide non-technical teams toward feasible solutions to problems worth solving.
And on that note: here’s how to run your hackathon.
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