The hackathon was not the hard part

Picture a company that ran an AI hackathon. Forty-five ideas got nominated, fifteen got built. Everyone in the room feels like they are most of the way there.

Then someone puts a dollar value on each of the fifteen. Not a novelty score — what the task costs today, what it would cost automated, how often it actually runs. Out of fifteen shipped ideas, one turns out to be worth automating. The rest gets quietly shelved.

Fifteen builds is not one function off your desk

A hackathon produces demos. A demo is a script that worked once, in front of an audience that wanted it to. Whether it survives March's invoices, a disputed claim, or a candidate who ghosts after the second round is a different question, and it is the one that decides whether the person who used to do the work gets their week back.

We do not rank ideas by how clever the agent is. We ask one question: is there a threshold someone will sign, a remedy when it misses, and a name on the result. If yes, it is a function. If no, it is a demo, and demos do not come off anyone's desk no matter how many of them you build.

Why the count is misleading

Fifteen built things feels like progress because building is the part everyone can see on a demo day. Running is the part that never shows up in a retro: the supplier who invoices twice, the refund that is really a chargeback, the exception on day forty. That is where the real cost of "eighty percent done" sits, and it stays invisible until someone is on the hook for it.

What we do differently

We do not audit your hackathon and hand you a stack-ranked backlog. We take one function — bookkeeping, claims, the service desk, hiring, procurement — and run all of it, routine cases and exceptions, against a standard you sign before we start. Nothing is a pilot. A job either meets the standard or it is redone free.