Powering the World’s Hackathons | Brandon Kessler (Founder & CEO, DevPost)

CRAFTED. | The Tech Podcast for Founders, Makers, and Innovators

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DevPost powers most of the world’s hackathons. And, according to founder and CEO Brandon Kessler, lately there is one overarching directive: “Executives from the top down are saying: `We need to do hackathons to uncover the value of ai.`” Nearly every one of the 1,200 hackathons DevPost powered last year was AI-centric.

On this episode of CRAFTED., we explore why hackathons are still such a powerful tool, both as public competitions and as internal initiatives. And we hear the founding story of DevPost and why they pivoted from hosting public competitions of all kinds (cooking challenges with Michelle Obama! NYC Big Apps!) to only focus on developers. Plus, how and why DevPost launched a new product that is custom-built for internal company hackathons.

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Key Moments:

[1:53] DevPost’s mission and why hackathons are still so valuable, especially at this moment with AI

[6:20] What makes a hackathon successful?

[8:40] Brandon’s story: he founded and ran a music label for years before seeing the opportunity with challenges

[11:40] Launching ChallengePost, scaling up and powering all federal competitions under President Obama — and why they eventually changed the name and company focus to DevPost

[15:46] Launching DevPost for teams: a tool for companies to run internal hackathons

[19:00] Brandon’s favorite competitions over the years

[22:00] How hackathons have mirrored the top tech trends: from cloud to XR to blockchain to AI

[25:18] What’s something that sounds like science fiction now, but that Brandon thinks will be commonplace soon?

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Help improve CRAFTED. Please take this quick 5m survey. You might win a prize. Thanks!