6 free workshops · hackathon Oct 16–18, 2026 · workuity biltmore, phx
Zero to Launch — the Ship AI hackathon
Ten weeks of go-to-market, then a weekend where you don't build — you launch. Six free workshops on alternating Wednesdays from August 5, a build window that opens Aug 3, and a hackathon in October where it all goes public. Bring the product you've been sitting on. Wherever it stands on the Friday, you close it out and put it in front of people. Judged on what shipped, not on what you demoed.
Workshops
6 sessions, Aug 5 – Oct 14, 2026
Hackathon
October 16–18, 2026
Where
Workuity Biltmore — Phoenix, AZ
Cost
Free · teams of 1–4
Why this exists
Two kinds of builder, stuck in the same place.
The perpetual builder
- Shipping code every day, launched nothing.
- Not sure the product is right, so the answer is another feature.
- The product bloats, the launch date slides, and there's still no customer on the other end of it.
The ready-but-frozen builder
- The product works. The next move doesn't exist.
- No site, no audience, no channel, no first ten customers.
- No idea which of those to do first.
This weekend is for both. Most hackathons reward building something new in 48 hours and it dies on Monday. This one inverts that: the code is the part you already have. What you're missing is a launch, and that's the whole deliverable.
feel the fear and do it anyways
What you leave with
Six things, by Sunday afternoon.
The first two are written in August and everything after is built on them. The last four are what the judges score at the weekend.
Positioning that holds up
A one-page brief: who exactly it's for, what they use today instead, your sharp edge, and the outcome in their words. Put through the swap test before anything gets built on top of it.
An elevator pitch you've delivered
Sixty seconds, five beats, ending in a real ask — one version for customers, one for investors. Not drafted and filed — said out loud, on the clock, on demo day.
A live marketing site
Real URL, real copy, content and SEO in place. Not a placeholder with a waitlist form on it.
A public launch
Executed during the weekend. A date, a channel, an audience. If nobody outside the room can reach it, it didn't launch.
A growth engine
One repeatable channel with numbers attached. Not a plan for one — a running one.
Receipts
Analytics, signups, revenue, replies. Whatever the truth is. Flat is a valid result if you can show what you learned.
The program
Six Wednesdays, then the weekend.
The curriculum is a full GTM engineering framework — the deck is session one, and every session after builds on the last: positioning before the site, the site before the channel, the channel before the launch. Each night is a presentation with a live build — watch, or follow along on your own laptop. Free, public, and open to anyone, whether you compete or not.
The roadmap, then what it looks like when it works — two businesses, real numbers, B2C and B2B.
Positioning that holds up, and the site that carries it.
Automated distribution, paid, and the CAC ceiling — then the weekend where it all goes public.
- 01Wed Aug 5GTM Engineering
- 02Wed Aug 19Zero to $3,000
- 03Wed Sep 2Outbound Agents
- 04Wed Sep 16Unfair Advantage
- 05Wed Oct 7Ship the Surface
- 06Wed Oct 14Agentic Growth
Each session has its own page with the full agenda, what to bring if you want to follow along, and what to go do afterward. See the whole curriculum.
The weekend
Friday night to Sunday afternoon.
No teaching this weekend — that all happened on Wednesdays. Friday you lock a launch plan, Saturday you execute it in a room full of people doing the same thing, Sunday you show what it produced. The B2C and B2B playbooks were sessions two and three — mentors run those 1:1 on Saturday if you need the refresher.
Kickoff & launch plans
- 6:00 PM
Doors, food, check-in
- 6:30 PM
Kickoff — ten weeks, two days left
Where the program has been and what the weekend demands. A condensed run of the framework for anyone joining fresh, plus the rules, the categories and the deadline.
- 7:00 PM
Launch rehearsal
The full pre-flight, run as a room. Site live, analytics firing, tracking that survives a judge's question, assets exported, copy written. Then everyone's plan gets broken on purpose — better to hear it Friday than discover it Sunday.
- 7:45 PM
60-second pitches
Everyone delivers the elevator pitch they wrote in September. Newcomers get the crash version and pitch anyway. It's the dry run for Sunday.
- 8:15 PM
Team formation
Solo is fine. Teams up to four. If you've been building alone since August, this is where you pick up help.
- 8:45 PM
Launch plans locked
Every team writes it down: what goes live, on what channel, to which audience, at what hour. Posted in Discord so the room can hold you to it.
- 9:15 PM
Building starts
Launch day
- 9:00 AM
Doors, coffee
- 9:30 AM
Launch clinic
The last mile, end to end: site live, analytics wired, tracking that will survive Sunday's questions, and the launch post itself. Forty-five minutes, then you go do it.
- 10:15 AM
Build & mentor hours
1:1 rotations running all day. Sites, performance, paid acquisition, B2B sales, content, design.
- 12:00 PM
Lunch
- 1:00 PM
Launches go live
Teams start pushing publicly, with the room as a war room. Copy review, channel help, and the first numbers coming in while there's still time to react to them.
- 3:00 PM →
Iterate on what the channel tells you
The launch is data. Saturday evening is for acting on it rather than admiring it.
Ship & pitch
- 9:00 AM
Doors, final build block
- 12:00 PM
Submissions close
Hard deadline. Lunch while the judges read.
- 1:00 PM
Pitches
Five minutes plus three of questions, live product on screen.
- 3:30 PM
Judging
- 4:00 PM
Awards & closing
Prizes & judging
Five categories. One judged award per team.
The pool is cash plus in-kind, and it grows with sponsorship — amounts land on this page as sponsors confirm. Entry is free either way.
Best B2C Launch
Real users, real traction, from a launch executed during the weekend.
Best B2B Launch
Real pipeline or paying customers. Design partners and pilots count.
Best Marketing Site
Craft and conversion. Positioning, clarity, performance, content.
Best Growth Engine
The most repeatable channel, with the numbers to prove it repeats.
Crowd Favoriteroom-voted
Voted by the room at Sunday's pitches, not scored by the judges — the build everyone wanted to try, argued about, or wished they'd thought of first. It's the one award you can take home alongside a judged category.
How it's scored
- 40%Did you ship it?
Publicly launched during the weekend, live URL. This gates everything — an unlaunched product cannot place.
- 30%Receipts
Evidence over narrative. Small and true beats big and vague.
- 20%Growth engine
Does the channel run again next month without a hero effort?
- 10%Craft
The site, the product, the taste.
The rules
Eleven of them. All of them short.
- 01Teams of 1–4. One team per person. Solo entries are fine.
- 02Bring a product you've already built, or start when the build window opens Monday August 3, 2026. Both are eligible — this is a launch hackathon, not a from-scratch hackathon.
- 03Anyone can compete. You do not have to attend a single workshop — turn up on the Friday with something to launch and you are in. The sessions exist to make you better at it, not to gate you out of it.
- 04Your launch has to go public during the hackathon weekend, Oct 16–18, 2026. A live, publicly reachable URL is required.
- 05Submit your project by 12:00 PM MST, Sunday Oct 18. No late submissions.
- 06You keep 100% of your IP. Ship AI claims nothing. Open source is welcome, not required.
- 07Any stack, any tools, any language. AI-assisted everything is fine and expected.
- 08Receipts required. Numbers in your pitch need evidence you can put on screen.
- 09One judged category per team. Win one and you're out of the running for the others — Crowd Favorite is the exception, since the room votes it.
- 10Demos over memos. Five minutes, live product. Slides are supporting material, not the pitch.
- 11In person. No remote track this round.
Submissions close 12:00 PM MST, Sunday Oct 18.
One submission per team, as a public GitHub issue. Project, live URL, what you launched, and the numbers. The full requirements are on the submission page — read them Friday, not Sunday morning.
Sponsorship
Help us keep it free and stack the pool.
Ship AI is free and stays free. Sponsorship funds two things: the prize pool, and the marketing to fill the room. No lead lists, no attendee data, no hard-sell slot — builders can tell the difference. If you want the room's attention, mentor a team.
Title
$5,0001 available
Named in the event lockup. Keynote mention Friday. Judging seat. Logo across the site, every event page and every announcement. Table presence all weekend, and a speaking slot if you want one.
Category
$2,5004 available
Your name on one prize category, and you present that award Sunday. Judging seat. Logo on the site and event pages. Table presence.
Mentor
$1,000Two mentor seats in Saturday's 1:1 rotations — direct working time with every team that wants it. Logo on the site.
Community
$500Logo on the site and event pages, and a shoutout Friday and Sunday.
In-kind is just as welcome
- API credits and AI platform usage — the highest-leverage thing you can give here. Credits go straight into builders' hands and get spent that weekend, on real launches, in public.
- Tools, hosting, infrastructure — anything a team needs to get a site live.
- Food and beverage — Friday dinner through Sunday's pitches.
- Venue — space for 50 with power and wifi, Friday evening to Sunday afternoon.
- Swag for participant bags.
Sponsorship closes October 2, 2026 so prize amounts can go on this page before we push registration. Get in touch.
We're also looking for
Judges and mentors.
Judges
Sunday, roughly 1:00–4:30 PM · 3–5 seats
Founders and operators who have launched something and can tell a real number from a vanity one. You'll score against published criteria, ask hard questions in the Q&A, and hand out an award. Sponsors at Category tier and above get a seat.
Mentors
Saturday afternoon · 5–8 seats
1:1 rotations with teams that need a specific thing unstuck: marketing sites and performance, paid acquisition, B2B sales, content and SEO, design. Two hours is enough — show up for the block you can make.
Questions
Frequently asked.
Do I need to already have a product to enter?
No, but it helps a lot. Most hackathons ban pre-existing projects — this one is built around them. If you've been sitting on something you never launched, this is your run. If you're starting fresh, the build window opens Monday August 3, which gives you ten weeks before the weekend. Either way the score is weighted toward launching, not building.
What's the difference between the workshops and the hackathon?
The workshops are six free sessions on alternating Wednesdays from August 5 to October 14 — the whole go-to-market curriculum, presented in order, with the work done live on screen. Show up and watch, or follow along on your laptop. The hackathon weekend, October 16 to 18, is the finale: you launch publicly, build the growth engine, and pitch what happened. You build across the ten weeks; you ship at the weekend.
Do I have to attend the workshops to compete?
No. Anyone can compete, whether you came to all six, one, or none. Turn up on the Friday with something to launch and you are in. The sessions are free and worth attending because they make the launch go better, but they were never a gate. Plenty of people will just be building.
What's the GitHub repo for?
Optional, and genuinely useful. It's all open source: a folder per session and 25 skill files that do the mechanical half of the go-to-market work — positioning brief, pricing model, content map, launch checklist. Take it and run the process yourself whenever you like, whether or not you make it to a session. Nobody is disqualified for not having one.
What if I'm not clear on my value prop yet?
That's expected, and September 16 is the session for it. Positioning and the elevator pitch: who it's for, what they use today instead, your sharp edge, the outcome in their language, and then a sixty-second pitch built on top that ends in a real ask. It's written live on screen for a real product, cuts included, so you see what a finished one looks like. It sits deliberately before the site session, because a site built on fuzzy positioning is just a nicely built page that says nothing.
How much does it cost?
Nothing. Every Ship AI event is free and public. Sponsors cover the prize pool and the food.
Do I need a team?
No. Solo entries compete on the same footing. Friday night has a 60-second pitch round and a team formation block, so come alone and leave with a team if you want one.
Do I need to be a developer?
No. Half of this weekend is positioning, copy, content, channels and sales — the parts most engineering-heavy teams are worst at. Designers, marketers and non-technical founders are genuinely useful here.
What counts as launching?
A publicly reachable URL that someone outside the room can use, plus an actual launch action — a post, a listing, an email, a thread, a call. Not a private beta and not a waitlist page you never told anyone about.
Who owns what I build?
You do, entirely. Ship AI takes no equity, no license and no IP. Open sourcing your work is welcome but not required.
Can I participate remotely?
Not this round. The mentor rotations and the pitch session only work in a room. The Discord stays open all weekend for questions, but entries have to be in person.
What if I can't be there all three days?
Come for what you can. Friday's keynote and Sunday's pitches are the two that matter most — the deadline applies to everyone either way.
What should I bring?
Laptop, charger, whatever you've already built, and a domain you're willing to point at it. Everything else we'll have.
How do I sponsor, judge or mentor?
Email santos.d.hernandez@gmail.com or say so in the Discord. Sponsorship closes October 2 so prize amounts can go on this page before registration opens up.
Bring the thing you never launched.
just ship it