Why we hack: the culture of company hackathons at Stytch

Twice a year, Stytch puts the daily grind on pause for something a little different: company hackathons! It’s more than a tradition—it’s a cornerstone of how we foster creativity, build community, and explore new ideas.

What are company hackathons?

Company hackathons are a dedicated in-person week where every Constytchuent—from engineers and product designers to go-to-market and operations teammates—shifts gears to work on whatever project they want. It’s a time for rapid prototyping, experimentation, and collaboration outside the boundaries of regular day-to-day work. These are the kinds of ideas that might not fit into a normal sprint or quarterly plan, but have the potential to shape Stytch’s future.

We host two company hackathons a year, and participation is company-wide. As a geographically distributed team, these are an opportunity to come together in person and spend unstructured time collaborating with teammates across the org. Everyone is encouraged to join a project, form a team, and present what they built during demos, regardless of whether the final result is polished or perfect. What matters is the initiative, the story behind the work, and what you learned along the way.

Why we do it

Company hackathons are rooted in a few key values:

• Creativity & exploration: Company hackathons give everyone the freedom to pursue a spark of curiosity—whether it’s trying out a new technology, solving an annoying workflow problem, or prototyping a new product feature.
• Cross-functional collaboration: Teams often include people from different parts of the company who don’t normally work together. It’s an opportunity to break down silos and gain new perspectives.
• Autonomy & ownership: This is your time to work on something that excites you and could benefit Stytch, our customers, or your teammates. It’s a celebration of permissionless innovation.
• Reinvigorating the joy of shipping: Free from the usual structure, company hackathons let us rediscover the joy of building—fast.

Overall, they’re a key part of our culture that help us foster creativity and cross functional relationships, which can be challenging to cultivate in a hybrid work environment. They’re invigorating for the team and help accelerate how we work and our roadmap in a meaningful way.

What to expect during company hackathons

• Project time: Everyone signs up for a project and gets building. It’s okay if the result isn’t a polished launch—what matters is the journey and the lessons learned.
• Team building: Don’t have an idea yet? Jump into the #open-hackathon-brainstorming Slack channel or browse our internal idea doc. You can pitch a project during the kick off to recruit more teammates to join you.
• Demos: At the end of the week, everyone presents what they worked on. Demo day is a celebration, and more than a little bit of a competition as participants vie for prizes.
• Food & fun: From daily breakfasts to late night snacks, hackathons come with plenty of fuel and festivities.

Types of projects

Project ideas range widely. Some popular themes include:

• Fixing nagging customer issues or technical bugs
• Prototyping new products—sometimes big bets require hefty de-risking before tackling them. This is a great opportunity to do so
• Improving internal processes, reducing toil, or enhancing developer experience

We solicit ideas from the Developer Success, Solutions Engineering, and Product teams in advance of each hackathon to help inspire ideas for folks that are unsure what to tackle.

To encourage a wide variety of exploration and celebrate different forms of innovation, company hackathons wrap up with some friendly competition and fun prizes.

Our top honor, the Golden Spool, goes to the best overall project, judged by a panel of judges selected for each hackathon. These judges also act as MCs for demos. We also have many awards that are voted on by all Constytchuents. There’s Stytch in Time for the hack that most accelerates our internal velocity, Burner of the Midnight Oil for exceptional effort (results may vary), Dev’s Advocate for the project that notably enhances developer experience, and Sparks Joy for the innovation that most boosts quality of life or fulfills long-standing team wishes. We’ll also introduce targeted prizes from time-to-time if there’s a particular focus we’re hoping to foster, in the past this has included Best in Show for the best overall presentation, Do it for the Vine for the project that drives the most awareness of Stytch, and Just Ship It for the most production ready project.

The bigger picture

Company hackathons aren’t just about what we build in a week—it’s a way to experiment with how we work. It’s a chance to embrace rapid iteration, ownership, and customer-first thinking. The hope is that some of those principles carry over into our normal workflows, helping us move faster and better every day. And rekindling the feeling of the early days of Stytch, when every day was focused on shipping and delivering value to customers without the overhead of process, meetings, and the other parts of day to day work that are now necessary as a company of 60+ people serving thousands of developers.

Curious what’s come out of hackathons before? Stay tuned for a week of mini launches highlighting projects from our most recent hackathon a couple weeks ago that are ready for you to use now. Want to build the future of identity with a team that loves to hack? We’re hiring.