The Hack is Back — And Developer Marketers Should Pay Attention

Kristina Duca, Chief of Staff

Those of you in the developer marketing world will remember a few years ago when NFTs were the hottest thing nobody understood, everyone was sporting a mullet (again), and every single dev event had to have a hackathon.

And then, gradually, they didn’t. Debates were had, and "hackathon fatigue" became a phrase people used seriously. So, I'll admit I wasn't expecting hackathons to be the most energizing topic I'd encounter this month.

We were recording an episode of Catchy’s podcast, *Bits & Bants*, and our guest was Brandon Kessler, founder of Devpost — one of the biggest hackathon platforms in the world. I expected an interesting conversation. What I got was a genuine reframe of something I thought I already understood.

The hack, it turns out, is very much back.

The Stat you Should Remember

Let's start with the number that reframed everything for me.

Devpost tracks what Brandon calls the "click to build" ratio — of the developers who show interest in a hackathon, what percentage actually go on to spend weeks or months building software as a result? On Devpost's platform, that number sits between 5 and 33%.

Compare that to the channels most developer marketers spend the majority of their budgets on — demos, tutorials, conferences, banner ads — where the equivalent rate is less than 1%.

Hackathons drive developers to sustained, active building at a rate anywhere from five to thirty-three times higher than any other channel in the mix. That's not a marginal improvement. That's a different category of outcome.

And the reason matters as much as the number. It's one thing to get a developer to read your docs or poke around in a sandbox. Those are worthwhile. But getting them to come in, build something real with your tools, and then *stay* — returning to your environment of their own accord, long after the event is over — that's the holy grail of developer marketing. That's the moment a developer stops being an audience member and starts becoming an advocate, a power user, eventually a champion inside their organization.

The hackathon doesn't just generate awareness. It generates ownership. And ownership is incredibly hard to manufacture any other way.

Why the Audience is Bigger Than You Think

Here's something that often gets overlooked in the hackathon conversation: the definition of "developer" has expanded significantly.

The rise of no-code and low-code tools means there's now a much larger population of people who have ideas they want to take to a proving ground — product managers, designers, operations leads, founders — people who aren't traditional software engineers but who are building, and who want to see what they can create. Hackathons are increasingly a space where that broader community shows up and does real work alongside developers.

For developer marketers, this is an opportunity. A well-structured hackathon isn't just a developer acquisition event anymore — it's a chance to reach the full spectrum of people who might build with, advocate for, or influence the purchase of your tools.

Why Right Now is the Right Moment

So if hackathons have always had strong engagement numbers, why does it feel like the moment to revisit them?

Because demand has never been higher — and it's coming from a new direction.

The AI wave has created genuine, top-down urgency inside organizations. CEOs and heads of engineering are actively pushing their teams to get hands-on with AI tools, and fast. That pressure is translating directly into appetite for hackathons — not as a grassroots developer activity, but as a structured format for rapid, real-world learning.

The broader research backs this up. A global study from the University of Melbourne and KPMG — surveying more than 48,000 people across 47 countries — found that while two-thirds of people are already regularly using AI, only two in five have received any meaningful AI training or education. People are using the tools; they're not yet fluent with them. And McKinsey's research on AI adoption behaviors found that even when formal training is available, most people don't engage with it — they learn through doing and through peer discussion, not through onboarding videos.

That's exactly what a hackathon is. A doing environment. A peer learning environment. The format is well-matched to how people actually build competency, which is why organizations are increasingly turning to it as a deliberate upskilling mechanism.

For developer marketers, this creates a specific opportunity: companies that are already using your tools — your API, your platform, your SDK — are looking for structured ways to deepen their teams' fluency with them. A sponsored 1-2 day internal hackathon isn't just an event; it's a value-add that accelerates adoption, surfaces power users, and turns a transactional customer relationship into something stickier. That's a conversation worth having with your existing accounts, not just your prospects.

What This Means in Practice

If you're thinking about where hackathons fit in your developer marketing mix, here's how I'd think about it:

Lead with the click-to-build argument.

Less than 1% of developers who encounter your brand through traditional channels go on to build with your tools. Hackathons move that number by an order of magnitude. That's the conversation to have with budget holders who are skeptical of event spend.

Design for building, not just for attending.

The engagement lift comes from developers actually shipping something, not from showing up. The best-performing hackathon sponsors don't just have a presence — they send engineers and product people who can help developers solve real problems in real time. That embedded support during the build is what creates lasting association with your tools.

Measure what happens after.

Time-in-sandbox in the weeks following a hackathon is more predictive of real adoption than day-of metrics. Registrations and submissions are table stakes; the number to watch is how many participants are still in your environment thirty days later.

Think about the full funnel.

For prospects, hackathons are an acquisition and activation play. For existing customers, they're a deepening and retention play — a way to turn a team that uses your tools into a team that champions them internally. Both are valuable, and the same event format can serve both if you structure it right.

A Channel Worth Reconsidering

Although like the mullet, the hackathon didn’t entirely go away, it did have a very trendy moment that faded when the next shiny thing came along.

What Brandon is describing is structural. The AI moment has created demand from the top of organizations that isn't going away. The expansion of who's building has widened the addressable audience. The data on how people actually develop fluency — through doing, not through watching — makes hackathons one of the most defensible investments in the developer marketing toolkit right now.

The hack is back. And this time, the business case is harder to argue with than ever.

*Want to hear the full conversation with Brandon Kessler from Devpost? Look out for the full episode soon to be released on our Bits and Bants YouTube Channel. And if you're thinking through how hackathons might fit into your developer marketing strategy, let's talk.