Hackathons

Bring a real business challenge. Give student teams 24 hours to solve it. Meet the next generation of engineering talent along the way.

Get Involved

Traditional hackathons are judged from the sidelines. iMasons puts you in the room.

For 24 hours, you work alongside the people who could build your next solution or join your next team.

The return shows up twice: fresh solutions to a real business problem, plus a talent pipeline you’ve already met in person.

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Planned cycles
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Hours per cycle, in‑person
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Teams at our first Hackathon (SMU)
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Students, from 27 universities

How it Works

What’s Happening
What You Get as a Sponsor
Hour 0: Kickoff
Your challenge is introduced from the stage, in your own words: a real business problem, not a hypothetical.
You set the problem. Every team that picks your track spends the next 24 hours solving exactly what your business needs.
Hours 1–5: Selection & Ideation
Participants form teams and select the challenge they want to tackle, attend a workshop to understand the problem, and develop a concept.
Challenge workshops help participants understand real business problems, resulting in higher-quality, more practical solutions.
Hours 5–24: Build & Deploy
Teams work through the night. Your engineers and product people move table to table as mentors, answering questions and pressure-testing ideas.
Hours of informal, structured time with dozens of motivated students, giving you a far deeper read on talent than a resume or a 30-minute interview.
Hour ~24: Judging & Demos
Teams present working prototypes to a judging panel that includes your people. At SMU, 76 teams delivered 25+ working solutions per challenge track in 24 hours.
You leave with a stack of real, working approaches to your problem, the kind of exploration a consultancy would take weeks and a much bigger budget to match.
Immediately After: Awards
Winners are named and recognized in front of the room, sponsors, and press.
Your brand stands next to the winning idea at the exact moment it's announced, a credible story for your own comms, not a paid placement.
The Weeks After: Follow-Up
Sponsors get contact details for interested students; several typically apply for internships or full-time roles. At SMU, 52 students left ready to apply for jobs in digital infrastructure.
A warm, pre-vetted pipeline into people who already understand your business and have worked on your actual problem.

Sponsor Benefits

Bronze
Silver
Gold
Platinum
Diamond
Annual Amount
$5K
$25K
$50k
$100k
$150k
Access Level
Visibility
Impact Challenge support
3-month program
6-month program
12-month program
Events
Logo on website + display boards at 1 event
Support the "Impact Challenge" at 1 Hackathon 𝗼𝗿              1 Pitch Competition
1 Hackathon
2 Hackathons 𝗼𝗿                 1 Pitch Competition
4 Hackathons 𝗼𝗿        2 Hackathons + 1 Pitch Competition 𝗼𝗿                 2 Pitch Competitions
Challenge Ownership
No challenge
Support the shared impact challenge
Bring your own challenge
Bring your own challenge
Bring your own challenge
Thought Leadership
—
—
Podcast, panels, and thought leadership sessions
Podcast, panels, and thought leadership sessions
Podcast, panels, and thought leadership sessions
Experts On Site (Hackathons)
1 expert
1 expert
1 expert
2 experts
4 experts
Judges (Hackathons)
—
1 judge
1 judge
2 judges
4 judges

Upcoming Hackathon

Q4 2026

NYU Hackathon

Our second cycle will take place at New York University (NYU). Bring a sponsor challenge!

Location: New York City, NYU Campus
Date: 2026 Q4 – TBA
Challenge Application Window: Open

Get Involved
Get Involved

The Two Challenges That Powered Our First Hackathon

WATER & SUSTAINABILITY

Mapping Smarter Sites for Rainwater Harvesting

Grundfos’s live challenge track: use AI and geospatial analysis to identify optimal sites for rainwater-harvesting infrastructure.

Produced 25+ working solutions in 24 hours.

Learn More
WILDLIFE CONSERVATION

Using AI to Isolate Elephant Calls

ElephantVoices' live challenge track: build machine-learning models that isolate elephant vocalizations from ambient noise for field research, supporting anti-poaching work in Kenya. Hardware for this track was supplied by the Open Compute Project.
Learn More
How to Get Involved

Bring your challenge
to the next Hackathon

Sponsorship gets your own challenge in front of the next generation of infrastructure engineers.

Get Started