“Hackathon Insights”, a product that uses data to optimise events
Hi everyone! I’m Diego Luiz Brum, and today I’m going to tell you how a proposal from a business partner ended up giving rise to a brand-new Anjos & Brum product.
Picture a business partner asking for an in-person cybersecurity hackathon, with no sponsors, no cash prizes and mentoring as the only reward. Sounds almost impossible, right? That’s exactly the challenge Anjos & Brum was handed at the end of 2024 — and it became the catalyst for our new product: Hackathon Insights.
The setup: a well-meaning client, but out of touch with reality
Our partner wanted a “lean” event: a cheap venue, zero sponsor interference and mentoring vouchers as the prize. A noble idea, but one that underestimated the logistical complexity and overestimated the pulling power of their own brand. Analysing data from platforms like DevPost and TaiKai, we discovered something crucial: 86% of failed hackathons made the same 3 mistakes: a hard-to-reach venue, an irrelevant prize and poorly planned dates.
The birth of Hackathon Insights
That’s when we built a predictive analysis tool, cross-referencing 10 years of event data from Portugal and Spain. The initial report exposed some surprising gaps:
- Turnout well below average: the forecast was 30 participants, but the historical median is 96 — with 60 being the ideal number.
- A token prize: no cash at all, versus €2,550 in real value plus a few perks at similar events.
- A problematic date: finishing on a Friday? 76% of successful events wrap up at weekends.
But it wasn’t all criticism! The 2-day duration was spot on, and the panel of judges was in line with the market standard.
Sponsorship: the dilemma the data revealed
Our partner feared sponsor interference — and with good reason. Insights showed that the problem isn’t sponsorship itself, but how it’s structured:
- Vouchers (e.g. €500 in AWS credit): low bureaucracy, high uptake.
- Direct sponsorship (e.g. €5,000 for the event): an accounting nightmare and a risk of interference.
The solution? Cutting from 5 to 2 strategic sponsors, focused on practical resources.
Hot topics and strategic venues
Drawing on 2025 cybersecurity trends (World Economic Forum), Insights suggested themes such as:
- AI in cyber defence (real-time attack detection).
- Ransomware as a Service (RaaS) (the new threat frontier).
- Zero Trust architecture (“never trust, always verify”).
For the venue, we prioritised accessibility and convenience; spots in the centre of Porto and Gaia should be the ones to go for. Some examples:
- Casa da Música (20-100 people, integrated public transport).
- WOW Porto (40-70 people, views over the Douro).
The verdict: we should have the intuition to imagine a path, but the data to confirm it
Hackathon Insights was born to answer one question: “Why reinvent the wheel?”. Events are complex ecosystems, and metrics like drop-out rate, sponsor engagement and participant profile can be the difference between a flop and a milestone.
And for our partner? We offered a clear path: adjust the dates, attract 60+ participants with a hybrid prize (mentoring + small cash prizes) and focus on low-friction sponsorships. The impossible, in the end, was just a matter of perspective.