Why Hackathon Organizers Love Working With Backboard

Over the past year, we've supported a couple dozen hackathons across Canada and beyond. From UofT Hacks and McHacks to KingHacks, SF Hacks, Waterloo events, and AI Collective Paris, we've seen the same pattern again and again:

When hackers get real AI infra on day one, they build way more than they thought possible by day three.

This post is for hackathon organizers who want their participants to ship ambitious AI projects without spending half the weekend debugging infrastructure.

What We Bring to Hackathons

Our goal at every event is simple:
Make it possible for teams to build stateful, multi-agent, RAG-powered apps in a weekend.

We've brought this to:

• UofT Hacks

• McHacks (McGill)

• KingHacks

• SF Hacks

• AI Collective Paris

• Waterloo hackathons (like CxC Waterloo and UW Listen)

• …and many more university and community events

Our typical support has included:

• Free Backboard credits for participants

• Quickstart templates so teams start with working code

• Workshops and office hours to get hackers unstuck fast

• Judging and special prizes for best use of Backboard

Backboard is a stateful AI platform: built‑in state, memory, and RAG so teams can ship multi-step, multi-agent apps fast.

How Participants Benefit

The comments we hear from participants are remarkably consistent:

• "We had our entire infra up and running in minutes."

• "We were able to build way more than we thought!"

• "I wouldn't have pulled this off without Backboard."

Infra in Minutes, Not Hours

With Backboard, teams can:

• Spin up stateful conversations with built-in memory

• Plug in RAG over their own docs and data

• Orchestrate multi-step, multi-agent flows from a single API

From "Simple Bot" to Multi-Agent Swarms

At events like UofT Hacks, McHacks, and Waterloo hackathons, we've seen teams show up planning to build a basic chatbot and leave having built multi-agent swarms where each agent has its own LLM, all agents share persistent memory, and the system improves iteratively over the weekend.

How Organizers Benefit

When builders can ship more, your hackathon looks better.

Better, More Polished AI Projects

Because teams start with production-grade AI infra, final demos are more robust, more feature-complete, and easier to showcase in recap posts and highlight reels.

A Partner That Actually Shows Up

We don't just drop credits and a logo. At many events, we've run live workshops, hosted office hours, judged final projects, and sponsored "Best Use of Backboard" prizes.

Why Backboard Is a Great Fit for AI-Heavy Hackathons

Backboard gives your hackers the Stateful AI Platform, RAG out of the box, and a unified surface for ambitious ideas.

Want Backboard at Your Next Hackathon?

Email us at: hackathon at backboard.io — tell us about your event and dates.