Belvo just wrapped its third company-wide hackathon, and its second one this year. The first ran in 2025 and it was such a success that we decided to do even more. This year, we split it into two events: one in the first semester, and this one, held in August.
The theme was AI agents: tools that don't just answer a single prompt, but reason, take steps, and work toward a goal. Over one intense week, 12 teams designed and shipped agentic products, testing Belvo's own platform along the way.
"Belvo recently held its third hackathon centered on a theme close to where the industry is heading: building AI agents while we also wanted to put our platform through its paces," - Max Weber, Engineering Director
Projects ranged from internal tools built to make Belvo's own teams faster to commercial concepts and a few genuine moonshots.
Every team needs an engineer and a non-engineer
Belvo split the entire company into 12 teams for the week. Each one needed engineers, but also people from departments that don't write code day to day: sales, legal, marketing, and others. Nobody got to build alone in a corner.
Two roles anchored every team:
- Mini CEO: owns the problem statement, the scope, and the priorities. Keeps the team aligned and makes the trade-off calls.
- Mini CTO: owns the technical approach and the architecture, coordinates the engineering work, and makes sure there's a working demo by the end.
Teams were encouraged to hold an internal kickoff on Monday and check in daily to keep every workstream pointed in the same direction.
Building more than a demo
A working prototype wasn't enough to clear the bar. Every team also had to think through what happens after the hackathon ends.
- Internal-facing projects needed a plan for embedding the tool into existing processes, along with training slides, runbooks, and documentation.
- Public-facing projects needed a marketing angle, a plain-language explanation for a non-technical audience, and a basic sales concept.
By the end of the week, every team demoed their build live on the Belvo platform. Notebook-only prototypes didn't count. A short slide deck backed up each presentation.
What the week looked like from the inside
Our Head of Customer Success, Thiago Quartarollo, was struck by how fast his team moved from a blank page to a plan.
"I was surprised to see so many great ideas coming up so quickly during our first meeting. We were able to define what we wanted to create and already put together a plan to start making things happen." - Thiago Quartarollo, Head of Customer Success.
Mixing departments made the difference, he added: working across different areas, backgrounds, and personalities brought more perspectives to the table and helped the team land on a stronger solution. If the project ever ships, they see it speeding up Belvo's data strategy in Mexico and putting more value directly in clients' hands.
For our Head of Marketing, Thais Baptista, this was the first hackathon. She'd never joined one before, though she had a rough idea of how it would work. What stuck with her most was watching a group turn into an idea and an execution over just a few days, plus getting to work with people outside her usual team and see how other teams pulled their own ideas together. She also pointed to something less visible: AI at Belvo isn't a talking point.
"The use of AI is genuinely encouraged, it's not just a buzzword. We have an intelligence team, we are supported by Belvo to test different tools and choose to use the ones that have a good impact on our workflows." - Thais Baptista, Head of Marketing.
Our Product Strategy Director, Guy Levy, walked in without knowing quite what to expect, on a team where not everyone had worked together before. What surprised him was how little friction there was and how fast the team moved anyway, largely thanks to the engineers on the team, who put AI at the center of how they worked.
The team wrote clear specs and designed around a set of mockups. From there, the build (with AI doing a lot of the heavy lifting) turned that into a working software, documented itself along the way, and even produced the walkthrough used for the demo. Having commercial and security perspectives in the room changed the shape of the project too: instead of a pure product and engineering question, the team also had to think about how existing clients would see it and about getting privacy and security right, which shaped both what they built and how they presented it.
It was an overall great experience, and credit goes to the whole team for making it work. I am looking forward to the next one! - Guy Levy, Product Strategy Director
Looking ahead
Twelve teams, one week, and a stack of working prototypes is a lot to show for a single sprint. It wasn't really about naming a winner. It was about seeing what a small, motivated, cross-functional team can build when it commits to shipping something real in a matter of days.
“More than a competition, it was a chance to experiment hands-on with fast-moving technology and celebrate what our teams can build together in a short, focused burst". - Max Weber, Engineering Director
If the pace of the last two hackathons is any indication, the next one isn't far off.
Want to build with us?
Weeks like this are just a glimpse of what it's like to work at Belvo. If shipping fast, working across teams, and putting new technology to real use sounds like your kind of week, check out our open roles and see where you'd fit in.
