What started as a company-wide experiment became something much bigger: real tools, built by real Belvoers, changing how we work every day.
At Belvo, we are used to moving fast. But at the beginning of 2025, we decided to try something different: pause the day-to-day, mix engineers with salespeople, designers with the People team, finance with product, and give everyone the same challenge: build something that matters, using AI.
From day one, our hackathons had a clear focus: artificial intelligence. Not as a buzzword, but as a real tool in the hands of every Belvoer, regardless of their background or role. The question was never "if" AI could help us work better. It was "where," and "who" would be the ones to figure it out.
That is how our company-wide AI hackathons were born. And what happened next was surprising even to us.
A simple idea with a big impact
Instead of keeping innovation siloed inside tech, we opened the doors to everyone. Belvoers from every team (revenue, operations, people, engineering, customer success) sat at the same table, or rather, joined the same video call, and started building together.
The rule was straightforward: no spectators. Every participant had a role, a voice, and a chance to see their idea take shape.
"Organizing our second company-wide hackathon as Head of Security was a real privilege, and team composition was where it all started. We built 12 teams, each designed to feel like a 'mini Belvo': a mini CEO and CTO at the top, with the right mix of engineers, subject matter experts, and AI power users. The goal was cohesion: people who could tackle a shared problem together. AI helped us land the final rosters, balancing skills and knowledge in ways a spreadsheet alone couldn't. And that bet on cohesion paid off. The outcomes of the hackathon are now visible across the company. Real challenges our employees and customers face were tackled in those few days, and the solutions are in use today." - Maximilian Weber, Engineering Director at Belvo
What made these hackathons special was not just the energy, though there was plenty of that. It was the fact that some of the projects did not stop when the timer ran out. They kept going. They turned into real tools, used by real clients or by Belvoers themselves every single day.
One of the most exciting stories to come out of Belvo's hackathon culture comes from a team you might not immediately associate with product development: the People team.
How Belvo's People team started building with AI
People teams everywhere share a familiar challenge: heavy operational workloads, high volumes of repetitive requests, and limited bandwidth to focus on what actually moves the needle. At Belvo, our People team decided to do something about it.
A Slack bot that knows the answers: ask_people
The first project was born out of a simple frustration familiar to anyone who has ever joined a new company: where do I find the information I need?
The answer became ask_people, a Slack bot built during the hackathon that lets any Belvoer ask questions about perks, internal processes, guides, benefits, and policies and get an instant, accurate answer. No ticket, no waiting, no searching through folders.
"Our hackathon project was to build a Slack bot where the team can ask questions about benefits, processes, day-to-day topics, or anything related to people operations. It was an incredible experience, not only because we learned so much about the technical side, but we now have a Slack channel that answers questions automatically. This has meaningfully reduced the time we spend on repetitive queries, and every Belvoer can get a fast, accurate response whenever they need one. It's pretty amazing to see a bot answering just like us!" - Joana Maffi, People Lead at Belvo
It was a small tool with a big impact. And it proved something important: the People team was not just capable of building, they were great at it.
From one bot to a whole new way of working
Encouraged by what was possible, the People team kept going. Through 2025 and into 2026, they partnered with AI tools (including Claude) to rethink some of the most time-consuming parts of their work.
Onboarding, without the scramble
Joining a new company comes with a steep learning curve. And behind the scenes, preparing for a new Belvoer's arrival used to match that intensity.
Now, it works differently. When someone new joins, an AI-powered system reads a structured onboarding framework in Notion, identifies the right sessions and the right people for that specific team, and handles the scheduling automatically. New Belvoers arrive on day one with a full, thoughtful onboarding already in place.
Payroll validation, made more reliable
Payroll is one of those processes where precision is everything. The People team built a workflow powered by AI to streamline payroll validation, reducing the manual effort involved and giving the team faster visibility into anything that needs a closer look.
Hiring, reimagined from the ground up
Perhaps the most impactful area of all has been hiring. Recruiting is one of those functions where the volume of work is enormous, the details matter a lot, and the human judgment at the center is irreplaceable. The People team's goal was never to replace that judgment. It was to protect it, by removing everything that didn't need to be manual.
The result is a hiring process that has been quietly transformed.
AI now helps craft job descriptions that are sharp, consistent, and aligned with what each team is actually looking for. Direct candidate sourcing has been automated, letting recruiters spend their energy on the conversations that actually move things forward. Interviewers no longer need to split their attention between listening and typing notes: interviews are captured automatically, so candidates get the full attention they deserve.
But one of the changes the team is most proud of is harder to see from the outside. Every candidate who goes through Belvo's process now receives a personalized, AI-assisted feedback email. Not a generic rejection, but a thoughtful message that helps them understand their profile, what stood out, and where there is room to grow. It's the kind of feedback most companies don't take the time to give. At Belvo, we built a system that makes it possible to give it to everyone.
The impact showed up in the numbers, too. Candidate Net Promoter Score (cNPS) improved after we introduced personalized feedback, a signal that how you treat people during the process matters just as much as the outcome.
Reporting has also gotten sharper. The team now has real visibility into the full recruitment funnel: where candidates come from, where they drop off, and how long each stage takes. Decisions get made with data, not gut feel alone.
"I didn't expect to have so much fun redesigning how our team works. But beyond that, the impact has been real. We've cut down the operational load dramatically and freed ourselves up to focus on what matters most: the people." - Aurora Lastres, Senior People Manager at Belvo
And the roadmap keeps growing. New ideas come out of every hackathon, every friction point spotted, every process that still has room to improve.
What building together taught us
The hackathons taught Belvo something no strategy document could: that great ideas live everywhere in the company, not just in engineering. When you give people the space, the tools, and the trust to build, they do.
The People team's journey is proof of that. They started by solving one small problem and ended up reshaping how an entire function operates. Not because they were told to, but because they were curious enough to ask "what if this could work better?" and accountable enough to actually find out.
That combination is what Belvo's culture is built on. People who don't wait for permission to improve things, who find the hard challenges energizing, not exhausting and that grow because the problems they are working on demand it.
It is also, not coincidentally, what makes Belvo a place where someone from the People team can ship a product, a security engineer can run a company-wide hackathon, and a Slack bot built in a few days can change how an entire organization gets answers.
"What this past year proved to me is that Belvo's biggest competitive advantage was never the technology. It was always the people willing to pick it up and do something with it. When you see someone from the People team shipping a product that changes how the whole company hires, onboards, and supports its employees, you realize AI isn't closing a capability gap. It's amplifying a culture that was already there. That's what we're building on. And honestly, we're just getting started." - Pablo Viguera, Co-Founder and Co-CEO at Belvo
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