Inside Crusoe's internal hackathon: How it convinced VP judges to scale an external program

Summary

73% of participants had never touched Crusoe Managed Inference (MI) before the hackathon, but every project submission still hit production quality. Crusoe, a cloud infrastructure company, used Devpost for Teams to run its first internal hackathon with a clear goal: get employees building on Crusoe MI to produce production-ready projects and surface real product feedback. Led by Emmanuel Acheampong, Developer Relations Manager, the event drew employees from across all departments and experience levels. The team aimed to use these projects and insights as the foundation for scaling this program to an external builder audience.

"We wanted to take the lessons from this internal hackathon and use them externally." — Emmanuel Acheampong, Developer Relations Manager, Crusoe

Crusoe chose Devpost for Teams primarily for its streamlined judging experience, a critical requirement given that judges were VP-level executives across multiple time zones. The results exceeded expectations: production-quality projects across the board, company-wide commitment to growing the hackathon program, and a foundation of product insights to build on.

Key outcomes:

• 73% of participants had no prior experience with Crusoe MI before the hackathon—yet all submitted projects met the bar for production
• The top 30% of submitted projects are confirmed for production with C-suite conversations underway; the remaining 70% are near-complete and heading toward production
• 89% of participants said they would participate in another Crusoe company hackathon
• Executive judges were so impressed by the caliber of projects that Crusoe committed to growing the hackathon program
• Crusoe collected product feedback from first-time internal MI users on onboarding, documentation, and first API requests

"At Crusoe, we have a really high bar of engineering excellence. We wanted to create the opportunity to celebrate that excellence—and build amazing products that we can ship to production. That's the main genesis of the hackathon." — Emmanuel Acheampong, Crusoe

Company profile

Crusoe is a cloud infrastructure company powering the AI revolution with an energy-first approach. Vertically integrated across energy sourcing, hyperscale data center operations, and cloud services, Crusoe provides the foundational AI infrastructure for customers building at scale.

Crusoe MI is a managed inference service that enables developers to run open-source model inference with fast time-to-first-token, resilient scaling, and predictable cost. Crusoe ran its first internal hackathon to give more of its internal teams the opportunity to build projects for these features that could ship to production.

Key considerations and goals

• Get employees building on Crusoe MI to test the product, validate its quality, and produce production-ready features
• Drive cross-departmental participation, including among teams with no prior MI experience
• Collect direct product feedback from first-time users and use it to improve the MI experience ahead of a broader external hackathon

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The challenge: Getting a broad internal team to build on a newly launched product

The Crusoe team wanted to leverage its internal talent to gather product feedback and generate production-ready features. The goal was to get employees across departments to use MI for the first time, build high-quality projects, and surface real-world feedback on onboarding, documentation, and the developer experience.

The challenge was planning an event accessible enough to attract broad participation—including non-technical teams—while still producing high-quality submissions. Getting employees to step away from their day jobs to build added another layer of complexity, as Emmanuel noted: "Getting people internally to leave their work to participate in a hackathon at work is very different from having an external one."

The judging setup also required careful consideration. Crusoe's judges were VP-level and higher executives located across multiple time zones. The hackathon platform needed to make the judging experience frictionless so judges could focus on evaluating submissions.

The solution: A hackathon format that maximized participation and high-quality submissions

Crusoe structured the hackathon with defined tracks to provide structure for judging, while keeping participation open to anyone at Crusoe.

"I wanted to make sure the barrier of entry was as low as possible to ensure anyone who was interested—both in engineering and outside of engineering—could join," said Emmanuel. "The tracks ensured that the judging was done fairly, but opening it up allowed more people to participate."

#1 Employees built production-ready projects on Crusoe Managed Inference

The primary goal of the hackathon was to produce projects ready for production. All submitted projects met that bar and impressed the executive judges.

"[Crusoe executives] keep asking when the projects are going to be put into production." — Emmanuel Acheampong, Crusoe

The top 30% of projects were confirmed for production with C-suite conversations immediately underway. The remaining 70% were described as "almost end-to-end finished products" that were added to the product roadmap. This is an especially notable outcome given that 73% of participants had never used Crusoe MI before the hackathon.

#2 Surfaced internal product feedback from first-time users

Since most participants were using Crusoe MI for the first time, the hackathon gave the product team real-world insight into how new users experience it. 73% of participants had no prior experience with Crusoe MI before the event. 89% said they would participate in another Crusoe company hackathon.

Participants surfaced direct feedback on onboarding flows, first API requests, and documentation, which were all insights the product team could act on immediately. That feedback is particularly valuable as Crusoe considers running open hackathons for external developers, where first impressions of onboarding and documentation are crucial.

“Because of this internal hackathon, we can leverage all these lessons to make that experience better for an external one.” — Emmanuel Acheampong, Crusoe

#3 Generated executive buy-in and a commitment to doing more

VP-level judges across multiple time zones came away impressed by what the participants produced. 

"They were really, really impressed by the caliber of the projects and the whole judging experience," said Emmanuel. The hackathon gave leadership direct visibility into what their team produces when given unstructured time to build. 

"They got to see a side of the engineering team that they rarely see," said Emmanuel. "Usually engineers are given tasks and then they just do it—but when engineers are given an opportunity to be creative, they can really build awesome tools."

After the hackathon, there was company-wide enthusiasm to run more, and Crusoe leadership committed to growing the program.

#4 Showed that hackathons activate developers at every level

Teams from across the organization joined the hackathon, including engineering, design, product, and sales, which shows that AI-focused events can engage well beyond technical teams. Participation exceeded internal expectations. "I thought people would be hesitant to participate," said Emmanuel. "But they were really, really excited."

Looking ahead, Emmanuel sees hackathons as central to how Crusoe engages the broader developer community. "Hackathons are a great way to activate and engage with developer communities," he said. 

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#5 Made judging easy for a global executive panel

The judging experience was the primary factor in Crusoe's decision to use Devpost for Teams. VP-level executives located across multiple time zones needed an intuitive platform that required no setup on their end and had no technical friction that might discourage them from participating again. One feature stood out in particular. 

"Judges not having to sign up in order to do the judging was a great feature—that was really beneficial for us. The judging platform and the judging process—that was the deciding factor for us to use Devpost." — Emmanuel Acheampong, Crusoe

The Devpost for Teams support team also contributed to a smooth event. When a judging issue arose mid-hackathon, the team resolved it quickly despite working across time zones. "I reached out to the Devpost team and they helped me navigate that almost immediately," said Emmanuel. "That's the reason why we'd like to keep leveraging Devpost in our upcoming hackathons."

Conclusion

Crusoe set out to get its internal team building on Crusoe MI, produce features ready for production, and surface real product feedback before scaling its hackathon program to an external developer audience. The hackathon delivered on all three: production-quality projects confirmed for the roadmap at the C-suite level, and direct feedback from first-time MI users on onboarding and the developer experience that will inform what comes next.

With Devpost for Teams managing registration, submissions, and judging in one place, Crusoe was able to focus on what mattered: getting employees building on its platform and generating projects with real business impact.

"The concept of a developer has evolved," said Emmanuel. "With the tools that Crusoe is building, almost anyone can be considered a developer if they're willing to engage." 

Ready to run a hackathon that drives AI adoption and ships real projects? Book a demo to see how Devpost for Teams can help.