A hackathon kickoff sets the rules, forms the teams, and points everyone at the same finish line before a single line of code is written. This hackathon kickoff template gives you an agenda for the opening session so your event starts fast and every team has a real shot at shipping a demo by the deadline.
Run this kickoff at the start of any hackathon, internal innovation day, or time-boxed build sprint. It works for a one-day internal event or a weekend-long open hackathon. The kickoff is the highest-leverage hour of the whole event. Get it right and teams spend the rest of the time building instead of wandering.
Everyone attends the kickoff: organizers running the show, judges who can answer scoring questions, mentors offering help during the event, and every participant. This is the one moment the whole room is together, so use it to align before people scatter into teams.
Open with the theme and why it matters, then get the boring-but-critical logistics out of the way: schedule, scope, tools, and conduct. Show the judging criteria explicitly so teams build toward what is rewarded. Run rapid idea pitches, let teams self-organize around the ideas they love, and close by confirming the submission format and deadline. Then get out of the way and let people build.
Run the kickoff, track teams, and capture every demo in one place. Run it in OrgTP.
90 minutes total · 6 sections
Stop copying agendas into a doc every week. OrgTP runs your meetings live — scorecard, rocks, issues, and to-dos all in one place, with your AI agents in the room.