Proof of Usefulness Hackathon Final Winners Announced 🎉

Once you discover truly useful software, it’s hard to ignore. It finds its way into your life and workflow, helping you answer a nagging question, finish tasks more efficiently, make faster decisions, or solve a problem that existing tools made more complicated than it needed to be. Before long, you might even start to wonder how you ever got by without it.

When we launched the Proof of Usefulness Hackathon in January, we wanted to give the people building these kinds of solutions a platform, along with a share of $150,000 in cash prizes and software credits to help them keep building. Alongside Bright Data, Neo4j, Algolia, and Storyblok, we invited builders to show us what their projects could do and provide the evidence to back it up.

And boy, did they show up.

Over the course of the hackathon, we received hundreds of submissions and published just shy of 300 stories on the #proof-of-usefulness-hackathon page. Behind those numbers are builders who took the time to share their work, explain the problems they were tackling, and put their progress out there for others to examine.

To everyone who submitted a project, published a report, or spent time discovering what others had built: thank you for making this hackathon’s inaugural edition a success.

In May, we announced our first set of winners, recognizing projects across all five award categories. Today, we’re closing out the hackathon with the final round of winners.

This round covers the remaining $118,000 in prizes, comprising $12,000 in cash and $106,000 in software credits, distributed across the following categories:

AWARD CATEGORY	FINAL-ROUND PRIZE POOL
Bright Data	$60,000 in software credits + $6,000 in cash
Algolia	$40,000 in software credits.
Neo4j	$6,000 in software credits.
Storyblok	$3,000 in cash.
HackerNoon	$3,000 in cash.

Now, without further ado, let’s meet the projects taking home the final Proof of Usefulness Hackathon awards:

Bright Data Awards

$60,000 in Software Credits ($20,000 each for 3 projects)

• Visby

https://hackernoon.com/visby-earns-a-76-proof-of-usefulness-score-for-tracking-brand-visibility-across-ai-search?embedable=true

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• FoxPlug

https://hackernoon.com/foxplug-earns-a-6719-proof-of-usefulness-score-by-building-an-automated-white-label-launch-kit-generator?embedable=true

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• Siiqo

https://hackernoon.com/siiqo-earns-a-59-proof-of-usefulness-score-by-building-nigerias-local-commerce-operating-system?embedable=true

$6,000 in Cash Prizes ($1,000 each for 6 projects)

• Autonomous Company Deep Research Agent

https://hackernoon.com/autonomous-company-deep-research-agent-earns-a-52-proof-of-usefulness-score-by-building-automated-vc-style-company-research-reports?embedable=true

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• Cofoundr

https://hackernoon.com/cofoundr-earns-a-42-proof-of-usefulness-score-by-building-an-ai-powered-co-founder-matching-engine?embedable=true

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• Ella’s AI Agent

https://hackernoon.com/ellas-ai-agent-earns-a-4606-proof-of-usefulness-score-by-building-an-autonomous-e-commerce-ai-support-agent?embedable=true

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• TransactionLink

https://hackernoon.com/transactionlink-earns-a-6613-proof-of-usefulness-score-by-building-automated-kyb-and-kyc-onboarding-workflows?embedable=true

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• Visual MCP Gateway

https://hackernoon.com/visual-mcp-gateway-earns-a-4766-proof-of-usefulness-score-by-building-a-unified-ai-chat-interface?embedable=true

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• hello.cv

https://hackernoon.com/hellocv-earns-a-63-proof-of-usefulness-score-by-building-ai-powered-profiles-that-network-autonomously?embedable=true

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Algolia Awards

For products built around fast, meaningful search and discovery.

$40,000 in Software Credits ($10,000 each for 4 Projects)

• HOL Guard

https://hackernoon.com/hol-guard-earns-a-30176-proof-of-usefulness-score-by-building-a-firewall-for-ai-agents?embedable=true

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• Siiqo

https://hackernoon.com/siiqo-earns-a-59-proof-of-usefulness-score-by-building-nigerias-local-commerce-operating-system?embedable=true

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• Cofoundr

https://hackernoon.com/cofoundr-earns-a-42-proof-of-usefulness-score-by-building-an-ai-powered-co-founder-matching-engine?embedable=true

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• Visual MCP Gateway

https://hackernoon.com/visual-mcp-gateway-earns-a-4766-proof-of-usefulness-score-by-building-a-unified-ai-chat-interface?embedable=true

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Neo4j Awards

For systems where relationships between data points drive the product.

$6,000 in Software Credits ($2,000 each for 3 projects)

• HostLens AI

https://hackernoon.com/hostlens-ai-earns-a-5535-proof-of-usefulness-score-by-building-an-agentic-graphrag-ai-assistant-for-rental-market-insights?embedable=true

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• FlowMind

https://hackernoon.com/flowmind-earns-a-47-proof-of-usefulness-score-by-building-an-ai-project-manager-that-auto-assigns-tasks?embedable=true

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• Cofoundr

https://hackernoon.com/cofoundr-earns-a-42-proof-of-usefulness-score-by-building-an-ai-powered-co-founder-matching-engine?embedable=true

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StoryBlok Awards

$3,000 in Cash Prizes ($1,000 Each for 3 Projects)

• FoxPlug

https://hackernoon.com/foxplug-earns-a-6719-proof-of-usefulness-score-by-building-an-automated-white-label-launch-kit-generator?embedable=true

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• Developer Farm

https://hackernoon.com/developer-farm-earns-a-6756-proof-of-usefulness-score-by-building-an-honest-ai-architecture?embedable=true

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• theCloaq

https://hackernoon.com/thecloaq-earns-a-55-proof-of-usefulness-score-by-building-an-intelligence-workspace-that-unifies-scattered-knowledge?embedable=true

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HackerNoon

$3,000 in Cash Prizes ($500 Each for 6 Projects)

• PMB – Local Memory for AI Coding Agents

https://hackernoon.com/pmb-personal-memory-brain-earns-a-115-proof-of-usefulness-score-by-building-local-first-persistent?embedable=true

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• tenv

https://hackernoon.com/tenv-earns-a-11112-proof-of-usefulness-score-by-building-a-versatile-version-manager-for-opentofu-and-terraform?embedable=true

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• Tinky Town

https://hackernoon.com/tinky-town-earns-a-9761-proof-of-usefulness-score-by-building-a-qr-code-based-auxiliary-communication-infrastructure?embedable=true

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• Snatch Guard

https://hackernoon.com/snatch-guard-earns-a-94-proof-of-usefulness-score-by-building-an-accelerometer-based-iphone-theft-detection-lock?embedable=true

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• AIOProductOS

https://hackernoon.com/aioproductos-earns-a-94-proof-of-usefulness-score-by-building-a-product-operating-system-that-connects-feedback-revenue-work-and-code?embedable=true

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• Claude Code Organizer

https://hackernoon.com/claude-code-organizer-earns-a-8794-proof-of-usefulness-score-by-building-a-dashboard-to-manage-claude-code-memories-configs-and-mcp-servers?embedable=true

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Congratulations once again to all our winners. We can’t wait to see you scale!

How to Claim Your Proof of Usefulness Hackathon Prize

• Contact asher@hackernoon.com and yes-reply@hackernoon.com with the email ID linked to your winning project.
• We will validate your claim and share a form requesting your details for reward distribution.
• Cash prizes will be disbursed within 1–3 weeks after completing the form.
• Software credits will be fulfilled directly by the respective sponsors. Fulfillment timelines may vary.

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