Introduction
What if the secret to unlocking your company’s next big innovation could be found within a single event? As corporations face pressure to innovate faster than ever, traditional methods often struggle to keep up. While Product-Led Growth (PLG) and Sales-Led Growth (SLG) have dominated the conversation, Hackathon-Led Growth (HLG) is emerging as a transformative model, particularly for AI companies and consulting firms.
From Product-Led Growth (PLG) to Bootcamp-Led Growth (BLG)
Silicon Valley has long celebrated Product-Led Growth (PLG) for its efficiency in scaling by delivering immediate value to customers, high satisfaction, and organic growth, with companies like Slack as prime examples. More recently, Bootcamp-Led Growth (BLG), pioneered by Palantir, has supercharged growth by running 500+ bootcamps last year, driving mass adoption of their AI platform (AIP).
Now, at Onova, we’re introducing an extension of BLG with Hackathon-Led Growth (HLG)—a new model that helps companies achieve the same growth benefits from bootcamps, but on a much larger scale.
Hackathons as Growth Catalysts
Hackathons are no longer just coding competitions or product innovation in isolation. Instead, they are evolving into strategic tools that can compress sales cycles, drive customer acquisition, and expand enterprise use cases. Companies, particularly in AI and consulting, can leverage hackathons to solve complex problems for their clients, demonstrate time-to-value (TTV) quickly, and secure enterprise deals.
Drawing inspiration from Palantir's Bootcamp model, hackathons have the potential to shorten the path from use case to production, allowing companies to co-create solutions with customers in days, not months. This model turns traditional customer engagement on its head—just like Palantir’s Artificial Intelligence Platform (AIP) Bootcamp has done by showing value almost immediately. Palantir’s bootcamps, where participants go from zero to production-ready AI use cases in under five days, underscore the immense potential of such immersive experiences.
Case Study: Palantir and the Power of Bootcamp-Led Growth
Palantir’s success with its AIP Bootcamps provides a playbook for HLG. The bootcamps focus on compressing the sales cycle and increasing customer acquisition rates by delivering immediate value. In Q4 2023, Palantir saw a 70% US commercial sales revenue growth to $131M, which they credit to these bootcamps.
At the core of Palantir’s bootcamp strategy is the focus on time-to-value. During bootcamps, customers engage directly with AIP, solving high-impact problems quickly. This is the same dynamic that hackathons create, allowing customers to get hands-on with the latest AI tools and generate high-value outcomes rapidly. For instance, one Palantir bootcamp participant generated $10 million in savings in just two days by building an AI-powered production disruption manager. This underscores how intensive, hands-on experiences lead to rapid enterprise adoption and measurable business outcomes.
Similarly, hackathons can provide companies with a fast track to close deals, especially in industries like AI and consulting, where complexity is high, and proof-of-concept is crucial. By getting “hands dirty” with AI solutions, participants in hackathons can move quickly from concept to production, ultimately converting prospects into customers.
Why Hackathons and BLG Work: Time-to-Value is Everything
As Palantir's COO Shyam Sankar noted, their bootcamp model enables enterprises to exit with production-ready use cases and the skills to continue iterating independently. This same principle applies to Hackathon-Led Growth. By getting customers and prospects involved in creating real solutions through hackathons, companies can demonstrate immediate value, accelerate customer onboarding, build internal advocates, and reduce the friction that typically slows enterprise sales.
When enterprise clients demand rapid returns on investment, the ability to deliver solutions in days rather than months is key. The hackathon format, brings stakeholders together—often IT departments, business leaders, and end-users—who can see the “WOW” moment firsthand. This speeds up decision-making, reduces sales cycles, and fosters a collaborative environment that encourages customers to commit to long-term partnerships.
Lessons from the BLG and SLG Shifts
What’s particularly fascinating is how Palantir’s model mirrors the larger shift in go-to-market (GTM) strategies in the B2B space. Sales-Led Growth (SLG) is becoming more hybrid, combining elements of Product-Led Growth (PLG)and hands-on, intensive experiences like bootcamps. Iconiq’s 2024 GTM report highlighted this shift, showing more SLG companies adopting hybrid models to drive faster adoption by reducing friction points, especially with traditional sales channels dropping in effectiveness.
For AI companies, integrating hackathons into their sales and GTM strategies means delivering faster time-to-value and ultimately increasing customer engagement. Palantir’s success with AIP bootcamps illustrates that BLG isn’t just a sales tool—it’s a method for compressing the time from interest to implementation, and Hackathon-Led Growth offers the same promise.
Why You Need a Hackathon Partner
Hackathon-Led Growth (HLG) is the next evolution in driving corporate innovation and scaling enterprise adoption. Most companies do not have the resources to run hundreds of these events per year like Palantir, nor is it their core competency. For reference, our largest hackathons with 1,000+ global participants typically require 6-8 months of planning.
Organizing hackathons at this scale and frequency requires significant effort and many businesses underestimate the complexity involved, from creating challenge statements to handling post-event follow through. At Onova, we specialize in managing the entire hackathon process end-to-end, offering not only the software platform but the expertise to ensure hackathon outcomes align with long-term business growth.
Conclusion
Hackathon-Led Growth (HLG) is the next evolution in driving corporate innovation and scaling businesses, especially for AI companies and consulting firms. By partnering with Onova, businesses can unlock new opportunities, streamline processes, and push their core offerings to new heights—all through the power of well-executed hackathons.