From Hackathon to Launchathon: How Dialpad launched 20+ new projects in two months

In the fast-paced world of tech, innovation needs to be endless. For Dialpad, having a culture of creativity and collaboration is not just a goal but a way of life.

While we were already releasing features every week, we wanted a way to open up our entire team’s creativity with no limitations, which is why in 2022 we had our first-ever global Hackathon. Then, in 2023, we amped it up even more with a fast follow Launch-a-thon.

How did we make our Hackathon different from the thousands of other companies that have one? What even is a Launch-a-thon? Read on as we share how we created this unique experience that took Dialpad’s Hackathon to a whole new level.

The problem with most Hackathons

A traditional Hackathon is a 24-48 hour stretch where everything is dropped and engineers hack on projects outside their regular work. This format has its benefits, but we wanted to figure out a way to not only get this burst of creative energy in a tight timeframe, but also allow the work to get to a place where it’s pretty close to shippable.

To do this, we made our Hackathon a full week. This doesn’t severely impact our existing roadmap’s progress, but those few extra days make a huge difference in how far that idea can go.

Then there’s the post-Hackathon issue. Once the Hackathon is over, when and how do these innovative projects actually see the light of day?

Sure, some do, but those are usually very small features or things that aren’t necessarily complete experiences. Or what happens is it takes multiple quarters or even years for projects that weren’t ready for prime time at the end of the Hackathon to finally get prioritized. Either way, this can be disappointing for the participants and simply a bummer for the company that these creative innovations get put in a box to never be seen again.

To fix this problem, when 2023’s Hackathon wrapped up, we said to ourselves, “Wouldn’t it be awesome to take all of these amazing ideas and just tell the teams to keep working on them till they’re done?”

If we already have the idea of removing limitations by making our Hackathon longer than most, why not bust through that even further and give teams even more time? That’s when Dialpad’s CEO, Craig Walker, came up with the groundbreaking forum of a Launchathon.

What the heck is a Launchathon?

These awesome projects are incomplete! We want to get them into production! Our execs want them! The Launchathon enters the chat as the mechanism to get these ideas off the ground.

Our Hackathon took place in November, and as we all know, the holidays are usually a slower time of year for most businesses. Dialpad also does limited releases, allowing for increased QA support. So we told Hackathon project teams that during December they could make the decision to stop roadmap work for a couple weeks to finish what they started while it’s still fresh in their minds (and the excitement was still buzzing).

The projects had to get both leadership approval and go through an architecture or design review to move forward, ensuring that progressing the idea was the right move to make. Once these checks were made, it was up to the teams to get to code complete by the end of the holidays.

What resulted from the Hackathon-turned-Launchathon was 20+ projects coming to fruition within two months of the Launchathon! (Compare this to the previous year’s Hackathon, where we launched just three projects within one year of the event!) We had eight of these in our recent April App Refresh, including things like Emoji Suggestions, Link to Message, and Timezone Assistant. And we plan to add even more throughout the year into our product roadmap.

Tips for getting the most of out a Hackathon

Tip #1: Expand beyond engineering

In order to make the best products that result in amazing experiences, you need product and design teams working closely with your engineering department. That’s why we include not just engineers, but all of Product and Design too.

Having a week where everybody works together on outside the box ideas they’re pumped about, creates not only ready-to-ship customer experiences during the Hackathon, but has lasting effects on the team’s day-to-day work together afterwards as well.

Tip #2: Pitch ideas early

Have everyone start putting forth their project ideas way before the event so when the clock starts on the Hackathon, the participants aren’t spending half their time thinking of ideas and forming teams. How we do this at Dialpad is that anyone at the company can submit a project idea. From there, we have a sheet that populates where you can sign up for a project.

A lot of people’s ideas are the ones they want to work on, but there’s also a huge amount of people who jump onto teams based on a colleague’s idea they like. This group might not have participated if it wasn’t for seeing the idea beforehand and knowing that they could work on something interesting that they didn’t have to come up with.

We find the idea collection and team formation pre-event an essential piece of the puzzle to our Hackathon success. At our last event, we had over 200 ideas and 70 formed project teams.

Tip #3: Think global

Dialpad is a global company, with R&D hubs in the Bay Area, Kitchener, Vancouver, Bangalore and Buenos Aires. Not to mention our many employees who are 100% remote. To make the Hackathon inclusive and engaging for everyone involved, we do a couple key things to keep this global-first mindset.

Most importantly, instead of live demos and in-person judging, we want our judges to be able to review all the projects regardless of where the team members are located. (If the team members are spread all over the globe, we need the judging to lend itself to that.) At the end of the week, all teams submit a project video of the work they’ve accomplished.

At our first Hackathon in 2022, we had no clue going into it how these videos would turn out… and we were absolutely blown away. Though the teams basically had one day to produce their video, the production quality was top notch. One video in particular, Dark Mode (which is now in our product), was so top notch that we ended up creating a new prize category—it received a Dialpad Academy Award!

These videos are not only fun for the teams to make, but they give the judges (execs across the company) the ability to judge and vote for the winners wherever they are, as well as provide a video archive where ideas can live permanently. In 2023, we had 70+ project videos submitted, which can be accessed by anyone at Dialpad and picked up for our roadmap anytime in the future.

Tip #4: Don’t forget to celebrate

As mentioned above, we have a judges panel watch the project videos (our very busy CEO has watched every single video both years—that’s 120+ project videos!) and select 1-3 nominations per prize category.

To ensure we recognize different types of projects, our prize categories cover a wide range from “Highest Polish Hack,” “Best Use of AI,” “Internal Champion,” and “Revenue Potential.” We have a single deliberation meeting for any close calls, and then at our Awards Ceremony each judge presents a couple awards they are particularly proud of or passionate about.

Our Awards Ceremony is also not just for the R&D organization. We take over our company’s monthly all-hands meeting so we can get every Dialer pumped about the work that has been done. We also host Show & Tells remotely and at each hub, where participants can show off their videos and ask questions to the teams that built them.

Beyond producing incredible work, we want every part of this event to bring people together, instilling a sense of community, collaboration and collective innovation—until our next one.

Looking forward to our next Launchathon

We’re incredibly proud of the creativity and hard work our teams put into these projects and are excited to see where these innovations take us next. As we move forward, one thing remains clear—Dialpad’s EPD community will keep driving innovation, one hack at a time!