Hackathon 2024: Better, Faster and More Impactful Than Ever

What's the first thing that pops into your mind when you hear the word "Hackathon?" If you thought "energy drinks, snacks and late-night coding sessions," you may have seen the show Silicon Valley one too many times. That's OK, we have too (and snacks and caffeine were certainly in abundance at Hamilton Lane’s annual hackathon event). But, in our view, hackathons are foremost about developing impactful technology in a limited amount of time through agile processes and cross-team collaboration.  

Almost 70 participants across 15 teams (representing nearly every one of our business functions) gathered in person and virtually with a shared goal: To make what we do better, faster and more impactful. This year's event was a resounding success, evidenced by four key themes: 

• Technology is an important business pillar that drives differentiation in our marketplace. 
• Our focus on agile and iterative development optimizes company-wide outcomes. 
• Representation across all business functions fosters better cross-team collaboration. 
• Challenging ourselves to think differently and move faster to solve complex issues doesn't stop when the hackathon ends – we can and should continue to build on lessons learned throughout the year.

Technology differentiates us

Hamilton Lane’s 30+ years of private markets experience, robust industry data and leading technology solutions have given us an edge in the marketplace. Through digitizing and synthesizing traditionally disconnected and opaque datasets (encompassing data from General Partners, Limited Partners, portfolio companies and technology partners), we have created an information advantage that informs what we do as a firm. Through an initiative called HL Innovations, we invest in and partner with other private market technology leaders to drive digital transformation across this industry. Our hackathon is an opportunity to leverage these technologies and other cutting-edge platforms to reinforce this advantage for our firm and our clients.  

It probably won’t come as a surprise that we selected AI and automation as the core themes of this year’s event. We firmly believe that AI is more than a buzzword; it's a step-change in the way we interact with data and technology that will have long-term effects on the private markets (and some may say, it already has!). The trick is identifying areas where AI can improve our products and productivity without compromising on governance and best practices. Our hackathon participants stepped up to that challenge and presented a number of great solutions, some of which married AI and automation together.   

Agile development and cross-team collaboration

Our technology teams regularly use agile development to create new software products and enhance existing ones through iterative processes. What makes hackathon development stand out from our traditional two-week sprints are the compressed timelines and new opportunities for cross-team collaboration. Getting the chance to step outside of your comfort zone and try something new can breathe new life (and ideas) into company culture and surprise us with the innovations that may arise from it. 

Non-tech colleagues also get exposure to different ways of working, which they can then incorporate into their day-to-day activities. During hackathons, everybody can work within a fast-paced, iterative cycle to try things out and pivot as needed. From investment teams to digital marketing to back-office operations and software development functions, colleagues get an opportunity to innovate, spot check and adapt their prototypes toward a desired outcome. This is the concept of agile development – breaking off a deliverable into manageable pieces and iterating until a minimally viable product (MVP) is up and running. It's something we focus on heavily here and a practice with which we have seen success. 

Improvement is the name of the game

As is the name of the game when it comes to hackathons, there are no wrong answers – only opportunities for improvement. Product development can often hit a wall when group think, or becoming too comfortable with familiar ideas and processes, prevents "wrong answers" from sparking new ideas and innovations. By lowering the stakes and focusing on near-term solutions, hackathons can help generate out-of-the-box ideas and drive teams to build workable prototypes quickly. That helps us improve both our products and company-wide comradery well after each event. 

Onwards and upwards

This year, we saw teams come together to build innovative products across AI, automation and other technologies that have the potential to make a big business impact. Our goal was to make what we do better, faster and more impactful. We're happy to say that we achieved this goal and that there's a growing appetite to do more next year. Hackathons bring out the best in us and we want more of that (snacks and caffeine included).