Builders Hack Day Seattle with Microsoft Research and GitHub Copilot

** Important: register on AICamp website is required for admission.

GitHub & Microsoft Research Present: Builders Hack Day Seattle
Are you using tools like AI Agents for marketing? outreach? coding? design? Are you building a technology company? Do you want to build your own tech startup?
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​​We'll be hosting a full day Builders Hack Day at GitHub in Seattle. Our goal is to empower builders with the community.
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This event is designed to connect builders and founders like you with the Microsoft Research Team and the Investor network in Seattle.
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​Plus, it’s a special research edition Hackathon: By participating in the hackathon, you’ll also be joining a Microsoft Research study that will help define how AI empowers the next generation of founders. Learn more about this research below. ​Ready to build something amazing while shaping the future of AI for startups?
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🛠 What You Will Build
​You will build commercially viable, innovative products using Microsoft’s open-source projects: GraphRAG and NLWeb.

​They’re foundational technologies designed to supercharge your product development. With GraphRAG, you’ll harness graph-based retrieval-augmented generation for multi-hop reasoning, explainable outputs, and enterprise-grade knowledge synthesis. With NLWeb, you’ll explore natural language interfaces that unlock web-scale intelligence and semantic search capabilities.

​The top 6-10 projects will be invited to pitch to a panel of investors.

​🚀 Not JUST another hackathon - What You Get
​This isn't just another hackathon - you'll receive free access to GitHub's latest Copilot development tools, plus priority technical support from GitHub Developer Advocate team during the hackathon. You'll also have direct pitch and demo opportunities with PNW VCs and technical leaders from GitHub and Microsoft.

​As part of Microsoft Research's study on AI-accelerated startup development, teams are randomly assigned to one of two advanced Copilot feature configurations to help us understand how different AI approaches impact development speed, creativity, and outcomes. See below for more details.

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​📅 Event Schedule: ​

##### Monday, Sept 8 - Hack Day

​9:00 AM - Check Ins
​​9:30 AM - Event Kick Off & Talks
​​10:00 AM - Team Creations
​​12:00 PM - Lunch
​​5:00 PM - Dinner
​​8:00 PM - Day 1 is Done
​9:00 PM - Community Judging

##### Tuesday, Sept 9 - Demo Night

​5:00 PM - Doors Open
​​6:00 PM - Demos Begin
​​7:00 PM - Networking
​​8:00 PM - Day 2 - Demo Night is Done

​Judges

• ​Kevin Crosby - GitHub Fund and Accelerator
• ​Kevin Leneway - Pioneer Square Labs
• Jon Turow – Madrona
• ​Yohei Nakajima - Untapped VC
• Angie Parker - Alliance of Angels

Sponsors:
We are actively seeking sponsors to support AI developers community. Whether it is by offering venue spaces, providing food, or cash sponsorship. Sponsors will not only speak at the meetups, receive prominent recognition, but also gain exposure to our extensive membership base of 20,000+ AI developers in Seattle and 500K+ worldwide.