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Business Insider
3 days ago
- Business
- Business Insider
How AI startups are using hackathons to compete with Big Tech for talent
Hackathons bring together computer engineers to rapidly solve technical problems. Now, they are increasingly helping startups solve another problem: scouting AI talent. The event, which brings people together for around 24 to 72 hours to build a software product, gained traction in Silicon Valley in the 2000s and became a staple affair for Big Tech companies like Meta. But after the pandemic, hackathons were slow to get going again, said Bela Wiertz, founder of Tech: Europe, and organizer of multiple AI hackathons across the continent. That changed with the AI boom. Wiertz said that, since the arrival of ChatGPT in late 2022, more research labs and AI startups have been arranging hackathons in cities with less "tech organization" in a bid to bring together top talent. And the events' talent-pulling power is making hackathons "a viable way for hot AI startups to compete with Big Tech for a top talent pool," Zoe Qin, vice president at Dawn Capital, told Business Insider. Big Tech companies typically have a major advantage over startups in the talent market: they can outspend them in recruitment and entice candidates with substantial compensation packages. Hackathons are one way for startups to level the playing field. "Startups cannot spend as much money on LinkedIn ads or copy what Big Tech do in terms of prestige, but they can show that they're more agile, and more approachable, that they're more committed during a hackathon," said Benjamin Wolba, the founder of European Defense Tech Hub, which organizes hackathons across the continent. In some cases, startups use hackathons to scout early-career talent that they might not reach during traditional hiring processes. Angelo Giacco, an Imperial College London and ETH Zurich graduate, participated in an AI hackathon organized by ElevenLabs in November. Two weeks later, he landed a job offer as an engineer at the AI startup. "I wouldn't even have considered applying if I hadn't gone to the hackathon," he told BI. "We're now hiring a few more people from hackathons, and we've launched one in seven different countries," he added. It's not just junior roles. Dawn Capital's Qin said that after some hackathons, she's seen some startups go after "high-performing candidates, or in the case of a hackathon run by a tech company itself, their engineers who have performed really well." Often, AI startups want entrepreneurial talent that's not rooted in a specific background, and recruiting from a hackathon allows these upstarts to find people "who want to tinker, build, and make things better — who may not necessarily match a classic profile of a computer scientist who wants to work in Big Tech," Qin added. While traditional AI research labs may not hire pure research talent from hackathons, it's useful for them to source solutions and customer-facing engineers who can build up the technology at the application layer. "For the foundation labs and all the infrastructure partners like Mistral and Eleven Labs, they're labs, but they're selling their technology as an infrastructure," said Wiertz. "So for them, yes, it's about hiring, but it's also the adoption of the technology in the ecosystem." Non-technical talent also has a shot Increasingly, more people from non-technical backgrounds are using AI coding assistants to vibe code and create technical products. That has lowered the barrier to entry for coding-related projects and broadened the talent pool that participates in hackathons. "University can be so theoretical, but hackathons help us to tackle real-life problems and get projects off the ground," said Franziska Harzheim, a venture scout at Flashpoint who has participated in multiple AI hackathons. With a degree in business analytics, Harzheim has still found a way to leverage her background to build an AI product with a team. "I feel like those hackathons are not about having a team of five super-experienced coders. It's more like we look at everyone's skill set, and according to that, we divide the tasks," she said. "If you're willing to learn something new on the spot, this is your space, it's amazing." They're also a valuable opportunity for companies to assess potential candidates from technical and non-technical backgrounds. "You get to see how people perform, whether they earn the food or are actually doing stuff in real life, not in an assessment center," European Defense Tech Hub's Wolba said. "You get to see them working on the inside — it could be very information dense, so it's a time-effective way to understand whether you want to work with this person."
Yahoo
07-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
AI self-hosting start-up Doubleword finds new Dawn with £9m funding boost
A British start-up which enables companies to 'self-host' their artificial intelligence functions will this week announce that it has raised nearly £10m in a round led by one of Europe's leading venture capital firms. Sky News understands that Doubleword - previously called TitanML - has secured the funding from Dawn Capital, a backer of successful technology companies including Mimecast and iZettle. Doubleword was set up to tackle what is known among tech experts as the 'inference problem', with AI becoming increasingly central to companies' interactions with customers, suppliers and other stakeholders. ADVERTISEMENT Advertisement Money latest: Uber making big changes to how you pay Inference refers to the process of running live data through a trained AI model to make predictions or undertake tasks such as answering questions or generating images. Peter Kyle, the science, innovation and technology secretary, said in a statement: "AI will help us to deliver growth for our economy and new opportunities for people up and down the country, so it's vital businesses have the confidence to adopt and realise its potential. "Doubleword's work is helping set the standard for how companies can do exactly that - adopting AI quickly and efficiently so they can realise their ambitions and allow their workers and customers to thrive in the age of AI." ADVERTISEMENT Advertisement Mr Kyle claimed: "This is yet another illustration not just of how British-born tech expertise is tapping into AI to help give businesses the world over a unique point of difference, but in the steps we've taken to make our tech sector a true global magnet for innovation and investment." The $12m (£9m) funding round will be announced on Thursday. Meryem Arik, co-Founder and chief executive of Doubleword, said: "Our customers want to build AI-powered applications-not AI infrastructure. "We eliminate the heavy lifting of inference at scale so they can go from idea to production faster, without racking up technical debt." ADVERTISEMENT Advertisement "We ensure that our customers can deploy any AI model with a single click, while always having the latest models and hardware supported - and without being wedded to a single model provider." The new capital will be used to grow Doubleword's workforce as it build partnerships with tech giants such as Snowflake and Nvidia. Doubleword's other backers include AI entrepreneurs such as Florian Douetteau, the chief executive of Dataiku, and Datadog CEO Olivier Pomel. "Enterprises creating specific business-critical AI would gladly self-host, if "expertise" and "cost" didn't sound like double trouble," Mr Douetteau said. ADVERTISEMENT Advertisement Read more from Sky News: China moves to ease tariff pain ahead of US trade war talks Plans to expand massive offshore windfarm under threat "Doubleword flips the script, making self-hosting effortless and reshaping the market for enterprise customers." Haakon Overli, general partner at Dawn Capital, described the company as "the most exciting start-up in this space". "They are scaling a product that businesses need at the right time, with the right expertise."
Sky News
07-05-2025
- Business
- Sky News
AI self-hosting start-up Doubleword finds new Dawn with £9m funding boost
A British start-up which enables companies to 'self-host' their artificial intelligence functions will this week announce that it has raised nearly £10m in a round led by one of Europe's leading venture capital firms. Sky News understands that Doubleword - previously called TitanML - has secured the funding from Dawn Capital, a backer of successful technology companies including Mimecast and iZettle. Doubleword was set up to tackle what is known among tech experts as the 'inference problem', with AI becoming increasingly central to companies' interactions with customers, suppliers and other stakeholders. Inference refers to the process of running live data through a trained AI model to make predictions or undertake tasks such as answering questions or generating images. Peter Kyle, the science, innovation and technology secretary, said in a statement: "AI will help us to deliver growth for our economy and new opportunities for people up and down the country, so it's vital businesses have the confidence to adopt and realise its potential. "Doubleword's work is helping set the standard for how companies can do exactly that - adopting AI quickly and efficiently so they can realise their ambitions and allow their workers and customers to thrive in the age of AI." Mr Kyle claimed: "This is yet another illustration not just of how British-born tech expertise is tapping into AI to help give businesses the world over a unique point of difference, but in the steps we've taken to make our tech sector a true global magnet for innovation and investment." The $12m (£9m) funding round will be announced on Thursday. Meryem Arik, co-Founder and chief executive of Doubleword, said: "Ou customers want to build AI-powered applications-not AI infrastructure. "We eliminate the heavy lifting of inference at scale so they can go from idea to production faster, without racking up technical debt." "We ensure that our customers can deploy any AI model with a single click, while always having the latest models and hardware supported - and without being wedded to a single model provider." The new capital will be used to grow Doubleword's workforce as it build partnerships with tech giants such as Snowflake and Nvidia. Doubleword's other backers include AI entrepreneurs such as Florian Douettau, the chief executive of Dataiku, and Datadog CEO Olivier Pomel. "Enterprises creating specific business-critical AI would gladly self-host, if "expertise" and "cost" didn't sound like double trouble," Mr Douetteau said. "Doubleword flips the script, making self-hosting effortless and reshaping the market for enterprise customers." Haakon Overli, general partner at Dawn Capital, described the company as "the most exciting startup in this spac".
Associated Press
13-03-2025
- Business
- Associated Press
Botguard raises €45 million Series B led by Dawn Capital; rebrands to Blackwall
Blackwall, deployed across 2.3M+ websites and applications, is an AI-enabled security and web infrastructure company dedicated to safeguarding web ecosystems from automated threats. Previously known as Botguard, Blackwall has secured a €45 million Series B funding round led by Dawn Capital, with participation from existing investors MMC. Having already launched into the US and APAC, the company will use its new capital to double headcount as it expands further in these key markets, and invest in intense product development. LONDON, March 13, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Blackwall, the global AI-enabled security and web infrastructure company founded in 2019 by Nikita Rozenberg (CEO) and Denis Prochko (CTO), today announced that it has raised a €45 million Series B round led by Dawn Capital, Europe's leading B2B investor. Already deployed across more than 2.3 million websites and applications, Blackwall defends web ecosystems from malicious automated threats. Around 50% of all global web traffic stems from bots, 66% of which is malicious. Traditional solutions are priced and designed for enterprises, leaving SMBs - subject to 43% of all cyber attacks - vulnerable. Blackwall partners with Hosting Services Providers (HSPs), Managed Service Providers (MSPs) and eCommerce Platforms, which typically host thousands to hundreds of thousands of websites. This in turn protects the SMB customers that use Blackwall via their service and hosting providers. Unwanted bot traffic throttles networks, and AI is driving the volume and sophistication of attacks HSPs and MSPs have to manage. This increases their costs while slowing down end customers' sites. While big providers can afford to spend millions on in-house product development, many HSPs and MSPs need external support to deal with the problem. Blackwall's flagship product, GateKeeper, is an advanced reverse proxy fortified with next-generation bot and attack detection mechanisms. It proxies requests to hide servers from bots and hacker attacks, allowing HSPs and MSPs to reduce operational costs by up to 25% as they maximise server farm user density, and helps maximise revenue for these providers which underpin operations for millions of SMBs worldwide. Blackwall helps HSPs/MSPs increase margins by growing revenue through scalable, high-value security services that attract new customers and open additional, recurring income streams. 'Blackwall has only scratched the surface of the US and APAC opportunity' - Norman Fiore, General Partner, Dawn Capital Led by Dawn Capital, with participation from existing investors MMC, Blackwall's Series B funding will be used to double headcount and accelerate growth as the company expands further into the U.S. and APAC, and strengthens global channel partnerships. Nikita Rozenberg, Co-Founder & CEO, commented: 'With Blackwall, we are taking our mission to the next level—delivering gold-standard infrastructure protection to SMBs that have traditionally been overlooked. This funding enables us to scale globally and continue innovating for the businesses that need it most.' Norman Fiore, General Partner, Dawn Capital commented: 'It is rare to see a business targeting SMBs which has such a broad offer, of which each component is best of breed. Blackwall's innovative technology provides exactly that.' 'Nik and Denis have devised a winning, channel-first strategy for their excellent product, and relentlessly executed on their bold vision. Blackwall has only scratched the surface of the expansive opportunity in North America and APAC, and we are confident that the company is uniquely positioned to transform how SMBs access advanced security solutions. We're thrilled to be supporting the team as they further scale and pioneer a new approach to infrastructure protection.' Mina Samaan, General Partner, MMC Ventures, said: 'We have been impressed by Nik and Denis's vision and execution from the start and we're excited to back them again in this latest funding round. Blackwall's approach—tackling malicious and useless traffic at the infrastructure layer—addresses a critical gap in the market, providing much-needed protection to hosting providers and smaller businesses. With the rise of AI-driven threats, Blackwall's products have never been more essential, and we believe it will become a leading force protecting against bots and other digital threats.' Blackwall also welcomes Norman Fiore, Co-Founder & GP at Dawn Capital, to its board, as well as Shamillah Bankiya, Principal at Dawn Capital. Roi Carthy, Co-Founder & CEO at Hudson Rock, will also join as Executive Chairman. About Blackwall Blackwall (formerly BotGuard), is an AI-enabled security and web infrastructure company dedicated to safeguarding web ecosystems from automated threats. Deployed across 2.3M+ websites and applications, GateKeeper, the company's flagship product, is trusted by 100+ service & hosting partners globally to enhance performance, reduce operational costs, and maximize revenue by protecting SMB customers worldwide against emerging threats with simplicity, affordability, and scalability. Learn more at About Dawn Capital Dawn is Europe's leading specialist B2B software investor, with assets under management of over $2bn. Dawn is primarily an early-stage investor, backing companies from Series A and B, and continuing to fund the top-performing through growth rounds to exit. Its roster of investments includes Mimecast (formerly NASDAQ-listed, taken private by Permira in a $5.8bn transaction), iZettle (sold to PayPal for $2.2bn cash), Tink (purchased by Visa for $2.0bn), LeanIX (acquired by SAP), as well as current market leaders, Collibra, Dataiku, Quantexa, Soldo, and Copper, amongst others. Dawn is currently investing from Dawn Capital V, the firm's $620m fifth flagship fund, and Dawn Opportunities Fund, a $80m fund to enable Dawn to double down on its best performing companies to exit. About MMC Ventures MMC is a leading European venture capital firm with a research-driven approach. It invests in early-stage transformative technology companies that utilise AI and data science across sectors including enterprise AI, fintech, data-driven health and cloud & data infrastructure. Examples of companies MMC has backed include: Synthesia, Copper, Signal AI, Interactive Investor, Current Health, YuLife and Cloudsmith.
Bloomberg
20-02-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
German Venture Firm HV Capital Adds Two Partners Amid UK Push
HV Capital, a German venture capital firm that has backed some of the country's most successful consumer technology startups, is adding two partners and opening its first office in the UK. The firm is poaching from two rivals, hiring Lina Chong from Target Global and Mina Mutafchieva, an investor at Dawn Capital, who will open a London office, HV Capital said. They are the first two female partners in the firm's twenty-five year history.
