HACKATHON

Forum X Anthropic Hackathon
Agentic AI for Zero-to-One

Build the next generation of AI agents that make starting a company faster, smarter, and more accessible.

Friday, September 12, 2025 | 10AM to 8PM
New York City
Win first-party APIs and Claude Code credits from Anthropic

why this hackathon

What You'll Build

Anyone can start a company. Getting from zero to one is hard. In one focused day, you will prototype a demo-ready AI agent or agentic workflow that automates crucial steps in early-stage building, like customer discovery, validation, and outreach. Mentors from Forum, Anthropic, and partners will guide you.

Zero-to-One Agents

Design agents with retrieval, tool use (function calling), and lightweight evaluation. Powered by Claude, with advanced reasoning to plan and act across real tools and data.

Agentic Workflows

Claude-powered flows chain tasks end-to-end, from lead research to outreach, summarization, insight extraction, and follow-ups.

A Tool To Use & Sell

Ship a working demo by day’s end. Keep using it yourself or start showing it to customers for feedback.

build with the best

Who This Hackathon Is For

We are curating a 75 person, high-signal room. Applicants are vetted for AI fluency and hands-on experience.

AI-native hackers.

Self-taught or early-career who thrive in unstructured environments.

PhDs & Research Scientists.

Masters and PhD builders ready to work outside the lab.

Early engineer hires.

Engineers with AI or ML experience exploring the founder path.

what you can win

Win first-party APIs and Claude Code credits from Anthropic

Repo-aware coding with Claude Code. Multi-file edits, issue-to-PR, and rapid prototyping in natural language and code, plus API credits to keep building.

Your hackathon team

​Learn directly from AI & GTM leads at top brands building agents for Zero-to-One

Scott Krenitski
Head of Amazon GTM Partnerships
Anthropic

Scott leads Amazon GTM partnerships at Anthropic, helping bring reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems to market. Scott has scaled revenue across startups and global enterprises, from building early-stage companies to managing Fortune 500 relationships at Google and Pinterest. He brings a cross-industry perspective to AI go-to-market strategy, grounded in experience across SaaS, marketplaces, and emerging tech — and is passionate about helping technical founders translate breakthrough products into market traction from zero to one.

Adam Heerwagen
Partnerships
Anthropic

Adam brings deep experience in scaling partnerships for AI infrastructure and enterprise platforms, now helping Anthropic connect its AI systems with high-impact market opportunities. Adam has led product and solution integrator partnerships at Pinecone, built multi-million-dollar platform deals at Mural with tech giants like Microsoft and Zoom, and sourced early-stage investments at Slow Ventures. He thrives at bridging cutting-edge technology with strategic partners, enabling AI-first founders to accelerate adoption and traction from zero to one.

Elio Narciso
CEO & Co-Founder
Scalestack

Elio Narciso is the CEO and co-founder of Scalestack, an AI-powered data platform that helps enterprises like MongoDB, Redis, Typeform, and Stepstone orchestrate data and automate revenue operations at scale. An MIT graduate with a background at AWS and deep expertise in enterprise sales and AI-driven automation, Elio has built Scalestack into what he calls an “Autonomous Revenue Engine” — unifying integrations, workflows, and AI agents to transform how companies go to market. He is also an active investor and advisor, passionate about helping high-growth startups accelerate efficiency, precision, and scale in their go-to-market strategies.

Ajay Sohmshetty
Co-founder & CEO
Dreamlit

Ajay is cofounder and CEO of Dreamlit AI, a vibe coding platform for automated emails. Ajay is a builder at heart and third-time founder, most notably co-founding Harmonic AI, the go-to sourcing tool & startup database for VCs and sales teams. Prior to that Ajay spent a brief stint at Google as a Machine Learning Software Engineer on the Personalization Team, deploying recommender system models across the Google Play store. Ajay holds a BS and MS in Computer Science with a specialization in AI from Stanford University.

Andrew Kim
Co-founder & CTO
Dreamlit

Andrew is cofounder and CTO of Dreamlit AI - think Lovable/Bolt/Replit but purpose-built for automated email notifications. Prior to Dreamlit, he was Head of Engineering at Bonside, a NYC FinTech startup, and Senior Software Engineer at Netflix. After over a decade of building web products for companies big and small, Andrew is excited to help builders of all skill levels bring their software to life especially with AI tooling.

Alice Krenitski
Head of Studio
Forum Ventures

Alice leads Forum’s venture studio in building AI-native companies from the ground up, embedding AI as the core operating system from day one. Alice guides founders through the zero-to-one journey by transforming concepts into validated products, architecting operating principles that make execution speeds previously impossible. With a background spanning venture studios, design agencies, startups, and academia, she’s turning the Studio into a testing ground for what “good” looks like in AI-powered company building — proving out the playbooks before scaling them across Forum’s portfolio.

Jonah Midanik
Managing Partner
Forum Ventures

Jonah founded Forum Ventures’ AI Studio in 2022 to build AI and agentic AI companies from scratch across multiple verticals. Jonah specializes in helping founders turn complex, deeply technical products into clear, compelling narratives that win customers, partners, and investors. He has helped launch companies like Pegasi and Amoeba, and works side-by-side with founders to craft the stories that carry them from zero to one — translating breakthrough technology into outcomes people can see, feel, and fund. Jonah believes agentic AI is the “killer app” for generative AI, unlocking a new era of autonomous tools that deliver results end-to-end.

Teija Bean
Head of Product Design
Forum Ventures

Teija specializes in transforming innovative AI-driven concepts into market-ready SaaS products. She is currently obsessed with scoping smarter, validating faster, and building conviction around what really matters to investors, without over-burning time or capital.

Alejandro Pereda
Associate
Forum Ventures

Alejandro surfaces 20+ new, viable and initially validated AI company concepts weekly to identify high-impact opportunities for founders. Alejandro recently vibe-coded a company called Buho – a financial intelligence platform purpose-built for startups to manage their runway, analyze cash flow, and model financial scenarios in real-time.

Olivia O'Sullivan
Partner & COO
Forum Ventures

Olivia guides Forum Ventures’ platform with a generalist’s edge, blending marketing, community, operations, and investing to help founders move from zero to one. Olivia is shaping Forum’s approach to be AI-first from day one, inspired by a shift she’s seeing in the market: the best AI-native startups now scale with five-person teams, hitting $1M+ in revenue in months. Since joining Forum in 2019, she’s grown the team from 4 to 30+, built a thriving founder community, and helped 400+ startups raise over $1B in follow-on capital.

Naomi Goez
Principl
Forum Ventures

Naomi brings an investor lens to early-stage product development, helping founders refine positioning, sharpen value props, and understand what gets a VC’s attention in today’s market. Naomi works closely with founders across Forum’s accelerator and pre-seed fund, guiding them through fundraising strategy and investor readiness.

Lauren Roberts
Associate
Forum Ventures

Tracks emerging trends across pre-seed B2B SaaS and helps evaluate hundreds of startups each year. Lauren offers real-time feedback on market positioning, storytelling, and early traction signals, helping founders think like investors from day one.

Vairo Di Pasquale
Lead AI Engineer
Scalestack

Vairo leads the development of Scalestack's AI agents, designing and deploying multi-agent systems from the ground up that power its Autonomous Revenue Engine for teams at MongoDB, Redis, Astronomer, and Typeform. With a background in AI research and applied ML, he specializes in large-scale agentic architectures that transform complex GTM workflows into autonomous, always-on systems.

join our hackathon

Build what every founder will need to launch, sell, and grow in 2025 and beyond.