TechTO Hackathon
Get ready for a 12-hour Hackathon from 9AM to 9PM designed for builders, dreamers, and doers!
Oh Canada! Calling all builders, dreamers, and maple syrup-fueled innovators!
Join us for the TechTO Open Hackathon this Toronto Tech Week on Monday, June 23rd—where AI agents and apps meet real-world connection.
The theme of the hack is Connected Experiences. Come build AI agents that drive real-world connections before, during and after events.
Winner will receive exciting prizes from our sponsors plus a $1,000 award provided by TechTO!
Expect a high-energy day filled with innovation, problem-solving, and connection. You'll have access to mentors, workshops, and plenty of opportunities to network with fellow hackers, developers, and creatives.
Come solo or with a team — just bring your passion and curiosity. It's not just about the code; it's about the people, the process, and the potential. Let's build something great together!
Agenda
9:00am: Doors open, check in and grab coffee
9:45am: Welcome speech and walkthrough of agenda of the day
10:00am - 6:00pm: Hackathon time. Lunch will be provided at 1:00pm
6:00pm - 6:30pm: Gathering video-demos and voting
6:30pm - 8:00pm: The top 5 teams/individuals are finalists for the judge panel. Play video-demos and Q&A
8:00pm - 8:30pm: Judges discussion
8:30pm - 9:00pm: Awards, drinks and social time
Host & Judges
Nael El Shawwa is a software craftsman and hands-on product and engineering leader with 20 years of experience delivering impactful web-based products across advertising, retail, and finance. He has led diverse teams of engineers, product managers, designers, and data scientists, fostering growth, experimentation, and excellence. At Perpetua, he scaled the engineering team from 10 to 70, drove ~5x revenue growth, and navigated three acquisitions, including a $150M sale to Ascential. Previously, he helped build Flashstock, acquired by Shutterstock for $50M, and led product engineering at Veriday and BMO. Nael is also the co-founder of #DevTO, a thriving tech community in Toronto.
Roy Pereira is the CEO & Co-Founder at Unified where they are enabling B2B SaaS developers to add 3rd-party integrations into their applications to access their customers' data in other platforms. Roy is a start-up and turn-around specialist with 10+ years of experience across advertising, security, networking, and software. With deep expertise in marketing, engineering, finance, and product management, he has led both startups and public companies to growth and success. Known for exceptional leadership and fearless change management, Roy builds and motivates high-performing teams. His strengths include strategic vision, execution, and business development, making him a respected, results-driven leader in today’s competitive tech and business landscape.
Haokun Qin is the Co-Founder at Gale, a YC-backed startup building the first AI-native platform to simplify immigration. Companies trust Gale to streamline H-1B and employment-based immigration, saving money, reducing administrative burdens, and staying compliant with evolving regulations. Previously, Haokun was a machine learning engineer at Viavi Solutions, advancing computer vision research. Inspired by his own immigration journey, he founded Gale to improve the outdated and complex immigration process.
Rahul Gudise is the Co-Founder at Gale, a YC-backed startup revolutionizing how businesses hire and manage international talent. Previously, Rahul was a software engineer at NVIDIA and Tesla, where he worked on cutting-edge systems that power some of the world's most advanced technologies. He was inspired to build Gale, while encountering firsthand the complexities, delays, and frustrations of the immigration process while getting his work visas.
Rishabh Sambare is the Co-Founder at Gale, where he is streamlining the opaque H‑1B visa application process with AI-driven solutions that save time and reduce costs for startups and law firms alike. Rishabh has a proven track record of turning cutting-edge technologies into impactful, real-world products. His career spans enhancing energy trading systems at Tesla, refining matching algorithms for the Waterloo co‑op program, and building decentralized (federated) machine learning systems for genomic and clinical healthcare data in Canada.
Amir Mehr is the Co-Founder at Zenbase AI, a YC-backed startup that helps developers focus on programming by automating prompt engineering and model selection. They are core contributors of Stanford NLP’s DSPy, the #1 LLM optimization framework used by Meta, Microsoft, Google, among many others.
Thank you for our sponsors
If you would like to know more about our sponsors, please visit:
ElevenLabs
Unified
Criteo
We are officially part of Toronto Tech Week 2025, a weeklong citywide collection of events to connect and celebrate the builders. June 23 → June 27, 2025 | torontotechweek.com.
TechTO is Canada's most connected tech community. We host events cross-canada and 60,000 people read our newsletter two times a week. Interested in learning more? techto.org. For sponsorship inquiries reach out to partnerships@techto.org.