These hackathons are stupid...and that's the point

The Stupid Ideas Hackathon is a new coding, designing, and creating movement turned global. From Toronto to Madagascar, participants are making programs that maybe no one needs. It's exactly what founder, product engineer Maya Lekhi, is going for.

Each event, 50 to 100 people bring their ideas and compete for awards like​"most over-engineered solution to a non-problem" and ​"most meme-able." Pairings include inspiration like ​AI that deliberately gives bad advice, ​a keyboard that randomly swaps two keys every hour, and ​an app that converts your important documents into emoji-only versions.

"Everything that anyone's allowed to build at the hackathon has to have some kind of uselessness in mind. So we're very anti-general utility. Pro jokes or things that are exciting outside of the whole 'save the world' narrative that your average hackathon tends to have," she says.

The inspiration struck amidst burnout from traditional hackathons. Lekhi says when constantly developing pitches and demos, some fun time is in order. She describes it as a movement of intentionally bad tech. "It serves as a counter-narrative to the pressure to build the next big thing, bringing back the joy in building and pushing back against Silicon Valley optimisation culture."

Inspired by other similar movements in the United States, like the original Stupid Hackathon created by Sam Lavigne & Amelia Winger-Bearskin, many stupid hackathons are growing around the globe. Lekhi works with a small team of dedicated members in various cities but is currently located in London, Ontario. 

"Ever since running the first one that I did in Seattle, it sort of blew up on Twitter and LinkedIn, and then I had a crazy amount of demand to get this into other cities. So I would call it a movement, and we're looking to turn it into a little bit more of a formal hub or network." 

The first event in Seattle led to additional events in Maya's home province of Ontario. Other offshoots have spawned in San Francisco and even Madagascar. The spread is natural, as a former attendee from the inaugural event brought it back to the African country.

This idea is gaining attention from big industry players, too. Shopify and Google have signed up as sponsors for the Stupid Ideas Hackathons. She says these big players are interested in younger generations experimenting with alternative avenues of innovation.

"I think that [these hackathons] serve to make people a little bit more creative in ways that they're challenged to access less often," she says. "So not only could people, like, see how fun it was, but also could, like, see that they are actively out there growing their technical skills. And a lot of people, like, resonate with that."

More events are planned for later this year. The next Canadian event will take place on September 27th in Toronto.

Images from the Stupid Ideas Hackathon Seattle event on June 8, 2025. Courtesy of Maya Lekhi.