SEE PAST PARTICIPANTS
HACKKENTUCKY × HACKTHETRACK 2025What teams actually shipped at last year's events — the caliber of builder your bounty gets pointed at. Hit play on any demo.
HOW A BOUNTY WORKS
PROBLEM + PRIZEChrome ($500) and Purple ($10K) sponsors get a bounty included.
WHAT MAKES A GOOD BOUNTY
THE #1 QUESTIONThis is the question every sponsor asks. The answer is simple: a specific, scoped problem with a clear finish line. Get that right and the rest takes care of itself — and don't sweat the prize size. The problem does the motivating, not the check: builders grind on a sharp, real challenge far harder than they chase cash.
One clear problem, not a theme. “Build something with our API” gets ignored. Name the exact thing you want built.
Judges (you) should be able to tell who won in five minutes. Define the metric or deliverable that decides it.
Something you actually have. Builders can smell a fake prompt — a genuine pain point gets real effort.
Narrow enough that a small team can ship a working answer in a day. If it needs a quarter, it's a roadmap, not a bounty.
A crisp problem and a clear winner is what makes a room pick your table — far more than the size of the reward. The challenge is the draw.
“Build something cool with our API.”
No finish line, no way to pick a winner, no reason to start. Teams skip it.
“Build a tool that flags anomalies in our sales dataset — anomalies are sales under $1 or over $25 — with a dashboard to review every flagged transaction and one-click approve or reject each one.”
A concrete rule and a clear deliverable. Builders know exactly what to ship.
SUBMIT A BOUNTY
KY COMBINATOR INTAKEReady to post one? Submissions run through the KY Combinator application workstream so intake stays in one place. Fill out the form and we'll follow up to lock the challenge and the reward — cash or in-kind, stackable on any sponsorship tier.
SUBMIT YOUR BOUNTY →Questions first? Email hackkentucky@kycombinator.com.