How Browser Use Ran the Largest Hackathon at Y Combinator with HackHQ

The Largest Hackathon To Date in Y Combinator History

On February 28, Browser Use hosted the Web Agents Hackathon at Y Combinator's San Francisco headquarters. The 26-hour overnight event challenged developers to build the next generation of web agents, with 18 sponsors including Google DeepMind, Anthropic, OpenAI, Convex, and Vercel, over $180,000 in prizes - and a guaranteed Y Combinator interview for first place.

185 developers showed up to build through the night. By the 10 AM submission deadline the next morning, 78 projects had been submitted, ranging from research agents and monitoring systems to outbound engines and personal productivity tools.

Every Team Demos Live

78 submissions. 42 judges. Six rooms. Seven prize tracks. And every single team had to give a live demo.

After a full night of building, hackers were running on adrenaline and little sleep. Every team got to demo their project live in front of a judging panel of Y Combinator founders and leaders from Vercel, Convex, Daytona, HUD, and Laminar. A chance to show what they built overnight to the people building the tools they use every day.

That meant running a semi-finals round where all 78 teams presented in parallel across six rooms, followed by a finals round where the top 10 pitched to everyone. To make that work for tired teams and busy judges alike, the logistics had to be airtight.

HackHQ handled submissions, room assignments, judging, and results for the entire event. Here's how the day unfolded.

Code Freeze to Demos in One Click

At 10 AM on the second day, teams submitted their projects through one shared link, no sign-up required. Each submission included a project title, description, demo video, live demo link, and the prize tracks they were applying to. Out of 78 submissions, 62 came in within a single hour as teams raced to meet the deadline. HackHQ handled the spike.

The moment submissions closed, HackHQ assigned all 78 teams and 42 judges to their rooms - in one click - distributing them evenly: exactly 13 demos per room. Each room got its own judging panel. When judges opened their link, they only saw the 13 projects assigned to their room, with all submission details, demo videos, and links ready to go. No delay, no confusion. Demos started immediately.

Every Room Running in Parallel

Each of the six rooms ran 13 demos back to back, with every team getting four minutes to show their project and answer questions from judges.

Each judge scored every project on four weighted criteria:

• Impact Potential (40%)
• Creativity (20%)
• Technical Difficulty (20%)
• Demo & Presentation (20%)

Beyond the main criteria, each prize track added its own: Best Devtool, Best Design, Best Infra, and the rest each had a track-specific criterion. Founder's Choice had custom criteria scored only by founders, and Most Viral tracked social engagement through embedded posts. Judges just scored what was in front of them. HackHQ handled which criteria applied to which track.

When demos wrapped, scores were weighted and aggregated automatically across all rooms, producing a ranked list for each prize track and one for the overall competition. Track winners were determined instantly, and the top 10 overall teams advanced to finals, where they pitched to the full audience. Nine winners were announced across seven tracks: Top 3 Overall, Founders Prize, Best Infra, Best Devtool, Best Design, Best Use of Real-Time Data, and Most Viral.

By the Numbers

• 62 of 78 submissions in a single hour. Teams rushed to submit at code freeze and HackHQ handled the spike without issues.
• 3,600+ individual scores across all criteria in two hours. 42 judges across six rooms evaluated all 78 projects through live demos.
• Semi-finals done by noon. Six rooms running in parallel, 13 demos each, all scored and aggregated into a single ranked list.
• Nine winners across seven tracks. All results calculated and ready for the awards ceremony.

With 18 sponsors, overnight catering, and a packed schedule, the organizers spent their energy on the hackers, not on wrangling scores.

About Browser Use

Browser Use is an AI browser automation platform that lets developers build web agents. A Y Combinator W25 company, Browser Use has 78,000+ GitHub stars and a growing community of 23,000+ Discord members. Their platform enables agents to navigate, interact with, and extract data from any website.