sprintd
Past sprint9-11 October 2026 · Bluelion, Zurich

sprintdZurich

The first sprintd innovation sprint. Two real cases, 36 hours, 13 projects.

45
builders
15
teams
13
projects
36
hours
The room filled for the kickoff
Final pitch: Sherlock Phones
The winning team on stage in a cloud of confetti, holding the 1st place cheque, next to the jury.
Sun 13:11

Fri 17:10

The cases were revealed.

Two companies walked on stage with a problem they had not solved yet.

Equans Switzerland presented its case

Equans Switzerland

How does a public tender become a priced offer, without a week of manual work?

“We deliberately set the bar high. We wanted to go beyond a prototype and build something an estimator could actually work with. What the teams managed to build in just 36 hours went beyond our expectations.”
Equans Switzerland

Case partner

LinkedIn
BanTender · SPAM²Case winner
Inventx × Outcept presented theirs

Inventx × Outcept

Can every bank advisory call be checked for fraud and compliance, instead of a sample?

“Swiss German fraud detection sounds like months of development. At sprintd Zurich, 5 teams needed one weekend for it. These approaches are now going into the MVP.”
Outcept

Case partner, with Inventx · translated

LinkedIn
Sherlock Phones · Sodium SecureCase winner

Fri 18:14

Teams formed over dinner.

45 builders, most of them strangers at five o'clock. By the end of dinner: 15 teams.

Dinner
Dinner
Teams found each other
Teams found each other

Fri 23:49

Then they built.

Through the night, through Saturday. Mentors walked the tables, the jury stayed out of sight.

“The cases from Inventx AG x Outcept and Equans Switzerland gave the teams some great real-world challenges to work on, and it was amazing to see how quickly the ideas developed over the day.”

Silvan Häfeli

Mentor

LinkedIn
  1. First night, first build
    First night, first build
  2. Lunch at the table
    Lunch at the table
  3. Heads down
    Heads down
  4. Debugging together
    Debugging together
  5. Team photo before the pitches
    Team photo before the pitches
  6. Pizza, then pitch
    Pizza, then pitch

Drag or scroll →

Sun 12:13

Final pitches.

13 projects. The finalists pitched live, with a working demo, to the jury and both case partners.

Final pitch: Sherlock Phones
Final pitch: Sherlock Phones
Final pitch: Sentinel
Final pitch: Sentinel
The jury listened
The jury listened
“By Sunday, the teams were presenting solutions of remarkable quality, combining deep AI expertise with a strong focus on real business value.”

Elke Arend-Heidbrinck

Jury

LinkedIn

Sun 13:11

The podium.

Ranked overall by the jury across both cases.

  1. 49/60
    case calls classified correctly
    0/28
    false alarms on clean calls
    Measured by the team on the case recordings · See the results on GitHub

    Sherlock Phones

    02

    Sodium Secure

    Swiss German bank calls, checked for fraud and compliance. Self-hosted, no cloud API.

    Inventx × Outcept caseCase winner

  2. BanTender

    01

    SPAM²

    From tender to priced offer.

    Equans Switzerland caseCase winner

  3. Favon

    03

    Favon

    Tenders in, clear air out.

    Equans Switzerland case
Full results on the platform

Afterwards

What they posted.

Public posts by partners, jury, mentors and builders. Every quote links to its source.

Five teams took on our case with Inventx AG, and every single one delivered. That says a lot about the builders you brought together.

Thaddeus Zambellis

Case partner, Inventx × Outcept

LinkedIn
From Friday's welcome to Sunday's pitches, the venue did what it does best: turned ideas into working products.

Bluelion

Host venue

LinkedIn
Thank you for the long nights, the sharp ideas and for making 36 hours feel like a sprint we'd happily run again.

Builder, team Favon

LinkedIn
Thank you for trusting us with a case at the very first edition. From the first briefing to the final pitches, we always felt in good hands.

Thaddeus Zambellis

Case partner, Inventx × Outcept

LinkedIn
A number nobody can trace is a number nobody will use.

Builder, team Ctrl+Free

LinkedIn
36 hours, one 200+ page tender, and a tool that gets bid teams to a first price they can trust. So proud of this team

Builder, team Favon

LinkedIn
Over one intense weekend we built an AI prototype combining speech recognition, LLM-based fact extraction, deterministic policy rules and explainable compliance decisions.

Builder, Inventx × Outcept case

LinkedIn
Thank you Sprintd for making your first hackathon my very first one. What a weekend, full of learning

Builder, team Typescript

LinkedIn
Confetti nearly gave us a heart attack, but we did have a blast!!

Builder, team SPAM²

LinkedIn
What can happen when you give talented people AI tools and a real-world problem to solve? This weekend, I got the answer.

Elke Arend-Heidbrinck

Jury and mentor

LinkedIn
The exchange with participants, mentors, organisers and fellow jury members was incredibly rewarding.

Elke Arend-Heidbrinck

Jury and mentor

LinkedIn
Looking forward to the next innovation sprint by sprintd.

Elke Arend-Heidbrinck

Jury and mentor

LinkedIn
Happy to have supported a few teams on their problem-solution fit and helped them sharpen their story for tomorrow's pitch.

Silvan Häfeli

Mentor

LinkedIn
After our talk, I was sure the teams would get the support they needed.

Thaddeus Zambellis

Case partner, about the mentors

LinkedIn

Drag or scroll ↔

The partners of sprintd Zurich.

Case partners

Supporting partners

  • Cloud credits, GPUs and technical mentoring

  • API credits for every builder

  • Claude API credits for the builders

  • Cloud Pro for every builder

  • Supports the builders with credits

  • Keeps the builders hydrated while doing something good

Co-host

Location

Join sprintd