​Build It. Test It. Prove It.

​Looks like a hackathon. Runs like a pressure test on you, not just your idea.

​Proving Ground runs a free three-day Sprint where judges push past the pitch. No script survives real questions about what you tried, what broke, and what you changed.

​Past teams have gone on to raise from 500 Global and Blitzscaling Ventures and join Berkeley SkyDeck and Confluent's accelerator. Those decisions were made independently of Proving Ground.

​What this is

​Most events judge what you built by the end. We watch the process and look past the end to what comes next.

​The team is almost everything: how you make decisions under pressure, how you handle a setback, how you treat each other when something breaks. You'll document that as you go. What we ask you to show, and how we question it, is built around behavior, not performance.

​Two tracks

​Discovery Track. Pre-market, no active customer contact yet. For founders seriously exploring a startup, including enterprise folks weighing the leap.

​Pre-Seed Track. In-market, already talking to customers. Ship something real, show what's changed, pressure-test your next move.

​The prize: the Street Test

​There's no cash and no trophy. Teams that clear the Sprint's scoring bar earn the Street Test: 30 days back in the real world, with no artificial deadline and no audience. It's a bar, not a placement, so any team that clears it gets in. This is where we see whether momentum was real or borrowed from the room.

​Teams that complete it receive a Proving Ground report card: a scored record of how you operated across the Sprint and the Street Test, scored on Pull, Momentum, and Founder Fit. It's yours to share with investors.

​It's the part a hackathon can't offer, because a hackathon ends when the event does.

​Schedule

​October 21 to 23, SAP Labs, Palo Alto.

​Wednesday: 9am to 8pm. Kickoff, building begins.
Thursday: 9am to 8pm. Full build day.
Friday: 9am to 4pm. Finals, live defense, deliberation, awards.

​Who should apply

​Pre-seed founders with live customer conversations.
Builders from startup or enterprise backgrounds ready to test an idea for real.
Product leaders, designers, and operators seriously considering the leap.

​University students: The commitment is all three days, Wed to Fri, 9am to close. Limited undergrad spots.