Community Hackathon NYC - Powered by Lovable x Phinite.ai x Tavily
Come build something ambitious with us at this vibe-coding hackathon hosted with our friends at Tavern.
This is an in-person sprint for founders, engineers, and builders who love shipping fast and turning ideas into real products.
Whether you’re hacking on a startup idea, experimenting with a new tool, or just want an excuse to build something cool with smart people around you - this hackathon is for you.
We’ll have a relaxed but high-energy environment where the focus is simple: build, ship, and learn.
Problem Statement
Build something that improves social connection and community.
Make it easier for people to meet, form friendships, find communities, stay consistent, and actually feel like they belong in a city like New York.
The Challenge Theme
Your project should clearly fit this theme:
Social connection
Community-building
Friendship and belonging
IRL meetups
Consistency and accountability
Helping people go from “we should hang” to actually hanging
Whether you’re hacking on a startup idea, experimenting with a new tool, or just want an excuse to build something cool with smart people around you, this hackathon is for you.
We’ll have a relaxed but high-energy environment where the focus is simple: build, ship, and learn.
What to Expect:
A demo on building AI agents using phinite for backend workflows (production mindset): tools, integrations, guardrails, and how to orchestrate multi-step actions.
A demo on using Tavily for web search for your AI Agents.
3 hours of high-energy building
Small teams or solo builders (your choice)
Mixer time to meet collaborators, co-founders, and future teammates
A strong community vibe with people actually working on real things
Demos at the end so you can pitch, get feedback, and get visibility
Prizes will include Tavern perks, merch, and special community access.
Judges:
Frank Albanese - Ex-YC | Ex-Antler | Co-founder & CTO at Tavern.
Sofia Guzowski - Head of Strategic Partnerships at Tavily, a NYC-based company focused on reliably connecting AI agents to the web. Previously, she worked on strategic partnerships at Microsoft in AI and emerging technologies. Outside of work, Sofia mentors founders through Techstars, and is passionate about tech-education.
Alime Karimova - Founder and Interior Designer working with tech founders and startup teams. Curator of tech events in NYC and the Bay Area. Winner, Antler × Lovable Hackathon.
Arpit Gupta - High-impact operator at the intersection of venture, founders, and large-scale ecosystems. Expert in
fund operations, CVC strategy, and accelerator scaling, with experience guiding founders across the U.S. and India.Srikant Lakshminarayan is a seasoned software engineer with a track record of building and scaling complex enterprise applications.
Celia Davis - Founder at Connext
Who Should Attend:
Founders and aspiring founders
Engineers (full stack, backend, frontend, AI)
Builders who like shipping fast
Anyone curious, ambitious, and hands-on
You don’t need a finished idea - just show up ready to build.
Sponsors
Phinite is an enterprise-grade agentic AI orchestration platform, we help builders create AI agents that can reliably run real backend workflows (APIs, databases, ERP/CRM integrations), with production-grade guardrails like audit logs, RBAC, and PII masking built in.
Tavily is the real-time search engine for AI Agents and RAG workflows.
Hosts
Somya Gupta - The face of NYC startup ecosystem
Tavern - A physical social network. Imagine WeWork but 100x better.
Connext - Elevating career accessibility through professional matchmaking. Find your Next Connection. Launching soon.
InterConnect - AI-powered career-building platform designed to turn student potential into real-world progress.