Alpaca x Conviction Trading Hackathon
Build a trading strategy. Compete for $2,000. You might even leave with a job.
What you can win
$2,000 Grand Prize — Best Performing Strategy
Build your strategy during the hackathon, then put it to work in paper trading. Strategies will remain active for two weeks following the event, with performance tracked on the Conviction leaderboard. The strongest strategy will win $2,000, with performance evaluated across returns, risk-adjusted performance, drawdown, and consistency.
Special Recognition — Most Creative Strategy
We’ll also recognize one of the most original strategies built at the event, based on the creativity of the thesis, use of signals and data, and how differentiated the approach is.
Career Opportunities at Conviction
We’re recruiting Conviction’s founding engineer directly from the builders we meet at the hackathon. Rather than relying solely on a traditional interview process, we want to build alongside exceptional engineers and see how they think, experiment, navigate ambiguity, and ship.
Career Opportunities at Alpaca
Get the chance to meet senior members of the Alpaca team and learn more about career opportunities and open roles at the company.
Explore open roles at Alpaca
Join Alpaca × Conviction (YC S25) in San Francisco for an afternoon of AI, trading, and hands-on building.
Alpaca is a global agent-first brokerage and clearing infrastructure that powers access to traditional and on-chain asset classes. Today, Alpaca supports over 10 million brokerage accounts across hundreds of fintechs and institutions in more than 50 countries, backed by $400 million in funding.
Conviction (YC S25) is building an agentic trading desk for everyday investors. Start with an investing idea, express it in natural language, turn it into a strategy, backtest and refine it, and create AI agents that can monitor the market around your thesis.
At the hackathon, you’ll use these tools to go from idea → strategy → backtest → paper trading in a single afternoon.
If you want to build at the intersection of AI, markets, and consumer fintech, this is one of the best ways to meet us.
Schedule
12:00–12:15 — Welcome + Challenge Kickoff
Meet Alpaca and Conviction, hear the challenge, form teams, and get ready to build.
12:15–12:45 — Alpaca: From Trading Idea to Real-World Execution
A conversation on the infrastructure behind modern trading, from market data and APIs to execution, backtesting, and AI agents.
12:45–1:00 — Conviction Demo
See an investing idea go from natural language to a backtested strategy and paper trading.
1:00–2:30 — Build Sprint
Build, test, and refine your strategy with support from Alpaca and Conviction.
2:30–3:30 — Final Presentations
Teams present what they built, what their backtest showed, and what they learned.
Judges:
- Alexandros Kyriakakis, Engineering Team Lead at Alpaca
- Tony Yamin, CTO of Conviction
- Aria Vikram, CEO of Conviction
The strategies go into paper trading on Monday and remain active for two weeks. Follow the Conviction leaderboard as performance unfolds in real market conditions. At the end of the competition, we’ll select the winner of the $2,000 Grand Prize.
What to expect
Hear directly from the Alpaca team
Hear from Tony Lee, Chief Brokerage Officer, Alpaca and Oscar Levy, Founder & CEO of River Markets, on prediction markets and the evolution of professional trading
Build and backtest a trading strategy in natural language
Learn how trading ideas move from thesis to real-world execution
Meet students, engineers, traders, founders, and fintech builders from across the Bay Area
Meet the Conviction founders as we recruit our founding engineer
Present what you built and see what everyone else came up with
No trading or coding experience required.
Bring your laptop and an idea.
We’ll take care of the rest.
Please register only if you are able to make it in-person in SF.
Official Prize Terms & Conditions and Disclaimers here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Yq9aP-uSogmzMHIRaFOAIQqeGcyQ3ULiywvzCCkZ02Y/edit?usp=sharing