TL;DR: WP Engine’s “To the Nines” Hackathon Showcases Innovation and Team Collaboration
WP Engine’s 2025 hackathon, themed “To the Nines,” demonstrated how focused team efforts can turn innovative ideas into actionable solutions.
• 16 teams tackled challenges in sustainability, AI, scalability, and user-friendly design, creating tools like AI-driven assistants and green deployment processes.
• Awards highlighted creativity, including for projects improving infrastructure and accessibility, aligning innovation with company values.
• Entrepreneurs can apply the hackathon mindset, creativity under time pressure, diverse teams, and iteration, to scale their own startups successfully.
For practical startup tips, explore lessons in adapting to trends in Google simplified search. Embrace teamwork and push your business efforts “to the nines”!
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WP Engine’s Hackathon Takes Projects “To the Nines”
As a serial entrepreneur who has navigated the startup and scaling phases countless times, I know the deep value a focused and collaborative team can bring to the table. WP Engine’s 2025 hackathon, themed “To the Nines,” proves exactly that, with the perfect mix of innovation and community-building.
What made WP Engine’s hackathon exceptional?
WP Engine’s annual hackathon didn’t just bring teams together; it transformed mere ideas into actionable solutions that tackle real-life challenges. This event was anchored by a clear theme, a playful yet profound nod to reliability: “To the Nines.” Not only does this phrase signify top-notch quality, but in tech circles, “five nines” refers to 99.999% uptime reliability, a rare benchmark in the SaaS and hosting world.
The hackathon featured 16 teams and over 50 employees. Participants ranged from engineers and project managers to business strategists, ensuring a rich diversity of expertise. Together, they innovated across areas like sustainability, scalability, AI, and user-friendly design for WordPress websites according to WP Engine’s blog.
What were the awards, and who won?
The hackathon recognized projects with six awards, built to spotlight creativity, practical application, and meaningful impact. Each award was carefully judged, focusing not solely on the technical approach but the lasting value the project could deliver to users and the company’s ethos. Here is a closer look at the winners:
- Five Nines Award: Team WPE Sage developed an AI-powered voice assistant that streamlines sales and customer service while delivering faster ticket resolutions.
- Green with Envy Award: Team Route 99’s “All Roads Lead to Rome” reduced energy usage by creating a client-side routing model.
- Inclusive Innovation Award: Team WPE Compass built tools to centralize domain account information, improving accessibility for employees.
- Stitching the Future Award: Team GreenSwitch showcased zero-downtime blue-green deployment processes for better infrastructure scalability.
- Single Nine Award: A Monte Carlo-backed system from “The Usual Suspects” automates performance issue diagnosis and resolution.
- Jeremy Stamp of AI-pproval Award: Team “Page Against the Machine” delivered AI-driven insights into website performance, empowering WP Engine users with practical, actionable data.
By integrating creativity with technical excellence, each team left a tangible mark, shaping both WP Engine’s future offerings and its internal operating systems. Beyond team collaboration, successful projects had ties to sustainability initiatives and contributed to charities like No Kid Hungry and Central Texas Food Bank.
How does gamified collaboration strengthen businesses?
As someone deeply involved with entrepreneurial projects for decades, I’ve seen firsthand how collaborative environments like hackathons not only fuel rapid innovation but foster team cohesion. Here’s why gamified settings like WP Engine’s hackathon succeed:
- Speed of exploration: Teams work under time constraints, three days, in WP Engine’s case, to produce prototypes that mirror fast-paced startup culture.
- Real-time decision-making: Collaboration across disciplines leads to instant feedback loops, replicating the pressures of real-world problem-solving.
- Safe failure: The hackathon format provides a low-risk arena where ideas can be tested without repercussions, encouraging bold moves and creative risk-taking.
- Rewarding impact: Awards tied to clear, purposeful outcomes (like sustainability and accessibility) inspire meaningful connections between project goals and company values.
Gamification isn’t a gimmick, it’s an unlocked gear that accelerates team growth and cognitive discovery. Participants engage brains on multiple levels: emotionally (through teamwork), strategically (solving challenges), and socially (learning from peers).
What insights can entrepreneurs take away?
The lessons emerging from WP Engine’s hackathon apply directly to startup founders, particularly when navigating uncertain waters. Here’s what we can learn:
- Look beyond technical execution. The most impactful solutions focused equally on sustainability and accessibility as they did on performance.
- Time pressure breeds creativity. Constrained timelines challenge teams to refine ideas quickly without overthinking, a powerful exercise for startups.
- Build teams with diverse perspectives. Cross-functional collaboration, mixing engineers with marketers, delivers broader results than siloed approaches.
- Pivot when necessary. Hackathons show the beauty of adaptation. If the first iteration proves ineffective, teams are encouraged to tweak ideas or collaborate across groups.
Remember: Founders who embrace the hackathon-style mindset, acting with urgency, aligning ideas with core values, and being unafraid of iteration, find themselves better prepared for scaling projects into long-term successes.
Closing thoughts: Applying the lessons
Hackathons like WP Engine’s 2025 event are not just tech-focused gatherings; they’re incubators for future innovation and leadership growth. As an entrepreneur, I see immense value in translating these collaborative experiences into real-world business practices. Try replicating hackathon energy with your team, especially when tackling ambitious deadlines.
For those interested in leveraging WordPress to scale your startup, WP Engine offers rich resources and community-driven opportunities to grow your digital footprint. Explore their offerings through the WP Engine blog.
Take bold chances as a founder. Iterate relentlessly. And above all, embrace teamwork that pushes your goals “to the nines.”
FAQ on WP Engine's Hackathon: "To the Nines" Event
What is the significance of the theme “To the Nines” used in WP Engine’s Hackathon?
The hackathon theme "To the Nines” carries dual importance. It symbolizes unmatched reliability, as the term is related to the "five nines," or 99.999% system uptime, a top standard in the SaaS and hosting industries. It also references high-quality innovation ("dressed to the nines"). This theme encouraged participants to deliver top-notch projects that focused heavily on reliability and performance. By implementing AI, sustainable solutions, and scalable infrastructure, WP Engine continued to push its offerings closer to this benchmark. Learn more about how reliability trends affect startups in Startup News 2026.
Who participated in the WP Engine’s Hackathon, and how collaborative was it?
The 2025 hackathon had over 50 WP Engine employees forming 16 teams. Participants included engineers, business strategists, and project managers, forming diverse groups to ensure innovative cross-departmental collaboration. Each team worked on cutting-edge ideas in sustainability, accessibility, and AI application for WordPress platforms. This level of inter-disciplinary collaboration mirrors the recommended practices shared in Startup News & Tips from Search Central Live Zurich, where businesses are advised to embrace multi-skill integration for product innovation.
What were the key projects, and are any relevant for sustainability efforts?
A notable sustainability-focused project was “All Roads Lead to Rome” by Team Route 99, which won the Green with Envy Award. The team developed a client-side routing model aimed at reducing server load and energy consumption. This project not only supported WP Engine's hosting efficiency but aligned with global sustainability trends driven by customer expectations. Sustainability remains a key business strategy, as also highlighted in AI News & Startup Guide: Key Lessons.
What role did artificial intelligence play in the hackathon projects?
AI was central to several projects, including the Five Nines Award-winning voice assistant developed by Team WPE Sage. This AI innovation streamlined customer service by enabling quicker ticket resolutions and reducing customer friction points. Moreover, Team “Page Against the Machine” created an AI-driven tool for analyzing and optimizing website performance, specifically using actionable insights. AI's integration aligns with industry-wide adaptability trends, such as those explored in WP Engine's history of innovation reviewed in Google Prediction Market Ads Overview.
How did the hackathon emphasize accessibility for WordPress users and employees?
Accessibility scored high among evaluation criteria during the hackathon. Team WPE Compass earned the Inclusive Innovation Award for building centralized tools that integrate WordPress platform data to improve account access for both internal teams and users. Accessible design has increasingly become a shared priority among startups and enterprises to ensure inclusivity, an angle frequently addressed in SEO Maintenance Guide for Entrepreneurs.
Why are gamified hackathons effective for business growth and innovation?
Gamified environments like WP Engine’s hackathon boost innovation by fostering collaboration, creativity, and quick problem-solving under deadlines. The structured format encourages real-time testing of prototypes, low-risk trials, and rewards impactful results. For entrepreneurs, adopting a gamified mindset can improve team dynamics and align projects with foundational values, a practice reflected in lessons from multiple successful scaling startups mentioned in Startup News 2026.
What entrepreneurial lessons can startup founders borrow from this event?
WP Engine's hackathon underscores the power of integrating diverse skill sets, focusing on more than just technical execution. Founders can learn to implement sustainability and accessibility alongside performance, fostering user trust and longevity. Startups can also use the hackathon mindset to iterate quickly under time constraints, a strategy amplified in AI News & Startup Guide.
Which charities benefited from the hackathon outcomes?
Winning teams directed WP Engine’s philanthropy to several charities, including No Kid Hungry, the Central Texas Food Bank, and TreeFolks. This initiative ties innovation with corporate responsibility, encouraging companies to integrate social impact deeply into their value-driven strategies.
What is WP Engine’s long-term vision as reflected in this hackathon?
By focusing on pillars like AI, sustainability, cross-team collaboration, and system reliability, WP Engine emphasized its commitment to being a future-ready WordPress hosting solution. Adopting similar strategies, startups can ensure not only scalability but also alignment with global digital infrastructure standards. Learn more about entrepreneurial tech trends from DeepTech Startup Tips.
How can businesses replicate WP Engine’s hackathon success?
To create impactful events like this, businesses can:
- Define a clear, value-driven theme.
- Encourage interdisciplinary collaboration across departments.
- Focus on products that address real-world challenges.
- Infuse elements like gamification for team-building while rewarding meaningful innovation. For more tips on team agility, explore insights from Startup Essentials on SEO and Innovation.
About the Author
Violetta Bonenkamp, also known as MeanCEO, is an experienced startup founder with an impressive educational background including an MBA and four other higher education degrees. She has over 20 years of work experience across multiple countries, including 5 years as a solopreneur and serial entrepreneur. Throughout her startup experience she has applied for multiple startup grants at the EU level, in the Netherlands and Malta, and her startups received quite a few of those. She’s been living, studying and working in many countries around the globe and her extensive multicultural experience has influenced her immensely.
Violetta is a true multiple specialist who has built expertise in Linguistics, Education, Business Management, Blockchain, Entrepreneurship, Intellectual Property, Game Design, AI, SEO, Digital Marketing, cyber security and zero code automations. Her extensive educational journey includes a Master of Arts in Linguistics and Education, an Advanced Master in Linguistics from Belgium (2006-2007), an MBA from Blekinge Institute of Technology in Sweden (2006-2008), and an Erasmus Mundus joint program European Master of Higher Education from universities in Norway, Finland, and Portugal (2009).
She is the founder of Fe/male Switch, a startup game that encourages women to enter STEM fields, and also leads CADChain, and multiple other projects like the Directory of 1,000 Startup Cities with a proprietary MeanCEO Index that ranks cities for female entrepreneurs. Violetta created the “gamepreneurship” methodology, which forms the scientific basis of her startup game. She also builds a lot of SEO tools for startups. Her achievements include being named one of the top 100 women in Europe by EU Startups in 2022 and being nominated for Impact Person of the year at the Dutch Blockchain Week. She is an author with Sifted and a speaker at different Universities. Recently she published a book on Startup Idea Validation the right way: from zero to first customers and beyond, launched a Directory of 1,500+ websites for startups to list themselves in order to gain traction and build backlinks and is building MELA AI to help local restaurants in Malta get more visibility online.
For the past several years Violetta has been living between the Netherlands and Malta, while also regularly traveling to different destinations around the globe, usually due to her entrepreneurial activities. This has led her to start writing about different locations and amenities from the point of view of an entrepreneur. Here’s her recent article about the best hotels in Italy to work from.
