PressureCookerStartup hackathon
with Give(a)Go
Pressure Cooker
Part of Dublin AI Week
From idea to pre-seed in a week.
You have three weeks to put a team together, find an idea worth a week of your life, do enough research to know whether it’s real, and apply. If you get in, you have a week to build and launch a new company. If you’re one of the three finalists, you get to present at the Rebase closing party on Thursday in front of 200 founders and 100 investors, and a shot at a €100,000 investment.
Pressure Cooker is run by Baseline with Give(a)Go. One team wins a commitment from Baseline to invest €100,000 in their pre-seed round.
You apply as a team of 2-4. Every founder must be 18 on or before Wednesday 7 October 2026. The company must be new: nothing built, sold, incorporated or funded before 4 September.
Applications 4-18 September, Challenge 2-8 October, Dublin
Run by Baseline with Give(a)Go, as part of Dublin AI Week.
The week runs as one path through four stages: idea, then build, then present, then raise.
- IDEA
- BUILD
- PRESENT
- RAISE
What you have to do during the week
Build. Bring it to market. Come back with evidence.
The build runs from 18:00 on Friday 2nd October to 18:00 on Tuesday 6th October, kicking off and ending up in Baseline. Every team will have to do all of the following.
Build a product and ship it.
Live, and usable by someone who isn’t on your team.
Bring it to market.
Put it in front of the people it’s for and ask them to use it or buy it.
Come back with evidence.
New users signed up, or signed letters of intent from customers, or both.
Paid customers get bonus points. Money is the clearest signal there is.
Who can enter
You apply as a team. A minimum of 2, maximum of 4 people.
We’d expect most of the people applying to be employed somewhere, or between things, or tinkering on evenings and weekends. That’s fine. That’s exactly who this is for. If you’re employed, read your contract.
Someone who can ship, and someone who can sell.
Both jobs are full-time for a week. If one person is trying to do both, one of them isn’t getting done.
Everyone gives the whole week.
If someone can only do evenings, then they’re not a co-founder.
Pick people you’ve worked with before.
Or at least argued with. A week under pressure is not the time to find out how someone handles stress.
Have the awkward conversations now.
Who’s CEO. How the equity splits. Who’s willing to leave their job if this works, and who isn’t.
Domain knowledge is underrated.
A team where someone has spent five years inside the problem can be an unfair advantage.
What counts as new
- It didn’t exist before 4th September 2026.
- No product and no customers before 4th September.
- No company incorporated around it, and no funding of any kind in place. No angels, no grants, no friends and family.
- Between now and 2nd October: talk to prospective customers, line them up, set up your tools and accounts. But don’t build the product and don’t take money.
Coming up with the idea
You’re not picking a company you’ll run for ten years. You’re picking something you can ship in a week.
You’re picking something you can build, ship and get initial traction in a week, and that narrows things a lot.
Start with a problem you’ve seen up close.
Your job, your industry, something you’ve watched someone struggle with every week. You don’t have time to learn a market.
The customer has to be able to say yes on or before Wednesday.
That rules out anything that needs a procurement process, a regulator, hardware, a marketplace, or a six-month sales cycle.
Small and sharp beats big and vague.
A narrow product that ten people pay for on Tuesday is a far better result than a platform nobody has finished by Wednesday.
Make it big, long term.
The first product should be narrow, but the narrow thing has to be a door into something much bigger. Venture returns need that.
Know who has the budget and the pain.
Not “SMEs” or “marketing teams”. A specific person with a specific job who feels the problem weekly and can spend money on it.
Be prepared to throw it away.
Between now and the 25th, the research should be capable of killing the idea. If it isn’t, you’re collecting reassurance, not doing research.
How it works
Four moves from application to the Rebase closing party.
- 01
Apply
Applications open on Friday 4th September and close on Friday 18th September.
- 02
Selected
Up to 10 teams are selected. Teams will be notified by 21st September, with a 48-hour window to accept.
- 03
Build
The competition runs from 18:00 on Friday 2nd October, as part of Dublin AI Week, to 18:00 on Tuesday 6th October.
- 04
Present
Three finalists are chosen on Wednesday and present on the evening of Thursday 8th October at the Rebase closing party.
Every day:each team posts a short update, what you shipped, what you learned, what’s next, in a shared WhatsApp. Momentum is most of what we’re judging, and the daily updates are how we’ll see it.
What we’re looking for in the finalists
We’re not judging the design, the deck, or the polish.
We are judging whether it’s a company we could fund. Beyond that, we’re judging what you did with a week.
- 01
Speed
How quickly did you get something live? A rough product in front of real people on Saturday beats a better product in front of them on Tuesday.
- 02
Iteration
How many times did you change something because of what a customer said or did? Teams that ship once and then polish are easy to spot.
- 03
Momentum
How did the week progress? A team that’s accelerating on Wednesday is probably more interesting than a team that peaked on Sunday.
- 04
Urgency
Did you do the uncomfortable things? The cold calls. The demo before it was ready. Asking someone for money and sitting through the silence.
- 05
Evidence
In ascending order of weight: sign-ups, active users, signed letters of intent, paid customers. Quality over volume.
- 06
The story
Can you tell us, clearly and honestly, what happened, what worked, what didn’t, and what you’d do next? This will not be a pitch.
Doing whatever it takes to win is exactly the attitude we want, within the rules. Fake users, borrowed customers and bought traffic aren’t hustle. They’re disqualification.
The prize
Baseline will commit to invest €100,000 in the winning team’s pre-seed round.
The prize
€100,000
Baseline will commit to invest €100,000 in the winning team's pre-seed round. We recommend doing it on a SAFE, and we’ll help with putting the fundraising process together, as well as warm introductions to experienced angels and pre-seed investors across Europe.
- It’s a commitment to invest, subject to the usual: a company being set up, the team that won being the team we invest in, and our standard investment of €100,000.
- The investment is for a team going full-time on the company.
- The commitment will stand for until 31st December, at which point if no company has been incorporated, or no pre-seed fundraising process has been initiated, the commitment will be withdrawn.
- Baseline picks the winner. It’s our call, as partners in the fund.
- There’s no fee to enter. Baseline takes no equity, no IP and no rights of any kind for taking part.
- The other two finalists shouldn’t feel hard done by. There’ll be a hundred investors in the room who’ve just watched you do more in a week than most companies they meet have done in a few months.
FAQ
If your situation doesn’t fit neatly into the rules, ask.
We’d rather answer a question in September than lose a good team over a misunderstanding.
Can I enter on my own?
No, co-founders only. While we are, generally speaking, open to investing in solo founders, in the case of this sprint, a solo founder would be at a disadvantage to teams of co-founders.
I've been thinking about this idea for a year. Is it still new?
Yes, if there's nothing built, nothing sold, no company and no money. Thinking is allowed. Head starts in product, customers or funding are not.
Can we talk to customers / write code before 2 Oct?
Customer conversations, yes. Writing product code, no. Research, wireframes, tooling accounts and tooling configuration are all fine. A working product on Friday morning is a head start, and will get you disqualified. No money changes hands and no product ships before the build starts.
When will we hear whether we're in?
21 September 2026. Selected teams then have 48 hours to accept.
What are the terms of the €100,000?
We'll invest on a standard SAFE at a cap / discount of your choosing, as part of a pre-seed raise which will include other investors.
Does Baseline take anything for us taking part?
No. No equity, no IP, no fees.
Do we have to quit our jobs if we win?
The investment is for a team going full-time on the company. If the winning team doesn't want to leave their jobs, then there isn't an investment to be made.
Writing an application that gets through
Write it yourself. Do the research. Be specific.
The application is the first test of whether you’re the kind of team that does the work.
Write it yourself. Do the research. Be specific. Tell us how you’ll sell. Keep it short.
Applications close 18 September 2026 at 23:59 in Dublin.