Creator Economy Hack - powered by You.com

📋 Event Description

Creators are the fastest-growing small businesses on the internet, and most of them still run on spreadsheets, DMs and vibes. Come build the tools that fix that.

Join GenZtea and localhost:nyc for a one-day, in-person hackathon where builders and creators team up to ship AI products for the creator economy, powered by You.com's real-time web search APIs.

Problem Statement

Every creator is a one-person media company: researcher, writer, editor, marketer and sales team. The tools haven't caught up. Build an AI product that helps creators make better content, grow faster, or get paid, using You.com to ground it in what's happening on the internet right now.

The Challenge Theme

• Idea to Post: turn a voice note, a messy idea or a link into a post, script or thread, informed by what's trending right now
• Trend Radar: spot what's about to blow up in a niche and tell creators what to make before everyone else
• Creator Business: brand deal finders, sponsor pitch writers, rate card builders, media kits that write themselves
• Research Desk: research agents for video essays, podcasts and newsletters, with real citations so creators never post something false
• Anything else that helps creators make, grow or get paid

What to Expect

• A kickoff demo on building with the You.com APIs (search, research and live web context for your app)
• 6 hours of high-energy building
• Builder + creator teams: creators from the GenZtea community join teams, bring real problems and test your product live
• Teams of 2 to 4, or come solo and we'll match you
• Food, drinks and good energy all day
• Live demos at the end in front of creators and investors.

Prizes

• 🥇 1st Place: $500 cash
• More prizes and You.com API credits to be announced

To qualify, every project must use the You.com API, live in a public GitHub repo, and be shared in a demo post on LinkedIn or X tagging You.com, localhost:nyc and GenZtea.

Judges

• TBD

Who Should Attend

• Creators who want to build the tools they wish they had
• Engineers (full stack, backend, frontend, AI)
• Founders and aspiring founders in media, consumer and creator tools
• Designers and product people who ship fast
• Anyone curious, ambitious and hands-on

You don't need a finished idea. Just show up ready to build.

Sponsors

• You.com is the leading AI search infrastructure — built for developers. Our APIs let you build intelligent agents and applications that use live, factual data from the web, news, and research, in real time. With just a few lines of code, you can power your LLMs with up-to-date, citation-backed results instead of static training data.

More sponsors to be announced. Want to sponsor? Email [somyag00@gmail.com]

Hosts

• localhost:nyc: Making NYC the biggest startup ecosystem in the world.
• GenZtea: A community for Gen Z founders, creators and investors.