Current Project
Checkout: Building a Travel and Hospitality AI Ecosystem in NYC
Checkout is a one-day travel and hospitality AI hackathon taking place in New York City on August 8, 2026.
I am co-organizing the event and leading work across sponsorship strategy, company research, partner outreach, judge outreach, attendee qualification, and sponsor CRM operations.
The event has attracted more than 130 registered builders across four industry-specific tracks.
The four tracks
AI Trip Planning
Tools that improve travel discovery, planning, personalization, and booking.
Hotel and Hospitality Operations
AI workflows for hotel teams, guest experience, revenue opportunities, staffing, and operational decision-making.
Local Experiences
Products that help travelers discover, understand, and book experiences connected to local communities.
Sustainability and the Future of Travel
New approaches to transportation, responsible tourism, climate impact, and long-term travel infrastructure.
What I Am Building
My work focuses on turning the event into useful infrastructure for travel and hospitality companies, not just a one-day gathering.
I am helping build the systems used to identify aligned companies, qualify potential partners, manage sponsor and judge outreach, track follow-ups, understand attendee relevance, and create company-specific participation concepts.
My responsibilities include:
- Sponsorship strategy and outreach
- Sponsor and judge CRM design
- Company and contact qualification
- Warm relationship activation
- Founder and executive outreach
- Judge recruitment
- Challenge-partner concepts
- Attendee research
- Follow-up tracking
- Sponsor value positioning
- Sponsorship deck development
Building the Sponsor and Partner Pipeline
I built a sponsor and judge CRM in Notion to manage each company, contact, relationship source, participation fit, latest signal, materials sent, next action, follow-up date, and confirmation status.
The pipeline separates possible company involvement into clear roles:
- Sponsor
- Judge
- Challenge partner
- Prize provider
- Workshop host
- Product partner
- Attendee or recruiting partner
Each company is evaluated based on the outcome it could receive from the room, including product experimentation, customer discovery, recruiting, developer exposure, ecosystem access, or talent visibility.
Understanding Who Is in the Room
I reviewed more than 40 registered attendees using public information to understand their backgrounds, technical skills, industries, and possible relevance to sponsors and challenge partners.
This work helps connect company participation to actual builder interests rather than making broad claims about attendee quality.
Turning Company Goals Into Builder Challenges
The sponsor strategy is designed around specific company goals.
For each potential partner, I ask:
- Why does this room matter to the company?
- What product, hiring, customer, or ecosystem outcome could it receive?
- What problem could builders test or solve?
- What form of participation would be easiest to approve?
Potential participation can include judging, product challenges, prizes, workshops, recruiting access, product testing, or sponsorship.
What this project demonstrates
- Early-stage GTM
- Partnership sourcing
- Ecosystem development
- Event-based distribution
- Sponsor positioning
- Founder outreach
- Relationship-led growth
- CRM design
- Market research
- Community building
- Product challenge design
- Operational follow-through
Current Status
Checkout is scheduled for August 8, 2026 in New York City.
More than 130 builders have registered. The four tracks, sponsorship structure, event page, sponsor deck, outreach systems, and attendee research are in place.
Sponsor, judge, challenge-partner, prize, and venue conversations are still in progress. No company or individual should be presented as confirmed unless written confirmation has been received.