Four Tracks. Real Challenges. One Day.

Pick the track that excites you most. In the Energy & Sustainability and Social Impact tracks, our partners bring real-world challenges straight from their daily business, so you work on problems that actually matter to them. In the Open Track and AI as a Service, you choose the problem yourself.

Energy Track - by Wien Energie

Challenge 1 - Rethinking Decentralized Energy

Status Quo & Problem Statement:

The energy sector is becoming increasingly decentralized: More and more households and businesses are generating their own electricity, operating solar power systems and battery storage, charging electric vehicles, or managing their consumption flexibly. At the same time, new opportunities are emerging through energy communities, dynamic electricity rates, smart meters, and intelligent IoT solutions.

Challenge:

How can Wien Energie structure decentralized energy in a way that provides customers with tangible economic value and enables Wien Energie to develop a scalable and profitable business model?

We are looking for innovative products, services, or digital platforms that, for example, integrate photovoltaics, battery storage, electric mobility, energy communities, dynamic electricity rates, flexible consumers, and smart IoT devices.

Challenge 2 – Cooling as a Service: Comfort for a City of Renters

Status Quo & Problem Statement:

Vienna now averages around 35 days above 30 °C per year, five times as many as in the late 1950s. Cooling is becoming a basic need, but access to it is unequal. Wien Energie's district cooling network supplies roughly 300 large buildings, while roughly 78 % of Viennese households live in re nted apartments, where a fixed air conditioner means landlord approval, façade permits, high upfront cost and noise for the neighbours. Most people are left wit h a fan, or with nothing.

Challenge:

Design a Cooling-as-a-Service offering for Vienna: residents pay for cool hours, not for hardware. Work out who the customer is, what exactly is being sold, how it is delivered, installed and serviced across a short summer season, and how it is priced so that lower-income households can also afford it. Show us the business model, not the gadget.

Social Impact Track - by HobbyLobby

Challenge 1 - Making The Hobby Lobby’s Offer Truly Accessible

Free leisure courses can make a real difference for children and teenagers: they discover talents, build confidence, and find a place of belonging. Hobby Lobby offers more than 100 free courses across 15 locations, yet not every child who could benefit actually takes part. Barriers such as longer commutes, language, cultural or family reservations, and a lack of knowledge about local leisure structures might be some of the reasons why children who need it most are not yet reached by the program. What other barriers can be identified? Where do these barriers hide: in registration processes, in communication with children and parents, or in missing trust towards Hobby Lobby and its course leaders? How could they be removed, and which incentives or institutional partnerships could help? Any solution must work without additional financial burden for families.

Challenge 2 - Building a Broad, Committed and Connected Community

Hobby Lobby's free courses are led by volunteers who share their passion with children and teenagers on a weekly basis. But many people who are eager to support the cause of Hobby Lobby cannot commit to a fixed weekly slot because of varying reasons. How can we reach these people and turn their initial interest and motivation into reliable, occasional engagement? How could that engagement look like? And when it comes to community building and lasting engagement - which personal forms of outreach make people feel seen from the first contact? What communication and tools are needed to build relationships and commitment, while keeping the effort manageable for the organization, for example when one coordinator looks after a community of up to 500 volunteers and still wants to stay personal and trusted?

Challenge 3 - Lasting Impact: Bridging the Gap between the Youth Leaders Program and Adulthood

In Hobby Lobby's Youth Leaders Programme, former Hobby Lobby course participants can take on real responsibility as co-course-leaders, develop their skills while being a role model for younger children, and receive support and mentoring during the one-year programme. But once the programme ends at ages 14-16, school, training, place of residence, and available time often change, and many young people drift away from the community. How can they stay connected to Hobby Lobby and actively shape their own next chapter within it? Together, develop a perspective for Youth Leader alumni and a model that works even when young people cannot yet predict how much time they will have after transitions in their education. The solution should offer genuine responsibility, personal growth and fun without overloading their life plans with obligations. Ideas could build on the brainstorming from our Youth Advisory Board (consisting of former Youth Leaders) - such as mobilizing them for mentoring, event coordination, content creation, and participation in decision-making. Feel free to think beyond that!

AI Track

AI is one of the most powerful tools of our generation. The real question is what we build with it. In this track, you start with a big problem, not with a cool model. Think global, aim high, and use AI to make a solution possible, affordable or scalable that couldn’t exist without it. Bring your own idea or take on our challenge.

Challenge 1: One Goal, One Moonshot

Pick a UN Sustainable Development Goal and move it forward with AI.

The 17 Sustainable Development Goals are the world’s to-do list, from ending hunger and ensuring quality education to climate action and reduced inequality. Most of these goals are far behind schedule. Your task is to pick one goal, narrow it down to a concrete problem and design an AI-powered service that makes a measurable difference. Show us who benefits, how impact is measured and how the service sustains itself financially. We’re not looking for the smartest algorithm. We’re looking for the boldest idea that could actually work.

Open Track - Bring or Find your own Idea

Some of the best startups begin with a problem the founders simply couldn’t stop thinking about. That's what the Open Track is for. Bring the idea you’ve been carrying around for months, the side project you never had time for, or the problem that annoys you every single day, and turn it into something real.

There’s no set topic and no partner brief. You decide what to build and for whom. It could be a B2B service, a new kind of marketplace or something nobody has thought of yet. What matters is that you solve a real problem for real people and can show why your solution beats what’s out there.

No idea yet? No problem. Come anyway, join a team on the day, or find inspiration in the conversations around you.