How do you innovate when you work at a bank?
It depends on which fintech you work for.
Varo Money is equal parts technology and banking. We are disrupting the banking industry with cutting edge technology, the mission of actually helping people to improve their finances, and we have teams with the right mix of tech and finance backgrounds. We are always looking for new innovative ways to change the way people deal with their finances. One of the ways we at Varo foster innovation is by conducting hackathons.
Hackathons are a fun way for the product and engineering teams to wear an “inventor hat” and build new products and features that they usually don’t get to work on during their regular work commitments. At Varo, the hackathon is a two days event during which the teams set aside their daily roadmap work and explore what’s possible.
Before the hackathon, individuals pitch their ideas to the whole company and form a team with others who are passionate about the same idea. During the hackathon, the teams will cancel all the regularly scheduled scrum ceremonies to give engineers the full potential to innovate. After the two days, the teams present what they’ve built to the judges and the entire company. We award winning projects cash prizes and recognize projects under different categories like Most innovative, Technical Excellence, Quick Win, People’s Choice — which is voted by the company.
We recently had our yearly hackathon and it was a massive success with 55 Varovians in 2 office locations taking part in it across 15 different projects. From this year’s iteration, we’ve got two hackathon projects that are already being worked on to get it to production. One of the projects that will soon hit our mobile apps is to increase the resiliency of the apps. This project will help solidify the experience for our customers in case of unexpected technical problems that might occur. Another call-out from this year’s hackathon, we had a new idea to start an internal interest group that has an ongoing goal to understand and increase financial inclusion. The self-interest group called #PeopleFirst meets once a month to discuss how Varo should continue to build a culture of social responsibility.
That’s only two ideas — we had many more, which were so good and have ended up on the product roadmap. Keep your eye on Varo for new feature releases in the coming months — and you’ll know that many of these had their genesis in the hackathon.
At Varo, we take innovation passionately, and that’s why our hackathon gets involvement from the senior leadership team, our CEO, and also our board members. The hackathon this year was so popular that to encourage further innovation, we are going to conduct two hackathons next year instead of the once a year occurrence that we have currently.
Our goal is not to work on these projects during hackathons and stash them never to see the light of the day. We have created a robust post hackathon process where each of the participating projects (not just the ones that won an award) gets assigned a sponsor from the leadership team. The sponsor works closely with the hackathon team to vet product-market fit, feasibility, roadmap capacity, etc. and help the hackathon team to take their idea into actual product roadmap to build and deliver to our valuable customers.
Are you interested in joining Varo and take part in the amazing innovation that happens day to day at Varo? Please check out our careers page.
Sundar Siva is a Senior Director of Engineering at Varo. He is passionate about mobile technologies and using them to solve real world problems.
