The Layover That Launched a Hackathon: From Frustration to Innovation
by Patrick Ng and David Druker
A few weeks ago, Kustomer kicked off the fiscal year by gathering the entire company in Nashville for four days packed full of team and company-wide events. At the same time, the engineering team was in the midst of making some team adjustments, and worked closely with our product designers and managers to organize and align projects to strategic goals. The energy and excitement was invigorating and contagious; ideas were being hatched and its execution plans were being solidified as commitments, but this event isn’t the focal point of this story. As we wrapped up the kickoff event with an amazing dinner, little did we know the next 24 hours would be a series of cascading obstacles during our journey back home.
The morning of our departure from Nashville was typical and uneventful. After checking out of the hotel, a few of us went to grab a quick breakfast and coffee to chat about a few ideas before saying our farewells. We made our way to the airport, went through security and walked over to our gate. A significant number of our Kustomer Krew happened to be on this Delta flight from Nashville to NYC. We boarded, found our seats, and looked forward to getting started on the ideas borne from a productive week.
Right as our plane was about to pull away from the jet bridge, the pilot made an announcement:
Ladies and gentleman, we’re having some trouble activating the emergency slide so we’re going to need to call maintenance to take a look. We’ll have you on the way as quickly as possible.
While this wasn’t an aircraft model that has been in news lately, it was equally as concerning that a safety feature of the plane wasn’t functioning properly. The pilot followed up several minutes later:
Sorry folks, maintenance needs to take a closer look. We’re going to deplane everyone so that the maintenance crew can safely inspect the explosive charges.
“Explosive charges”? I didn’t think I’d hear those choice of words in an airplane announcement but alas, we would be delayed by 2 hours.
We found ourselves wandering into the Delta Sky Lounge and bumped into our CEO Brad and CTO Jeremy. Of course, it wouldn’t have been complete without the rest of our Krew who were also displaced from the plane. Brad sent word to anyone displaced to come to the Delta Sky Lounge. While we were able to get in without issue because of the delay, the next shift of Delta employees at the lounge gave them a hard time and enforced the guest policy. Luckily, we were all members and were able to bring in 2 guests each to get in all of our Krew.
We now found ourselves with a few hours to spare, how were we going to spend it? Kustomer is a fully remote company so this was a rare moment where we had in-person face time with both co-founders of Kustomer, of course we spent it hacking away! In true Kustomer spirit, when life gives you lemons, turn it into (not lemonade) a hackathon.
We started talking about some recent feedback from a few customers. It was very clear that there was demand for a native app experience beyond the browser application. We determined that this meant building a Progressive Web Application so we could move fast using our current UI, add in support for badging, push notifications, and a native mobile experience.
We pulled up some code and started to dig in. One thing led to another, and after several more delays, a scheduled noon departure ended up being a 7 PM departure. Hackathons have always been in Kustomer’s DNA — pre-pandemic, hackathons were an annual event. Through this experience, we were all reminded of what it feels to be physically working together towards an immediate common objective. What some might see as a 6-hour nightmare at the airport, our team seized the opportunity and had fun doing what we love.
As of February 13, 2024, the Kustomer production application is now installable from a browser and can be used natively by users.
PS: We’re hiring! Come work with us — check out our open positions!
