Kevin O'Leary x Emergent Launch $100,000 Builder Fest

We've partnered with investor and entrepreneur Kevin O'Leary to launch Builder Fest, a build challenge open to business owners across the US and Canada, with a prize pool of over $100,000.

The headline number matches our earlier contests, but the payout does not. Where the Fabrizio Romano and Raj Shamani challenges split their pools among the top tlhree, Builder Fest pays out to 100 winners. First place takes $50,000, second $20,000, and third $10,000, and every place down to 100th still wins cash. All 100 winners also receive Standard plan credit.

Spreading the pool this wide changes what winning takes. A polished demo that goes viral is no longer the whole game. With 100 places on the board, a genuinely useful tool that solves one real problem has a real shot.

The challenge is live now and closes on 31st August. If you're thinking about entering, don't sit on it.

What Builder Fest is

Builder Fest is a business transformation challenge, not a coding contest. The brief is narrow on purpose: take one real problem in your business, build software that fixes it on Emergent, and put it to work. Describe what you need, and Emergent's AI agents handle the code, backend, and deployment. No developer, no technical team, no months of waiting.

That narrowness is the point. The strongest entries in our past contests were not the flashiest apps. They were specific tools built around a single workflow that someone actually used.

How winners are chosen

Selection runs in stages, and the criteria reward substance over reach. Entries are first ranked by community upvotes, and the 200 most upvoted advance to judging. Those are scored against a fixed rubric to produce the top 100, and the 10 highest present at a virtual Finale on 24th September, where a Final Panel decides the top 3. You can browse the entries and upvote on the showcase page.

The rubric weights business impact most heavily.

Real, evidenced impact on a real business leads the rubric, while follower counts and social reach carry no weight at all. Concrete beats aspirational, so evidence your impact: time saved each week, follow-ups no longer missed, revenue that moved.

Why this matters

Business owners across the US and Canada still run on fragmented systems and manual work, largely because custom software has always been expensive, slow, and gated behind technical hires. AI removes that barrier. If you understand a problem clearly enough, you can build the fix yourself and see results in days rather than months.

Builder Fest is a reason to finally do it. The people who win will not be the best coders. They will be the ones who picked the right problem and built something worth using.

Who can enter

Anyone who runs, operates, or works closely with a business in the US or Canada. The only real test is whether you can describe a problem software could solve, not whether you can build it. Teams can enter too, with one person named as the primary contact.

Key dates

One thing to watch: deploying your app does not enter you. Submission is a separate step from your Homepage or Profile, and you are in only once you have both a confirmation email and a Submitted status.

Stay tuned to Emergent News for more on AI tools, launches, and what they mean for builders.