A one-day build sprint: design a user-first brokerage on top of the Alpaca paper-trading API, go from idea to working prototype inside the timebox with AI coding tools, and defend it live to a jury.
The brief
Build the ultimate broker app on the Alpaca API. Teams designed a brokerage or trading experience on the Alpaca paper-trading API, using Lovable to get from idea to a working prototype inside the timebox, in the spirit of a modern consumer bank like bunq. The instruction was to pick a clear focus and execute it well rather than covering everything shallowly.
Scoring ran across eight objectives, each from 0 to 5, for a total out of 40: a live Alpaca paper account, a market view, a working order ticket, AI-driven trade ideas or portfolio management, portfolio intelligence such as risk metrics, an agentic trading agent, one creative feature outside that scope, and a written explanation of how the whole thing works.
How the day ran
- Walk-in and check-in.
- Grand opening and panel with bunq, Alpaca and Lovable, then team formation.
- Build starts. Open build, no grading during it — US markets open at 15:30 Amsterdam time.
- Build closes. Judges score every team on the eight objectives, live at the laptop rather than by upload.
- The top four pitch live, up to five minutes each.
- Winners, prizes and drinks.
Judging
The objective total selected the top four but did not carry into the pitch score, so a strong pitch mattered. Three jurors — two from the Alpaca team and one from bunq — each scored a pitch from 1 to 10, for a total out of 30. Highest total won.
The result
Teams shipped working brokerages in a single afternoon, several of them trading live paper orders through the Alpaca API by the time the build closed.
Winning projectCounterfactual — Team Shipfaced
A forward-looking broker on the Alpaca API that reveals what a portfolio is secretly exposed to, and simulates how a shock cascades through its dependency network before the market does.
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