Hackathon 2026 wasn't just about improving LARA or internal processes. It was four days that perfectly captured what #nobullshit culture actually looks like once you experience it from the inside.
From my very first interview with Adam [our CEO], I had a feeling that Labyrinth Labs was not a company like others.
I joined, experienced the first discussions, [and first #nobullshit feedback but that is for another blog] I got to know the people and my feeling was confirmed.
This blog is not about what we build, how we work or how we hire. Even though those would be nice ones too. It's about the kind of company you only really understand once you're inside it, and gosh, how happy I am to be here.
I thought I already knew what made us special. Then Hackathon happened.
When our founders presented me with the idea of Hackathon [this wasn't the first LL Hackathon btw.], I was rather skeptical. Taking the whole company somewhere offsite so they could spend 4 days working on things there's no time for during normal work days felt pretty unrealistic to me. [I thought to myself, wait, where's time for fun, team building activities, or just casual chats? Will we just work?]
Companies can pretend to have an amazing culture, claim how wonderfully they get along and what great people they have. But try taking them somewhere offsite for 4 days and reality will show itself. We are a fairly diverse group of people, but everyone found something for themselves. And we got along just fine.
This time we headed [after quite a long selection process and personal walkthroughs of several venues, thank you Zuzi] to Penzión Siesta in Valtice [btw. amazing place, highly recommended: from the beautiful garden and great food all the way to their own wine].
I didn’t expect to do a lot of running, but our team proved me wrong. We managed to go running after 4 hours of sleep with Rišo and Hašiš every morning [well, except the last one, but the wine tasting is to blame for that], then go biking in the evening [Laura, Sima: my girls!], celebrate Mirko's and Sima's and Števko's and Zuzka's big days [congrats again!], through endless debates about the universe [hey Ati] or life itself [all of you guys], dance sessions to DnB music created by our Rišo [hey there Linky, Števko, Mirko, Ondra, Lauri, Kubo, Zuzi..], or playing Secret Hitler, which Danušo got from us for his birthday.. And did I mention the viking helm I brought for our one and only techno viking Stano?
We also played the LL quiz and LL game [created by me and Zuzi] and I was pleasantly surprised by how everyone joined in and had so much fun. [the footage of “Action movie with 7EUR budget”, captured by Odstrk, will be brilliant long after I've written this].
But now on a slightly different note: what were we actually doing there during the days?
The tech team disappeared to their laptops almost immediately after arrival. The whole time, somebody was discussing K8s, debugging Terraform, analyzing ArgoCD sync behavior or arguing about Helm.
A big part of this year's hackathon focused on improving LARA itself. Teams explored ideas around customer overrides, upgrade visibility, testing improvements, AI-powered platform knowledge, ArgoCD dry-runs, and generally making the platform easier to understand for us, our clients and AI agents.
Meanwhile, Sales and People teams were fully present in their workshops, role plays, and customer journey discussions. There were deep dives into real deals we won, deals we lost, where customers stopped responding, where we ignored obvious red flags, and how many problems could probably have been avoided by simply asking better questions earlier.
We believe that bringing whole team together at least 2 a year and spending time with each other is really required to work well as a remote based team. We never enjoyed "organized fun" before and we believe that letting people decide how they want to spend their time is the best option. This year we met in Valtice and worked on LARA, Sales and customer success.
- Adam Hamšík, CEO & Co-founder
The People team also explored automation opportunities around internal operations and hiring, because apparently after spending enough time around DevOps engineers, every single workflow starts looking like something that should be automated. And our #nobullshit.camp conference planning was happening everywhere all at once and we've moved to the next stage with already approved speakers and partners [yay!] More details coming soon [Danušo, thank you again for the drone footage, we will definitely use it!].
None of this would have been possible without a steady supply of good coffee [we finally brought enough, thanks Adam] and the man who made sure we could actually brew it anywhere in the highest quality possible [thanks Dojči].
Naturally, the only reasonable way to finish all this was with a proper wine tasting. [to be honest, we were hesitant at first, right Dojči?]
The wine tasting started professionally. It did not stay that way [and that is all I am going to say].
We had plans to visit the colonnade on the last day. We did not visit the colonnade [obviously].
To sum up, Cloud problems were solved, LARA is smarter, sales sharper, people ops more automated, us more connected, nobody ran out of coffee and.. Valtice survived us [hopefully]. We know how to work hard, party hard, have fun and how to combine it all together. And that is exactly the kind of hackathon Labyrinth Labs should have. [and I am looking forward to the next one already].
