Retrospective: My Experience Leading UofT Hacks Sponsorships

Sponsorships X Hackathons

Sponsorship is about sales and building pipelines. You learn a lot about selling yourself and the organization, which are beneficial skills for networking and building connections in the long run. In 2025, UofT Hacks 12, it was great leading the team as the VP of Sponsorship and I'll discuss my thoughts on the role and some lessons learned along the way. Definitely, one of the most difficult roles I have ever taken on, not the most enjoyable on the whole, but a role I learned a ton and respect greatly.

Marketing and Brand Presence

We focused on creating engaging marketing assets to build awareness and excitement leading up to the event. Legacy of bringing successful events welcoming great Canadian and international companies like Shopify, Cohere, RBC, and many others.

The first winner of UofT Hacks

Early Challenges – Team Leadership

As a first-time team lead, one of our biggest challenges wasn’t in the final funnel — it began much earlier. We underestimated the importance of the initial May–June period. In hindsight, stronger momentum and outreach during those first two months could have set the stage for a more robust pipeline later on. It was my first iteration of sponsorship cycle, but in handbook for future, they have notes and templates that should allow for more robust standardization of the sales process.

Sales – A Personal Learning Curve

It is a tough role full-disclosure. For the past two years, only two people made it to the final event out of 5/6 people. There is churn and not everyone is made for this role. As well, normally, presidents and sponsorship are not best buddies by the end but that’s largely because sponsorship our goal is to represent the sponsors, not hackers or organizers. Sponsors provide information last minute which can change plans. This is not a role that is easy, but through the learnings, you and your team will come out stronger.

Sales was a steep learning curve. It takes time to understand the process and even more time to get comfortable with rejection. One of the biggest takeaways? Sales is a numbers game — and the more you engage with it, the more efficient and confident you become.

Sales playbook I made

The goal of the sponsorship playbook is to make this process repeatable and accessible. Huge thanks to past sponsorship leads and the current team for helping shape it. We've captured lessons that will benefit future years and identified opportunities to streamline and improve the entire sponsorship process.

One ongoing challenge has been team retention. Historically, few sponsorship team members return year-over-year. This playbook aims to reduce onboarding friction, share collective knowledge, and ensure smoother transitions moving forward.

Assortment of hackathon projects

Team Impact – Numbers I'm Proud Of

Despite the challenges, the team accomplished some incredible things:

  • Over 120 projects were built and presented during the weekend
  • Sponsors from across industries: RBC, 1Password, Proctor & Gamble, Ubisoft, Google Deepmind, Google, DoraHacks, MLH, Redbull
  • All student run organization over 8 months of planning
Seeing sponsors was enjoyable at event

My event highlight was catching up with sponsors at the event that we discussed and bounced emails the past few months. Great to see them in-person and celebrate the event together!