From Prototype to Profit: Round 2

Welcome back to Prototype to Profit! This second round is a focused, fast-paced sprint designed to turn your AI prototypes into adaptive, revenue-ready products using Paywalls.ai.

👉 To learn how to integrate Paywalls please read our docs 📚

Why We’re Doing This
Paywalls.ai is building programmable proxies for AI products, a smarter control layer that sits between users and large language models.

Our mission: make it easier for AI startups to monetize, personalize, and control access to their endpoints without rewriting a line of code.

This proxy doesn’t just meter and charge; it can observe, adapt, and react, turning every AI interaction into an opportunity to learn and optimize. It can send data to analytics, receive contextual signals, and adjust pricing, routing, or logic in real time.

That’s the insight driving this hackathon: There’s no product-market fit without revenue, and no revenue without experimentation.

The main challenge is simple: Turn your AI prototype into a revenue-generating product.

This hackathon is a monetization race. Your goal is to design and build an AI-powered agent or tool that uses Paywalls.ai to generate real-world revenue. We want to see systems that not only act intelligently but also sustain themselves through seamless, effective monetization. Each submission must demonstrate how Paywalls.ai’s monetization layers can create a complete, real-world application.

💡 Suggested directions include:

1. AI agents that automate user flows and trigger dynamic payments.

2. AI assistants that connect to external APIs and monetize access through contextual logic.

3. End-to-end platforms that transform user actions into sustainable revenue streams.

4. Products that use Paywalls.ai to actively track usage and charge real users.

Focus on monetization potential, execution quality, and user experience. The best projects will prove how intelligent automation combined with smart revenue design can turn a prototype into a profitable product. The more traction you can show, the better your chances of winning.

Projects will be evaluated on four pillars, with a primary emphasis on monetization.

1. Monetization & Commercial Viability (Primary Factor): This is a race. We're looking for projects that actually generate revenue or convincingly prove they can. This criterion measures the project's ability to create real-world value. Submissions that demonstrate traction (e.g., test users, live transactions, a clear path to profit) will have a significant advantage.

2. Technological Implementation: How well is Paywalls.ai integrated? The project should demonstrate technical depth, reliability, and purposeful use of Paywalls.ai features (e.g., dynamic pricing, metered billing, access control).

3. Design & User Experience: Design is how it works. Each project will be assessed for its clarity, coherence, and ease of use. A simple, effective user flow that leads to conversion is key.

4. Creativity: Innovation thrives on originality. Does your project monetize an AI interaction in a new, clever, or unexpected way?