Dev Opportunity Radar #13: a16z Alpha, a $740K Hackathon, and an AI Agent Competition

TL;DR

Welcome back to Dev Opportunity Radar.

This is a weekly series where I share opportunities, resources, communities, and interesting finds that I come across, with the goal of helping people discover things they might otherwise miss.

This week's edition features the a16z Alpha Fellowship, RevenueCat Shipaton 2026, and the Kaggriculture AI Agent Competition, along with IBM SkillsBuild as a resource worth checking out.

If you're new to the series, you can also browse previous editions, search past opportunities, and explore Community Finds, Reader Updates, and Resources Worth Checking Out on the Dev Opportunity Radar website. I've also written a short post about why I built it. You'll find links to both at the end of this article.

This week's 🌟 Community Finds section features an opportunity shared by Konark Sharma (@konark_13). Thank you, Konark, for sharing the Agent Harness Hackathon. I always enjoy seeing readers help others discover opportunities they might otherwise have missed, and I hope this section continues to grow.

If you've discovered something through the radar, I'd love to hear about it. Whether you applied to an opportunity, attended an event, joined a community, completed a program, built something, or found a resource you hadn't seen before, I'd be happy to feature your experience in a future 💙 Reader Updates section (with your permission).

And if you've come across an opportunity, resource, community, program, event, or anything else you think deserves more attention, feel free to share it in the comments.

If I feature one of your 🌟 Community Finds in a future edition, I'll always make sure to credit you. If you discovered it, that recognition belongs to you.

Table of Contents

• ⚡ Quick Scan
• 🔄 Still Open From Previous Editions
• 📍 This Week's Opportunities
  • 📌 a16z Alpha Fellowship
  • 📌 RevenueCat Shipaton 2026
  • 📌 Kaggriculture AI Agent Competition
• 📚 Resources Worth Checking Out
  • IBM SkillsBuild
• 🌟 Community Finds
  • The Agent Harness Hackathon
• 💙 Reader Updates
• 👋 Until Next Friday
• 🌐 Dev Opportunity Radar Website

⚡ Quick Scan

Opportunities

Resource Highlight

Community Finds

📝 A quick note: I spend a lot of time researching and verifying every opportunity before featuring it in Dev Opportunity Radar. However, deadlines, eligibility, program details, and application requirements can change after publication. Before applying, please take a few minutes to visit the official program page, review the latest information, and confirm that you're eligible.

🔄 Still Open From Previous Editions

Before we get into this week's opportunities, here are a few from previous editions that are still accepting applications.

I've already covered these in detail, so I won't repeat everything here. If any of them catch your attention, you can find the full overview, eligibility details, and application links in the original edition.

📍 This Week's Opportunities

Here are a few opportunities I came across this week that I thought were worth sharing.

📌 a16z Alpha Fellowship

Who it's for: Technical students and recent graduates, generally within three years of graduating, who want to work at a fast-growing startup or try building their own company.

What stands out: The Alpha Fellowship gives you two options. You can join a fast-growing a16z portfolio company as a full-time software engineer, or you can apply through the Founder Track and get $20,000 in equity-free funding to start building your own company. The Founder Track can also lead to up to $250,000 in additional investment.

I wanted to include this because it's a pretty unusual opportunity for someone early in their career. You're not just getting another fellowship or a short course. You can either get a full-time engineering role at a growing startup or get funding to try building something yourself.

Another thing I like is that you don't need to already have a company or a complete team for the Founder Track. You apply as an individual, and if you already know who you want to build with, each person can apply separately and mention the others.

The fellowship itself is also very hands-on. It runs for eight weeks in person and includes a kickoff retreat, founder AMAs, small-group dinners, and access to the a16z speedrun community and events.

One important thing to know is that this is not globally accessible. You need valid U.S. authorization to work full time, and accepted fellows need to relocate for the in-person fellowship. I know I usually try to share opportunities that are accessible to people from different parts of the world, but I still wanted to include this one because the opportunity itself is too interesting to leave out. If you're eligible, definitely take a look.

Startup Track: Full-time software engineering role with salary and equity

Founder Track: $20,000 equity-free grant + up to $250,000 in additional investment

Fellowship: 8 weeks, in person

Who can apply: Technical students and recent graduates, generally within 3 years of graduation

Important: U.S. full-time work authorization is required.

Applications: Cohort 2 applications open in September 2026. Early applicants can submit now for priority consideration.

💡 Tip: You can apply to both tracks. If you're already building with a team, each person should apply separately and mention the other team members.

🔗 Learn More

📌 RevenueCat Shipaton 2026

Who it's for: Developers, students, indie builders, and teams who want to build and launch a mobile app.

What stands out: The RevenueCat Shipaton 2026 is a global online hackathon where the goal isn't just to build something. You actually have to launch a new app during the competition and use RevenueCat for monetization.

And the prize pool is pretty big. There is more than $740,000 in cash prizes, along with things like a Times Square billboard, media coverage, and a chance to attend RevenueCat's App Growth Annual conference in New York.

I wanted to include this because I like hackathons where you actually have to ship something people can use. Instead of building a prototype and stopping there, Shipaton gives you a reason to take the idea all the way to launch.

Another thing I like is that there are a lot of different categories, so you don't necessarily have to compete only for the main prize. There are awards for things like design, gaming, social good, growth, building in public, monetization, and a student-only Next Gen Award.

There are also sponsor prizes from companies like JetBrains, OneSignal, Replit, Samsung, Stripe, and others.

Prize Pool: $740,000+ | Format: Online, global hackathon

Build Window: August 1 – September 30, 2026 | Submission Deadline: October 1, 2026

Team: Individual or team participation

Who can participate: Ages 13–99, with some countries and territories excluded.

Main Requirement: Build and publicly launch a new app during the Shipaton window and integrate RevenueCat for monetization.

🔗 Learn More & Join the Hackathon

📌 Kaggriculture AI Agent Competition

Who it's for: Developers, students, AI engineers, machine learning practitioners, and anyone interested in experimenting with AI agents. Some Python experience will be helpful.

What stands out: Kaggriculture is a Kaggle competition where you build an AI agent that manages a virtual farm and competes against other agents on a live leaderboard.

Your agent has to make decisions over hundreds of turns, balancing things like farming, trading, expansion, resources, and changing market conditions to try to make the most profit.

I wanted to include this because it's very different from the Kaggle competitions you usually see. You're not just given a dataset and asked to build the best prediction model. You're actually building an agent that has to make decisions, plan ahead, and react to what is happening around it.

Another thing I like is that it gives you a way to experiment with agent design without needing to build a huge project from scratch. You're working inside a game-like environment, but you're still thinking about things like strategy, optimization, resource management, and planning.

And honestly, the farming part just makes it more fun than another competition where you're staring at a dataset all day.

Prize Pool: $50,000 USD ($5,000 each for the top 10 teams)

Format: Online Kaggle competition

Competition Start: July 29, 2026 | Entry Deadline: September 23, 2026

Final Submission Deadline: September 30, 2026

Team Size: Individual or team

🔗 Learn More & Join

📚 Resources Worth Checking Out

Not every useful find comes with an application deadline.

Here's one resource worth checking out this week.

IBM SkillsBuild

Who it's for: Students, recent graduates, and anyone who wants to build skills in areas like AI, cybersecurity, data, cloud, and other emerging technologies.

What stands out: IBM SkillsBuild is a free online learning platform with courses, learning pathways, hands-on learning, and digital credentials.

I wanted to include this because it's one of those resources that's worth bookmarking. If you're trying to learn something new alongside school, work, or a job search, there are a lot of different topics you can explore without paying for another course.

You can find content on things like generative AI, AI ethics, cybersecurity, data, cloud computing, and quantum computing, so there's a good amount to explore depending on what you're interested in.

Another thing I like is that it isn't just video courses. There are also hands-on labs, learning pathways, digital credentials, and virtual events.

Cost: Free | Format: Online | Languages: 20+ languages

Topics: AI, Generative AI, Cybersecurity, Data, Cloud, Quantum Computing, and more

Credentials: Digital credentials are available for selected activities and pathways.

🔗 Explore IBM SkillsBuild

🌟 Community Finds

One of my favorite things about this series has been seeing people share opportunities, communities, and resources that others might not have discovered otherwise.

The Agent Harness Hackathon

Shared by Konark Sharma (@konark_13).

Konark shared the Agent Harness Hackathon, a seven-day online hackathon from WeMakeDevs in collaboration with TrueFoundry.

The challenge is to build an AI agent using TrueForge, TrueFoundry's open-source agent harness. The idea is to build an agent that can actually take actions, connect to real tools, safely run generated code, and ask for human approval before doing something irreversible.

I wanted to include this because I like that it's focused on building agents that can actually do things, rather than just answering questions. You can build something like a code review agent, incident responder, research assistant, analytics agent, or come up with your own idea.

There are several categories to compete in, including Best Use of TrueForge, Best Code Quality, and Best UI. There are also prizes for the best blog and social posts.

The total prize pool is $10,000, including an NVIDIA DGX Spark, Mac Mini, iPad, and other prizes.

Format: Online, with an optional in-person event in San Francisco

Dates: August 24–30, 2026

Team Size: Solo or teams of up to 4

Prize Pool: $10,000

Submission Deadline: August 30, 2026 at 8:00 PM London time

Who can participate: Developers, students, builders, and anyone interested in AI agents.

🔗 Learn More & Register

Thank you to Konark Sharma (@konark_13) for thinking of the radar and sharing this with the community. It really means a lot 💙

I'd love for this section to keep growing.

If you've come across an opportunity, fellowship, grant, hackathon, conference, community, resource, or anything else you think more people should know about, feel free to share it in the comments.

If I feature it in a future edition, I'll always make sure to credit you. If you discovered it, that recognition belongs to you.

One small request: If you're sharing an opportunity, please avoid posting raw URLs directly in the comments. DEV sometimes filters them before I get a chance to see them.

A short description alongside the link makes it much easier for me to review and potentially feature it in a future edition.

💙 Reader Updates

I'm looking forward to this section gradually growing over time, and I'd still love to hear from you.

One of my favorite parts of writing Dev Opportunity Radar has been hearing from people who discovered something they otherwise might have missed.

If you discovered an opportunity through the radar, applied to something, joined a community, attended an event, or simply found a resource you hadn't seen before, I'd genuinely love to hear about it.

You don't need to have been accepted or have a big success story to share. Sometimes simply discovering the right opportunity at the right time is already a win.

If you'd like to share an update, feel free to leave a comment on this edition. With your permission, I may feature it in a future 💙 Reader Updates section and tag you so other readers can celebrate your journey too.

I hope this section gradually becomes a place where we can celebrate those stories together, one update at a time.

👋 Until Next Friday

Before I go, I just want to say thank you.

Every week, I spend time searching for opportunities, resources, and communities that I think deserve a little more attention. But one of my favorite parts of this series isn't the research. It's seeing what happens after an edition is published.

Seeing someone discover an opportunity, apply to a program, share a resource, suggest a Community Find, or come back to tell us what they learned reminds me why I started Dev Opportunity Radar in the first place.

The goal has always been simple:

Help people discover opportunities they otherwise might have missed.

Thanks to all of you, it feels like we're doing exactly that.

Whether you've been reading since the very first edition or this is your first time here, thank you for being part of the journey. Every comment, suggestion, and shared opportunity helps make this series better than I could build on my own.

If you ever come across an opportunity, resource, event, community, or anything else you think deserves more attention, I'd love for you to share it in the comments. And if Dev Opportunity Radar helped you discover something exciting, I'd love to hear that too.

Thank you for reading, for sharing, and for helping make this our radar, not just mine.

I'll be back next Friday with more opportunities, resources, and Community Finds.

Until then, take care, and I hope you discover something amazing this week 💙

🌐 Dev Opportunity Radar Website

If this is your first time discovering the series, you can explore every edition, browse opportunities by category, discover Community Finds, and catch up on Reader Updates on the Dev Opportunity Radar website.

👉 Website

I also wrote a short post about why I built the website and the journey behind it.

👉 Website Launch Post

Transparency note: I used AI (Gemini) to create the banner image for this article.

I also used AI to help with grammar and wording. English isn't my first language, and sometimes I know exactly what I want to say but struggle to find the right words. I used AI to help me express those thoughts more clearly, especially when explaining opportunities and making sure the information was easy to follow.

The research, ideas, experiences, perspectives, and decisions about what to include are my own. As always, I recommend checking the official links before applying, since deadlines and program details can change.