Drafts
To write and review the challenge before publishing it.
€0
Write a challenge freeIncludes
- MARA AI writes the challenge from a role or a problem
- You edit brief, criteria, deliverables and timeline
- No live challenge
How MARA works: who does what in a challenge.
MARA is software with AI for creating and running practical challenges: hiring challenges, hackathons and business games. MARA AI writes the challenge draft in minutes, and you edit and approve it. Your people evaluate the submissions against criteria fixed in advance and decide: MARA gives no scores and issues everyone who submits a verifiable certificate and a portfolio.
- Drafts are free and unlimited
- Nothing goes live until you approve
- MARA gives no scores and makes no rankings
What are the steps of a challenge on MARA?
The steps are the same for a hiring challenge, a hackathon or a business game. What changes is the brief, the length and the deliverables.
01
Paste a job description or describe the problem.
A few lines will do, or a document you already have.02
Answer a few questions.
MARA AI asks them to understand what you need.03
Pick one of two directions.
MARA AI proposes two ways to set up the challenge, and you keep the one closer to your goal.04
Get the full challenge.
Story, brief, rules, evaluation criteria, deliverables and timeline. The first draft arrives in a few minutes.05
Edit anything.
Every part can change. Read the criteria carefully: once you publish, they are fixed and the same for everyone.06
Set the prize and the deadline.
You do this before publishing. The prize can be an interview, an internship or a day with the team.07
Approve and publish.
Nothing goes live until you approve it.08
Let participants in.
Publish the challenge to the MARA student community, growing with partner universities, or keep it closed. A closed challenge is reserved for a university's students, who sign in with their university email, or for whoever receives the private link. A company that publishes for a partner university's students uses the code the university gives it. People take part alone or in teams, as the challenge rules say.09
Participants work in the workspace.
All submissions land in one place.10
Post announcements and answer questions.
Each challenge has its own announcements and its own Q&A, visible to all participants.11
Your people evaluate.
Whoever evaluates enters the workspace, sees the submissions and reviews them against the criteria set in advance. They update statuses in the participant list (the candidates list, in a hiring challenge). If you need to, you export everything to Excel or ZIP.12
Everyone who submits gets a certificate.
A verifiable certificate they can add to LinkedIn and a portfolio of the work they did, winners or not. Results reach participants through an announcement in the challenge, their updated status and an email notification.
MARA saves you writing time and keeps sign-ups, submissions, announcements and certificates in one place. Reviewing the draft, answering questions and evaluating submissions still take hours from you and your people, so block that time in your calendar before you publish.
The whole flow has already run at a real event. H-FARM's H-ACK "Robots in Action", a 24-hour hackathon held on 11 and 12 April 2026, ran end to end on MARA: 157 participants, 30 teams, 6 judges. The numbers come from the H-FARM College article. Read the H-ACK case.
Who does what in a challenge?
Four roles. MARA writes the draft and keeps the work organized. People make the decisions.
| Who | What they do | What they decide |
|---|---|---|
| MARA (AI and software) | MARA AI asks a few questions, proposes two directions and writes the draft. The software collects sign-ups and submissions, holds announcements and Q&A, exports to Excel or ZIP and issues the certificates. | Nothing. It does not publish without your approval, gives no scores and does not rank anyone. |
| You, the organizer | Describe the problem, edit the draft, invite participants, post announcements, answer questions, update participant statuses. | The challenge text, criteria, prize, deadline, who takes part, how teams form, who sits on the jury, who to meet afterwards. |
| Your jury | Enters the workspace, reads the submissions and evaluates them against the criteria fixed before publishing, the same for everyone. | Judgments and winners. |
| Participants | Sign up for a public challenge, or join a closed one with their university email or the private link. Work alone or in a team, ask questions, submit. | How to solve the problem, within the rules. Whether to show the certificate on LinkedIn. |
To prepare criteria, rules and a schedule before you open the builder, use the free templates.
What does MARA not do?
Some things you might expect from a challenge platform, MARA does not do. It is better to know this before you choose.
It is not an agency
It does not select or rank candidates, and today it does not propose candidates: your people decide. You can publish the challenge to the MARA student community, growing with partner universities, or keep it closed: reserved for a university's students, who sign in with their university email, or for whoever receives the private link.It does not evaluate for you
No automatic scores, no rankings of people, no advice on who to hire. MARA AI writes the challenge; it does not judge the submissions.It does not form teams
MARA does not match people: how teams form is set in the challenge rules, which the organizer decides.It does not replace your lawyer
You write personal data, prize terms and ownership of the submitted work into the challenge rules, which participants see before they join. Have a lawyer check the wording.
What happens on the participant side?
These are the questions participants will ask you, with the answers:
01Do they pay anything?
No, never. They work in the browser.
02Alone or in a team?
Whatever the challenge rules say, and you write them.
03Can they use AI?
The challenge rules say so, and participants see them in the challenge from the start.
04Who owns the work they submit?
Ownership of the work is set in the challenge rules, which participants see before they join. Everyone who submits keeps their certificate and portfolio.
05Are questions private?
No. Questions and answers are visible to all participants in the challenge.
06How do results arrive?
Through an announcement in the challenge, each person's updated status and an email notification.
07Do they get feedback?
From the challenge you can send individual notes to people who submitted. The criteria are already written into the challenge.
08What do non-winners get?
If they submitted, the verifiable certificate and the portfolio of their work. No wallet, no cost.
Which challenge do you need?
Start from your goal, one per challenge. If you want to hire and also collect ideas, run two separate challenges.
You want to see how a candidate works before the interview
A hiring challenge starts from the job description and gives you submissions you can compare, all evaluated against the same criteria.You want ideas from employees on a company problem
You share an internal hackathon through the private link. Anyone with the link can join, so send it only to the colleagues you want to involve, across departments if you like.You want to see how a team reasons over time
A business game runs for several weeks in stages, and each stage builds on the previous one.You are a university, or you want to work with a university's students
A university, or a single professor, can write challenges for their own students without a partner company. A university that works with partner companies gives each one a code. The company uses it to publish challenges for the university's students, who sign in with their university email. The university can also write the challenge for the company, which approves it before it goes live. Students never pay, and conditions for universities are agreed with the team.
How much does it cost?
You pay the subscription only while a challenge is live.
Launch
To publish your first challenge.
€67/month
Everything in Drafts, plus
- 1 live challenge
- MARA community, a university’s students or private link
- Workspace and participant submissions
- Evaluation by your people on criteria set in advance
- Verifiable certificates for everyone who submits
- Export to Excel or ZIP
Growth
RecommendedFor teams that run several at once.
€109/month
Everything in Launch, plus
- 3 live challenges at once
- About €36 a month per challenge, instead of €67
- Announcements, questions and candidates of every challenge in one place
EnterpriseOn contract
For large companies and programmes with many challenges live at once.
VAT excluded. No publishing fee and no fee per participant. Participants never pay. Details are in the pricing section of the home page.
Frequently asked questions.
01Does MARA use AI to score candidates?
No, MARA AI writes the challenge draft and does not grade submissions. Your people evaluate them against criteria fixed before publishing. MARA gives no scores, does not rank anyone and recommends no one.
02Do participants need a crypto wallet to get their certificate?
No. Each certificate is recorded on the Polygon blockchain as a non-transferable token, but MARA handles the recording. Participants need no wallet and pay nothing.
03Where do candidates come from? Does MARA pick them for me?
You can publish the challenge to the MARA student community, growing with partner universities, or keep it closed: reserved for a university's students, who sign in with their university email, or for whoever receives the private link. Your people evaluate and decide: MARA does not select or rank anyone, and today it does not propose candidates.
04How much does MARA cost?
You pay the subscription only while a challenge is live: Launch costs €67 a month for 1 live challenge, Growth €109 a month for 3 at once. Enterprise is on contract, and drafts are free and unlimited. Prices exclude VAT, with no publishing fee and no fee per participant.
05Can I change what the AI writes?
Yes, all of it: story, brief, rules, criteria, deliverables and timeline. Nothing goes live until you approve it.
Your next challenge can start today.
Write your challenge in a few minutes. Drafts are free.
No commitment. You pay only when the challenge is live.