Before the day · Page 29
One challenge or four?
For you only
My default is one. One brief, four teams, four competing answers to the same question. That gives you the sharpest possible decision at five o'clock, because the judges compare like with like and the sponsor picks a direction, not a vibe.
There are honest exceptions. At Ionian we ran four challenges, because Spyros, the founder, treated the day as experimentation, a scan across product directions rather than one bet. That works, with a cost you should accept knowingly: every extra challenge divides the comparison. Four challenges means four separate one-team answers and a softer decision on each. One challenge means four answers to one question and a hard decision about it.
Decide what the company needs from the day, a decision or a map, and set the number of challenges accordingly.
| One challenge | A challenge per team | |
|---|---|---|
| What you get | Four competing answers to one question | A scan across four directions |
| The decision at 17:00 | Sharp: pick the strongest answer | Softer: a go/iterate/no-go per direction |
| Judging | Like against like | Each build against its own brief |
| Best when | One decision is stuck or expensive | A founder wants to explore the space |
| The risk | All four teams find the same local answer | Nothing gets compared, everything gets a maybe |
If you run multiple challenges, keep the shape identical: every brief still names a user, a context, and a goal, and every brief still passes the calendar test, because every brief still needs its five users at 15:30. Four challenges with four different user types quietly quadruples your recruiting. Read that sentence again before you say yes to a founder in scan mode.
The trade is always the same: the tighter the brief, the sharper the decision. The looser the brief, the wider the discovery. A private day buys a decision.