Welcome to the Proof of Usefulness Hackathon spotlight, curated by HackerNoon’s editors to showcase noteworthy tech solutions to real-world problems. Whether you’re a solopreneur, part of an early-stage startup, or a developer building something that truly matters, the Proof of Usefulness Hackathon is your chance to test your product’s utility, get featured on HackerNoon, and compete for $150k+ in prizes. Submit your project to get started! Welcome to the Proof of Usefulness Hackathon spotlight, curated by HackerNoon’s editors to showcase noteworthy tech solutions to real-world problems. Whether you’re a solopreneur, part of an early-stage startup, or a developer building something that truly matters, the Proof of Usefulness Hackathon is your chance to test your product’s utility, get featured on HackerNoon, and compete for $150k+ in prizes. Submit your project to get started! Proof of Usefulness Hackathon spotlight Proof of Usefulness Hackathon spotlight Proof of Usefulness Hackathon Proof of Usefulness Hackathon $150k+ Submit your project to get started Submit your project to get started We sat down with Haviva Fiskus to learn more about Quiet Cost, an early-stage diagnostic tool aimed at identifying hidden revenue leakage in businesses. Quiet Cost provides structured assessments to translate hidden friction into estimated financial impacts, prioritizing the highest-cost issues for founders and executives. Quiet Cost What does Quiet Cost do? And why is now the time for it to exist? Quiet Cost identifies where a business is quietly losing revenue due to outdated decisions, inefficient processes, misaligned messaging, and slow execution. It runs a short, structured assessment, translates hidden friction into estimated financial impact, and ranks the highest-cost issues to fix first. It’s built for founders, CEOs, COOs, and revenue leaders who already have data but lack clear visibility into where value is leaking. Now’s a good time for Quiet Cost to exist because businesses are increasingly focused on operational efficiency and stopping invisible revenue leaks without committing to long, expensive implementation cycles. Who does your Quiet Cost serve? What’s exciting about your users and customers? Quiet Cost gives leaders decision clarity instead of more data. It turns vague internal friction into concrete, prioritized business risks with an estimated financial cost, so attention and resources go to what actually matters. The real value is speed, focus, and avoided loss by catching expensive problems early, before they compound into missed revenue, wasted effort, or stalled growth. What technologies were used in the making of Quiet Cost? And why did you choose the ones most essential to your tech stack? To build Quiet Cost, we primarily utilized Lovable, an AI-powered software development platform. We chose this tool because it allowed us to rapidly prototype and test our core diagnostic logic without getting bogged down by traditional, time-consuming development cycles. What is the traction to date for Quiet Cost? We recently launched the app and are currently in the initial market validation phase. So far, Quiet Cost has been shared privately with professional connections to gather targeted feedback and rate the user experience before rolling it out to a wider audience. Quiet Cost scored a 34 proof of usefulness score (https://proofofusefulness.com/report/quiet-cost) Quiet Cost scored a 34 proof of usefulness score (https://proofofusefulness.com/report/quiet-cost) https://proofofusefulness.com/report/quiet-cost What excites you about this Quiet Cost's potential usefulness? I can give you a two-pronged answer: I can give you a two-pronged answer: From a practical standpoint: What stands out is how directly this targets a problem most companies know exists but struggle to isolate: slow, invisible value loss. The concept doesn’t depend on perfect data, deep integrations, or long implementation cycles. A five-minute diagnostic that surfaces expensive blind spots is immediately actionable, which makes the tool useful on day one rather than after months of setup. That kind of immediacy tends to drive real usage instead of passive interest.From a business perspective: The positioning is strong because it sits above crowded categories like analytics and productivity. You’re not competing on charts or features—you’re selling faster, clearer executive judgment. If the app consistently identifies even one issue that saves or unlocks measurable revenue, its ROI is easy to prove and pricing power follows. It also opens multiple expansion paths — recurring assessments, team-level diagnostics, benchmarking across companies — without needing heavy infrastructure. In short, the value proposition is simple to understand, expensive to ignore, and defensible if the scoring remains credible. From a practical standpoint: What stands out is how directly this targets a problem most companies know exists but struggle to isolate: slow, invisible value loss. The concept doesn’t depend on perfect data, deep integrations, or long implementation cycles. A five-minute diagnostic that surfaces expensive blind spots is immediately actionable, which makes the tool useful on day one rather than after months of setup. That kind of immediacy tends to drive real usage instead of passive interest. From a practical standpoint: From a business perspective: The positioning is strong because it sits above crowded categories like analytics and productivity. You’re not competing on charts or features—you’re selling faster, clearer executive judgment. If the app consistently identifies even one issue that saves or unlocks measurable revenue, its ROI is easy to prove and pricing power follows. It also opens multiple expansion paths — recurring assessments, team-level diagnostics, benchmarking across companies — without needing heavy infrastructure. In short, the value proposition is simple to understand, expensive to ignore, and defensible if the scoring remains credible. From a business perspective: Meet our sponsors Meet our sponsors Meet our sponsors Bright Data: Bright Data is the leading web data infrastructure company, empowering over 20,000 organizations with ethical, scalable access to real-time public web information. From startups to industry leaders, we deliver the datasets that fuel AI innovation and real-world impact. Ready to unlock the web? Learn more at brightdata.com. Bright Data: Bright Data is the leading web data infrastructure company, empowering over 20,000 organizations with ethical, scalable access to real-time public web information. From startups to industry leaders, we deliver the datasets that fuel AI innovation and real-world impact. Ready to unlock the web? Learn more at brightdata.com. Bright Data: brightdata.com Neo4j: GraphRAG combines retrieval-augmented generation with graph-native context, allowing LLMs to reason over structured relationships instead of just documents. With Neo4j, you can build GraphRAG pipelines that connect your data and surface clearer insights. Learn more. Neo4j: GraphRAG combines retrieval-augmented generation with graph-native context, allowing LLMs to reason over structured relationships instead of just documents. With Neo4j, you can build GraphRAG pipelines that connect your data and surface clearer insights. Learn more. Neo4j: more Storyblok: Storyblok is a headless CMS built for developers who want clean architecture and full control. Structure your content once, connect it anywhere, and keep your front end truly independent. API-first. AI-ready. Framework-agnostic. Future-proof. Start for free. Storyblok: Storyblok is a headless CMS built for developers who want clean architecture and full control. Structure your content once, connect it anywhere, and keep your front end truly independent. API-first. AI-ready. Framework-agnostic. Future-proof. Start for free. Storyblok: Start for free . Algolia: Algolia provides a managed retrieval layer that lets developers quickly build web search and intelligent AI agents. Learn more. Algolia: Algolia provides a managed retrieval layer that lets developers quickly build web search and intelligent AI agents. Learn more. Algolia: Learn more

This story contains AI-generated text. The author has used AI either for research, to generate outlines, or write the text itself. 

Between Two Computer Monitors: This story includes an interview between the writer and guest/interviewee. 

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Video Wizard Earns a 43 Proof of Usefulness Score by Building an AI-Powered Video Content Analysis Platform

Quiet Cost Earns a 34 Proof of Usefulness Score by Building an Executive Diagnostic Tool for Hidden Revenue Leakage

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