Last weekend Startup Weekend came back to Tampa. Startup Weekend attracts developers, designers, and entrepreneurs of all ages to a 54 hour hackathon to build out company and startup ideas. Teams go beyond a business plan and 54 hours later strive to have a working product.
That’s just what happened for 14-year-old Nathan Eyal and his team that worked on Live Warfare. The team that built out this mobile game also included Eyal’s dad Omer, who brought him out for the 54 hour hackathon.
According to 83degreesmedia, the product is a person-to-person video game that allows players to take a picture of someone and then digitally “shoot” them. Once they’re shot a notification is sent to their phone. Think of it as virtual paintball.
Ed Glarza, Akira Mitchell, Ken Morris, and Matt Saulding rounded out the younger Eyal’s team. “We focus on the team, and I think their team was really strong,” Ryan Sullivan, co-organizer for Startup Weekend told 83degrees. “Because Nathan was so passionate about the idea, he kept the team moving forward and making decisions.”
Nathan pitched his Live Warfare idea to a packed house at the University of South Florida, St. Petersburg on Friday evening. That’s when participants have 60 seconds to pitch their idea. After the initial pitches they go around the room with poster board signs and the people in the audience vote (typically with a colored sticker) on what projects they think should be developed. At the end of the vote, the projects with the most votes are hacked out over the remaining time.
During that time, Nathan and his team were able to build out the app. They also tested it out with friends and got real feedback on the idea. By the time final pitches occurred on Sunday afternoon Live Warfare was a finished product.
The second and third place finishers were both based on crowdsourced data. BuySignal came in second place. Their startup monitors Twitter feeds to find “indicators” that someone is about to make a purchasing decision. The third placed finisher, StreezWize, is an app that allows people to provide real time feedback about potential crimes.
See how these 10 year olds are sparking happiness and entrepreneurship.
Image: startupweekend.org
Wow, congrats to Nathan and his team. Pretty impressive for a 14 year old.