Last weekend St. Louis-based GlobalHack hosted the first of its quarterly hackathons. The winning team walked away with $50,000 from TopOPPS, which received the code and IP from the weekend project in return.
TopOPPS is the new company of Jim Eberlin, who also founded companies like Host Analytics and Gainsight. The weekend marked the public launch of TopOPPS, and the project the teams worked on will help the company move forward.
Why would a successful CEO choose a hackathon to launch a new product? Eberlin said he saw it as “an opportunity to have hundreds of the nation’s best developers working on your product non-stop for 48 hours, is priceless. In one weekend, we saw more innovative ideas and had access to more tech talent then most companies see in a year.”
Cofounder of LockerDome and GlobalHack Gabe Lozano agreed, noting that the event drew 200 designers, developers, and business professionals from all over the country. In fact, Eberlin was so impressed with the quality of work produced over the weekend, he awarded a surprise $10,000 check to the second place team.
The winning team was composed of Washington University students. They were, obviously, excited about the win.
“Absolutely incredible,” team member Eric Elias said of the experience. “I was fortunate to work with such an exceptional team and compete against so many talented people.”
GlobalHack has 3 more hackathons planned for 2014, with the sponsoring companies for future events yet to be announced. The nonprofit plans to award more than $1 million in prize money over the year.
Interested? Check out the GlobalHack website to keep up to date on all events.
Omaha’s new accelerator, backed by Dundee Venture Capital, Straight Shot, is making waves in Silicon Prairie. The cohort based accelerator, led by Faith Larson, is taking a big city approach to their accelerator class. Larson and her team have provided an intense amount of mentoring activities, speakers and networking events to make sure their teams are more than ready come demo day.
They’ve also taken a firm position in Omaha’s rapidly growing tech community. Their latest effort is a hackathon happening next weekend called CodeOne.
When Straight Shot partner First National Bank of Omaha decided that they wanted to see some new ideas and technology for their online web platform they turned to the team at Straight Shot. Together they decided to host a hackathon and engage the tech community to help with the banks platform.
The hackathon starts next Friday afternoon and runs through Sunday. Food, drinks, and plenty of caffeine will be supplied to the registrants. The bank is transforming their WinterGarden employee cafe space into a collaborative workspace for all of the hackers
Hackathons like this have created a stir in startup communities in the past. Perhaps most notably was Nashville’s “Code Crush” event. Some hackers are leery of corporations backing a hackathon for the sole purpose of developing their companies technology.
To that end First National Bank of Omaha has been a great partner to the Omaha tech and entrepreneurial community. Not only that but they are giving away $13,000 in cash for the top three teams. First prize is $10,000 cash. Second prize is $2,000 cash and third prize is $1,000 cash.
Throughout the weekend event First National Bank of Omaha will also be looking for potential candidates for their internship program which could lead to employment with the bank down the road. They’ve also made it quite clear developers will be developing for the First National Bank platform. I also hear that the food will be great, we’re not talking just chips,soda and pizza.
It’s looking like CodeOne will be an amazing event for developers, designers, coders and hackers. You still have a few days left to register and if you’re confident your three person team can knock it out of the ball park there could be some money in it for you as well.
While you’re at it don’t forget to register for Everywhere Else Cincinnati, the huge national startup conference is just two weeks away. Dundee Capital’s Mark Hasebroock is one of our 30 top notch startup speakers.
Starting now and culminating with a four day hackathon beginning at noon on Thursday, September 19th, the 20 Over 20 hackathon is looking to solve problems that have been lingering, unsolved for the last twenty years.
The hackathon was jointly created by Dialexa (www.dialexa.com) and Dallas Venture Partners (http://dallasventurepartners.com/). Co-CEO and founder of Dialexa, Mark Haidar told Nibletz: “With all the technology we’ve seen in the internet age over the last 20, years there are still problems out there that can be solved.”
That’s what they intend to do during the hackathon. Dialexa is already solving big problems ranging from surveillance at a Nigerian naval base to GPS tracking to building 3D tooth models from 2D scans. All problems that Haidar’s company has solved with technology.
Do you have a problem that’s been nagging at you that could be solved with technology? You can submit that problem now, here. On the evening of Wednesday September 18th, the 20 Over 20 team will select the 20 Over 20 Problems. From there, the preselected teams will have 18 hours to decide which of the problems they want to solve. If you submitted a problem and your problem is selected, you’ll receive a $20 gift card.
If you choose to participate on one of the teams, you’ll be competing for a $10,000 cash prize, winner takes all. The teams will work from noon on September 19th through 4pm on September 22. Each team will have 20 minutes to present their solution and 10 minutes for Q&A. The winning team will be incorporated free of charge by law firm Strasburger and Price. The prize money will be a $10,000 common stock equity investment for 2% to DVP.
Teams will be judged on four criteria:
How well does the idea solve the problem that was identified?
What level of disruption of innovation does the idea bring to the problem’s market?
Current operational functionality.
Technical feasibility of product roadmap
Stay tuned to Nibletz for more information on 20 Over 20. You can submit a problem and register a team here at the20over20.com
It wasn’t a big weekend in DC Tech this past weekend. Launch and startup parties at DC’s technology hub, 1776, are regular occurrences, as are startup events, designer events, and even hackathons. With the amount of tech and startup activity in DC, they are well on their way to becoming the “Silicon Valley of the East” as DC Mayor Vince Gray said in his remarks Friday.
Hackathons are awesome and are becoming more and more common. They come in any number of sizes and formats; there are informal hackathons called at a moment’s notice, hacking for a specific project, social hacking, and building companies. Two of the biggest hackathon formats for building companies are Startup Weekend and AngelHack.
Both events are ongoing and have meetups at multiple locations throughout the world. Startup Weekend’s happen every weekend and in multiple cities per week. AngelHack happens twice yearly and multiple cities compete over one weekend. Hackers, developers, designers and coders are encouraged to come on day 1 and pitch their project idea. Hackers in the crowd will vote on the best projects and build them out over the remaining hours in the weekend (24). From there judges select one winning team that they will send to the AngelHack “finals” in Silicon Valley with over $100,000 in cash and prizes on the line.
The Washington DC AngelHack is chaired by DC startup mega enthusiast Anton Gelman, CEO and cofounder of Cont3nt. Gelman is no stranger to hackathons and pitch contests. He won the New York Angel Hack last year.
“Over the summer, I happened to be in New York and decided to check out AngelHack New York. Crazy enough, I won! They sent us to San Francisco in the following month to compete with other winners from other countries. It was probably one of the coolest events I’ve been to, and then I thought, this was such an amazing experience in New York, why can’t we have one in D.C.? So I arranged a few meetings, made a few phone calls, and was able to convince them to host an event here in D.C” Gelman told Nibletz last year before the first AngelHack competition in DC.
This year, AngelHack DC attracted over 100 hackers to 1776 dc, the epicenter of technology startups. They pitched a wide range of ideas from big data to health tech, to social entrepreneurship, and even Kickstarter tracking. Check out some of the Saturday morning pitches in the short video below.
Comments Off on Kauffman Foundation Follows Hackanooga’s Footsteps With “Hacking The Gigabit City”0LikeLike 2,793
Over the course of last week’s everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference people saw that Tennessee was a contender in the startup and entrepreneurial space. What some may not realize is that it Chattanooga Tennessee that was the first to offer wall to wall gigabit Ethernet.
Two years ago Chattanooga, the city known for it’s choo-choo, became “The Gig City”. As the gig came online, Chattanooga’s startup leaders like Launch Tennessee CEO Charlie Brock, and CoLab founder Sheldon Grizzle quickly embraced the high speed Internet and developed several startup focused initiatives around it. All the while Google was still vetting out locations.
The first such initiative was The Gig Tank a hybrid accelerator that welcomed not only a cohort of startup teams but students as well. The program ran the entire summer last year and resulted in a student team winning $50,000 and a startup team, Banyan, winning another $100,000 and relocating (at their own accord) to Chattanooga.
This fall the Gig City welcomed a hackathon event that drew developers and hackers from across the country. The event was intimately known as Hackanooga.
Now with its big budget roll out almost complete, Kansas City is starting to embrace some of the ideas already tried and proven in Chattanooga.
Deep rooted startup supporters, the Mozilla Foundation and the Kauffman Foundation have teamed up to bring a hackathon to America’s newest gigabit city, Kansas City.
Both organizations continue to support the efforts in Chattanooga as well.
The Kansas City event is being held March 22-24, 2013. During the 54 hour period participants will hack together apps utilizing and taking advantage of Kansas City’s gigabit fiber
“We are looking for hackers to use the speed of the Google Fiber network to build applications that push the tech envelope forward,” said Cameron Cushman, manager in Entrepreneurship at the Kauffman Foundation. “We are trying to invent the future, and Kansas City is at the forefront of ultra-high-speed internet access. This event is for people who want to work and build something that can truly help others and improve lives.”
The event will begin on Friday, March 22 with dinner and rapid-fire project pitches, culminating with the formation of teams in specific areas, including health care, public safety, education and gaming. The next two days will be focused on designing, creating, making and building. The event concludes on Sunday, March 24 with demos of the applications to a panel of judges.
The applications created during the event could evolve into a submission to the Mozilla Ignite Challenge, which on April 3 will award $250,000 of seed money and mentorship to help the most promising projects get off the ground.
They are offering scholarship for free travel to Kansas City to a limited number of hacker, for consideration you need to apply here by February 26, 2013.
Comments Off on AngelHack, World’s Biggest Hackathon Coming To DC And We Have Free Tickets0LikeLike 4,269
The old days, picturing a dark room filled with pocket protectors, broken glasses and keyboards are long gone. The hackathon has become a big part of our culture in the startup world. It seems like everyone with a pulse on technology has found the way to create a hackathon to design this, hack this, break into this, vet this, or program that. Microsoft recently held a huge hackathon on their Windows 8 platform. Startup Weekend holds several hackathons every week.
None of these hackathons can parallel the enormous size, booty (prize stash), resources and sponsors of Angelhack.
Angelhack is going down this weekend in 11 cities with 2500 hackers and one gigantic Angelhack crown. Hackers, coders, developers, founders and entrepreneurs will converge on Tel Aviv, Paris, London, Washington DC, Boston, Toronto, Los Angeles, Seattle, Santiago and San Francisco for one crazy weekend of hacking.
The event kicks off at 9:00am on Saturday morning and runs through 5:00pm Sunday night. This hackathon isn’t for the weak at heart though. This isn’t a turn the lights off at midnight and come back at 8am kind of hackathon. Angelhack will run continuously all weekend long.
Angelhack is one of the most critically acclaimed hackathons in the world because of the creativity and startups that it helps create. All 11 locations will narrow the field down to 25 teams from around the world. These 25 teams will win six weeks of mentorship and be flown to Silicon Valley where they’ll show off their finished products to media, investors and other startups. In the past 30% of the finalists have found enough funding to continue building out their companies.
“Over the summer, I happened to be in New York and decided to check out AngelHack New York. Crazy enough, I won! They sent us to San Francisco in the following month to compete with other winners from other countries. It was probably one of the coolest events I’ve been to, and then I thought, this was such an amazing experience in New York, why can’t we have one in D.C.? So I arranged a few meetings, made a few phone calls, and was able to convince them to host an event here in D.C. And here we are, the first AngelHack competition is going to happen this weekend!”
Did we mention that Angelhack offers $650,000 in cash and prizes. If you’re anywhere within 300 miles of Washington DC, your plans for this weekend are now set.
Comments Off on Startup Weekend Asheville August 24th-26th0LikeLike 2,195
Startup Weekend is coming to Asheville North Carolina in less than two weeks. The festivities will kick off on Friday August 24th at 6:30pm at the A-B Tech Community College Enka Campus.
The Startup Weekend Asheville team describes the three day hackathon as “the 48-Hour Film Fest for techies, marketers & entrepreneurs”, making reference to an annual film fest in North Carolina’s mountainous cultural hub.
Asheville has a thriving startup scene, in fact a startup from Asheville called Corpora, just completed the GigTank startup accelerator in Chattanooga Tennessee (check out their pitch video here). In fact we met quite a few people from the Asheville area who had come to Chattanooga to check out their startup scene.
If you’re not familiar with Startup Weekend (and you should be if you read nibletz.com regularly) It’s a 54 hour hackathon style event where marketers, entrepreneurs, developers, and coders work together to develop ideas presented on Friday evening into companies come Sunday evening.
Friday starts off with registration, dinner and then Friday pitches. This is when everyone who has registered for the event and has an idea, can pitch that idea in sixty seconds or less. After the initial Friday pitches those who pitched are scattered throughout the room and the audience votes on the ideas to be developed by placing a sticker on a poster board with the idea on it. At the end of the voting period those ideas with the most stickers are developed.
After the Friday winners are selected, teams are formed. From there the teams spend the next 50 hours working on developing a product, testing their idea with consumers (consumer validation), and putting together a minimum viable product (MVP), mock up, working demo or actual product.
Saturday the teams reconvene early in the morning and continue to work on their startups. Throughout the day the event’s mentors (coaches) provide valuable advice to each and every team. The coaches for Startup Weekend Asheville are:
Rob Zazueta, Partner and Integration Manager at Vertical Respons; Denise Gaskin, Chief Operating Officer at Van Winkle Law Firm; and Traci Sigler COO at WallStCheatSheet.
On Sunday evening the teams will pitch before the judges and then go through a grueling Q&A session. After all the teams have finished their pitches and Q&A’s the judges disappear off to judge land and decide on the top teams of the weekend. Most Startup Weekend winners win valuable business related prizes and some Startup Weekend’s even have cash prizes.
Startup Weekend Asheville’s judges are: Jonathan Lawrie, PhD. Executive Director of the Western Office of the North Carolina Biotechnology Center; John Stainer, Managing Director at Carolina Financial Group; Joe Emison VP Research and Development at BuildFax.
It looks like Startup Weekend Asheville is going to be a great time in a beautiful city. If you’re in Asheville or surrounding areas it may be the perfect weekend event to get your entrepreneurial juices flowing. To register and for more information, visit the link below.
Comments Off on Startup Weekend Heads Back To Los Angeles, Register Now0LikeLike 1,748
The 54 hour Startup Weekend program is headed back to Los Angeles next weekend, starting on July 20th which is the same weekend as Memphis’ Startup Weekend.
Los Angeles just completed a Startup Weekend back in February that was a great success.
The February event saw 13 teams pitching on Sunday evening before the judges. The judges that time around included: Howard Marks (Start Engine), Paige Craig (BetterWorks), David Waxman (PeoplePC, Firefly Networks, SpotRunner) and Tyler Crowley (Sqweal, OAF, Launch, TWiST, Mahalo).
The judges for this round haven’t been announced yet but we are sure they will be just as good.
Organizing the Los Angeles event are Tyler Koblasa, Cameron Rasouli and Avesta Rasouli.
Registration started July 2nd and the organizers warn that last spring’s event sold out in 10 minutes. As of right now the eventbrite page shows tickets still available.
Startup Weekend LA kicks off Friday July 20th at 6:00pm and is being held at Coloft (920 Santa Monica Blvd, Santa Monica, CA 90401).
Comments Off on Exclusive Interview With Travis Chen Winner Of Hollywood Hack A Day0LikeLike 1,719
This weekend, we covered Hollywood Hack Day and now we have an exclusive interview with Travis Chen, created or Typing Karaoke. While not picking up a single Sponsors award, Travis won over both the crowd and judges. Who would think that something that could be education could be so fun. Watch the video below for not only the interview, but also how the crowd reacts when someone tries it during his pitch. They go Crazy…
Comments Off on Day 2 Has Started At Hollywood Hack Day At io/LA0LikeLike 1,673
We are here at Hollywood Hack Day, on a gloomy Sunday in Hollywood California covering what has turned into 70+ programmers from all over So Cal into one place. The idea behind Hollywood Hack Day was to bring Media and Tech together into one. With sponsors like Rovi, ToxBox, Mashery, Rdio, Spotify just to name a few, the programmers here have been coding all throughout the night.
We’ll be covering all the goings on today as well as later tonight and tomorrow have full videos on all the pitches and the winners as the night goes on.
LaunchMemphis, SeedHatchery and LaunchYourCity had over 20 startups pitch on Friday evening to try and secure a spot for development over the weekend at 48 hour launch. The field was great. There were all kinds of different pitches as you can see here at nibletz.com. Here are the four that were chosen by popular vote amongst their peers to develop.
ScrewPulp
ScrewPulp (as in Pulp Fiction, literature etc). Founder Richard Billings has an innovative new spin on the publishing and selling of e-books. Traditional models are flawed because the pricing is so spread out.
Screw Pulp’s distribution works like this. The first 100 copies of an e-book are distributed free in exchange for two things. Those two things are a social media mention across Twitter or Facebook and a star rating review. In other words, threw ScrewPulp an avid reader could read as many books as they want for free, as long as they were one of the first 100 people to download it, share it on social mean and then they give it a rating and review.
Now you can’t get another free book until both the share and the rating/review are completed. Why is this important? Because it drives feedback for the book and sharing of the book. You’re not obligated to give it a good review, just a review.
Now the next batch of books are $.99 then $1.99 and so on. Hear Billings describe it in the video below.
Yaddoog (Good Day Backwards)
I had to think to myself for a while, when was the last time a good photo sharing app was pitched. It’s been quite a while. However Friday night in Memphis a brand new idea for a photo sharing app was pitched and it’s great.
Founder Harold Strong started his pitch out by asking “How was your day” and pointing out that just about everyone in the world says “Fine”, which of course is a BS answer.
Strongs app idea has you take 24 pictures on your smartphone throughout your day. Then at the end of the day at a set time, the app uploads all 24 pictures to the Yaddoog site. Why not one by one, why 24? Because 24 pictures tells a story.
Watch the pitch below… It’s good…
Happy Potty
I know one entrepreneur who had a very similar idea called soflush.it two years ago but never developed it. No problem because Douglas Starnes and Daniel Pritchett have Happy Potty down pat.
Imagine you’re on a car trip and you have to go to the bathroom. When you pull over at the local BP station the restroom is a disaster and hasn’t been cleaned in days. Now imagine if you had an app with bathroom ratings on cleanliness, ease of use, hospitality etc.
Now, imagine that the app followed your GPS location and mapped out for you bathrooms that were open on your route, and clean. You would use that, you know you would.
I can’t wait to see the product they have at the end of the weekend. See the pitch below.
LostAPet
The idea here is great. The pitch was heartfelt, I think the name sucks but that’s because the pitch was so good.
James told a great story about finding a lost dog, spending hours researching what to do with a found dog and then distributing over 100 flyers. This process took hours.
During the presentation, James said “There’s no amber alert for pets”. That’s why I think the LostAPet name sucks so bad.. the name was right there in the pitch, something like “PetAlert””Doggie Alert”BowWowAlert” but nevertheless if 48 Hour Launch was a nationwide popular vote contest, this idea would be hard to beat. Everyone has a soft spot for pets and a nationwide bulletin board site to find and post lost dogs is something long needed.
It’s one of those ideas where you think “Why didn’t I think of that?”, because James did! Watch the video below, and maybe someone from the team will agree that the name could be better:
Comments Off on We’ll Be Live At io/LA Covering Hollywood Hack Day0LikeLike 2,579
This weekend, while Kyle will be on the East Coast at another Startup event. I’ll be at a Hackathon on the West Coast covering the Hollywood Hackathon. The event, which has moved to io/LA’s venue near the famed Hollywood and Highland intersection in the middle of Hollywood. Will be filled with those trying to make it into the entertainment field by way of Tech.
Comments Off on We Are At CityGrid Hackathon LA All Weekend Long0LikeLike 1,526
This weekend, we’ll be at the CityGrid Los Angeles Hackathon which brings together people of all different backgrounds, in a move to make local discovery better via both the Web as well as the Mobile space. From Friday the 27th of April till Sunday the 29th individuals who’ve never meet will take part in build products for the future.
Comments Off on Omaha: Food Fight App For Restaurant Ratings Wins Hack Omaha0LikeLike 1,774
Quick take every preconceived notion you have about a restaurant ratings app and throw it out the window. We’re not going to be talking about the next Urbanspoon or Open Table or even the next Venga. But to set the stage we need to talk about Hack Omaha first.
The Hack Omaha challenge was this past weekend in Omaha Nebraska. The event was a three-day event, similar to a startup weekend, which started on Friday and ended this past Sunday at 6:00pm. During this time the “hacker” teams needed to use some portion of publicly available government data and turn into something useful, or in Omaha Food Fight’s case, useful and fun.
While you’re probably thinking crime prevention heat maps, city park guides, community planning apps, and things like that, those were all represented but Omaha Food Fight took the cake (you see what we did there?).
The other teams were:
Safeomaha.org- An interactive crime heat map.
Omaha Bounty Hunter- “The Price Is Right” for stolen property values.
Play Safe Omaha- Map of safe places for kids to play.
Valuation and Comparison Interface: a property value comparison app.
HSW Project- relationships revolving around campaign finance.
Slum Lord Next Door- Search neighborhoods for major code violations
Is It Clean- is the place you’re going to eat at safe.
Nibletz Staff
Kyle
Nick Tippmann
