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Two Harvard University Alumni Win Salesforce $1M Hackathon Prize

techcrunch.com

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Re: Two Harvard University Alumni Win Salesforce $1M Hackathon Prize

#41

Post by chaqke »

melvinmt wrote: post #10

One of the comments, kinda what I already expected: "Spoiler: One of those guys used to work for Salesforce! (not kidding, they announced it during the demo). The French guys were followed around during the entire hackathon by a salesforce camera crew (I was sitting right next to them, some of the salesforce people even came over to help them submit to be sure they got it in before the last 5 min was up, kinda knew t…

given the copious amount of US laws regarding giveaways, it's probably illegal too.

did it for fun because of a coupon code, but I feel sorry for anyone who paid the full price of admission. if they were going to rig it anyway, why sell hackathon-only tickets? that's pretty malicious.

Re: Two Harvard University Alumni Win Salesforce $1M Hackathon Prize

#43

Post by colabi »

coppenheimer wrote: post #36
melvinmt wrote: post #10

One of the comments, kinda what I already expected: "Spoiler: One of those guys used to work for Salesforce! (not kidding, they announced it during the demo). The French guys were followed around during the entire hackathon by a salesforce camera crew (I was sitting right next to them, some of the salesforce people even came over to help them submit to be sure they got it in before the last 5 min was up, kinda knew t…

This is ridiculous. Really sounds like a bunch of sniveling losers. I participated in the hack, lost don't regret it at all. Well, a little bit because i hate staying up late. next time will plan ahead.And I'm a former salesforce employee and personally know a bunch of the dev relations team. No leg up there. I thought our submission was pretty good, didn't win, oh well. It's almost as if these commenters believed th…

it's fine to not win. i've won and and i've lost. i just won at Facebook last week. but i expect that what they ask to review, they review. i can't find anyone who said they detected any launches during the review period. i would have expected to find ONE person. don't run a hackathon with strict rules and a long development period and ask for source if you actually are NOT going to run the app. just be honest and ask for a wireframe or a f*ing powerpoint.

Re: Two Harvard University Alumni Win Salesforce $1M Hackathon Prize

#44

Post by colabi »

U2EF1 wrote: post #33
bobbles wrote: post #32

So the winning team: 1) Had a member previously employed by the selection team. 2) Had built their project prior to the hackathon. 3) Was actively helped by the Salesforce team during the hackathon. 4) Was ensured a place by other teams not even having their submissions seen by the judges. What a fair and balanced outcome! I fully expect everyone to take this event seriously in the future. /s

The only real surprise is that Salesforce wasn't better able to obscure it. Still, they weren't giving out a million dollars for a days work.

i wish it was a days work. they opened the competition oct 25th. so people were developing since then. and they might not have even gotten run.

Re: Two Harvard University Alumni Win Salesforce $1M Hackathon Prize

#45

Post by priley »

hughes wrote: post #7

Wait, the same Thom Kim, Harvard graduate, who's an architect at salesforce.com?

Yeah! The same Thom Kim who demo'd UPSHOT at Salesforce before the hackathon was even announced. :http://www.meetup.com/Salesforce-com-Integration-Analytics/e...

Re: Two Harvard University Alumni Win Salesforce $1M Hackathon Prize

#46

Post by jmacd »

goldenkey wrote: post #14
melvinmt wrote: post #10

One of the comments, kinda what I already expected: "Spoiler: One of those guys used to work for Salesforce! (not kidding, they announced it during the demo). The French guys were followed around during the entire hackathon by a salesforce camera crew (I was sitting right next to them, some of the salesforce people even came over to help them submit to be sure they got it in before the last 5 min was up, kinda knew t…

Not to mention it cost $500 to enter, meaning negative EV, not as bad as the lotto, but still a losers' gamble.

It did not cost $500 to enter.

It was either $99 or Free (there was a free entry promotion for most of the time during the run up to the hackathon).

Re: Two Harvard University Alumni Win Salesforce $1M Hackathon Prize

#47

Post by schmerdy »

goldenkey wrote: post #14
melvinmt wrote: post #10

One of the comments, kinda what I already expected: "Spoiler: One of those guys used to work for Salesforce! (not kidding, they announced it during the demo). The French guys were followed around during the entire hackathon by a salesforce camera crew (I was sitting right next to them, some of the salesforce people even came over to help them submit to be sure they got it in before the last 5 min was up, kinda knew t…

Not to mention it cost $500 to enter, meaning negative EV, not as bad as the lotto, but still a losers' gamble.

I don't know what you paid $500 for. The hackathon was free. Zero. $0. Early on they charged $99 for a developer pass, but they reimbursed me and my team members.

Re: Two Harvard University Alumni Win Salesforce $1M Hackathon Prize

#49

Post by schmerdy »

dimva wrote: post #11
eggbrain wrote: post #6

I hope this hackathon happens again next year. They were very generous with their grand prize, and anything you built you were able to keep. The one thing I'd ask them to change is for the prizes to be a little better distributed this year. I'd hate to be those second place winners who perhaps _just barely_ lost to the first place winners but had a $950,000 dropoff. Perhaps first place $500,000, second place $250,000…

Their prize structure reflects rewards in winner-take-all scenarios, such as the tech industry. How much money is the second-best CRM system making compared to Salesforce?

Almost as much. Only difference is that SAP is actually making a decent profit, while Salesforce is loosing money...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/louiscolumbus/2013/04/26/2013-cr...

Re: Two Harvard University Alumni Win Salesforce $1M Hackathon Prize

#50

Post by zulfishah »

colabi wrote: post #37
zulfishah wrote: post #26

The winning team presented their project at a Meetup well before the Hackathon was even announced: http://www.meetup.com/Salesforce-com-Integration-Analytics/e... Which is totally against the official rules for the Hacktahon, which stated "The application you or your team submits must: have been developed solely as part of this Hackathon" http://res.cloudinary.com/hy4kyit2a/image/upload/Final%201M%... So there you go…

i killed myself to get my entry in. it was another version of healthcare.love. i wish i knew what they were doing so we could team up. i checked my analytics this morning. i was the only one who viewed the official video. i was the only one who launched the app. i'd love to collect the stats from everyone to see how many apps even got played.

It's quite a farce. One can excuse not launching the app (it would require some setup for each individual app), but not looking even briefly at the video is inexcusable. But I'm guessing they already picked the 5 finalists for PR-value well before the entries were submitted, so they didn't want to spend their party-time at Dreamforce doing something so boring as looking at hackathon entries.
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