ATDC took an interesting spin on the Hackathon in August when they hosted their first ever ATDC Switch Pitch Hackathon. This inaugural weekend hackathon brought together hackers, developers, designers, and other technology creatives to solve problems faced by ATDC’s fastest growing startups.
Traditionally, hackathon participants find a solution to problems they have identified on their own, but ATDC took an interesting spin on things. Participating companies presented challenges to participant that had been low on the company’s to-do list but still were of importance. Challenges ranged from small features to entirely new products to drive new lines of revenue.
The minor problems that are on startup’s to-do lists are always bumped down week after week in priority and things are just left hanging. We thought this would be a great opportunity to get innovative and creative hackers together and solve some of these problems and have a great time doing it, ” said Everett Steele, president of Kanga and one of the participating companies.
Eight ATDC companies pitched their respective problems to hackathon participants who then worked over the weekend to develop solutions that were then presented to a panel of judges the Tuesday following the weekend hackathon. Stephen Fleming, vice president of the Enterprise Innovation Institute at Georgia Tech; John B. Hayes, chairman of Now Account; Michael Tavani, founder of Switchyards and co-founder of Scoutmob and Trish Whitlock, director of marketing operations at Tech Square Labs served as judges.
Participating Companies:
- First Performance, a platform providing financial institutions with customer self-service capabilities, card management and messaging tools that deliver greater control, security and communication to the cardholder. Challenge: create a solution for stronger security for First Performance’s cardholders throughout different stages of their transaction’s process.
- Kanga provides an Uber-like service for local delivery and a technology platform that enables others to start their own delivery service. Challenge: develop a portal for companies to crowdsource labor to support their business model.
- Groundfloor offers an enabling platform for individual investors to finance residential real estate loans. Challenge: develop a mobile solution to make processing and communication between borrowers and investors more transparent.
- Florence Healthcare offers software that connects home health care data from outside the clinic with the healthcare community. Challenge: develop a mobile solution to help manage physical hospital documents that can be sent to trial-pharmaceutical sponsors to achieve more efficiency in clinical trials.
- Amplify 4 Good caters to underserved communities through rapid problem solving and focusing on economic development, health and wellness, education and safety. Challenge: create a mobile solution to help nonprofit organizations source and manage volunteers for community efforts.
- Synappio helps email marketers get and stay in compliance with email service providers. Challenge: create a platform that protects e-commerce merchants from fraudulent charges and verifies transactions.
- Rescour offers a data platform and recommendation engine for commercial real estate investment. Challenge: create a property management tool that allows renters to input their own pricing data and allows renters to promote their property and share findings with others.
- Cognosos provides a Sensing as a Service platform that collects information from low cost, battery powered sensors that can measure physical data outdoors. Challenge: develop a physical asset packing system that was inexpensive, easy to use and scalable.
The solutions presented were evaluated based on validation, execution and design, and overall business model.
Results
Third Place: Rescour was also the crowd favorite. Rescour’s team won a $150 cash prize for their innovative mobile app.
Second Place: Groundfloor’s team built a better way for the company to communicate with customers and won the $300 cash prize.
Winner: Florence Healthcare team took first place with a live application to address the needs of sending sourced documents to healthcare sponsors globally. The team’s prize was $500 in cash.
If you missed this hackathon there are plans for a Fintech Hackathon in November.
Photo Credit: ATDC
