Salesforce.com Announces Two $1 Million Winning Teams for Hackathon

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/salesforce-com-announces-two-1-210000741.html

by jhchen • 13 years ago

34 28 13 years ago

finance.yahoo.com

tenpoundhammer2• 13 years ago

This may be the largest back pedal in the history of backpedaling.

misnome• 13 years ago

On a bike that doesn't go backwards when you backpedal..

brbcoding• 13 years ago

I personally haven't ever seen a bike that goes backwards when you backpedal. @dangrossman, thanks for the info -- TIL.

swang• 13 years ago

Microsoft/XBox1 backpedal probably beats this one. SalesForce isn't giving up much here. What's another million to a company they've already invested in?

tenpoundhammer2• 13 years ago

I don't know what this reference is about.

draz• 13 years ago

Ha. Still sticking to their guns: "...while the Upshot mobile app used pre-existing code, this did not violate the hackathon rules. Use of pre-existing code was allowable as long as the code did not comprise the majority of the app and did not violate any third party's rights." I think it does more damage than good

puredemo• 13 years ago

"The internal audit team's review determined that Upshot's mobile app was created during the hackathon and met these criteria."

They just took an existing application made during a nine year tenure at Salesforce, threw it into a generic responsive / mobile app framework during the "hackathon" and made a cool mil..

It helps if Salesforce is already an investor in your product, of course.

And this doesn't address why most apps that were submitted weren't even ran. It's not like 149 apps are all that hard to at least take a look at.

rhizome• 13 years ago

Because if they rescinded the Upshot prize, they would have wound up having to pay more for the Upshot app they wanted to acquire. They aren't going to throw that deal away, ever.

err4nt• 13 years ago

Why give them the publicity?

pc86• 13 years ago

More than anything, I’m bothered that the submitter has submitted multiple articles[1] on the same subject. Is HN karma really this important to people?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6836581

Jemaclus• 13 years ago

Well, this apparently bothers you, so it must be, right? :)

reneherse• 13 years ago

There are many more reasons to post an article than just winning internet points...

yeukhon• 13 years ago

The internal audit team's review determined that Upshot's mobile app was created during the hackathon and met these criteria.

Let's be honest. Upshot is pretty solid before the hackathon. It was functioning to some great degree. How many days did the event last? Three days? A mobile app for this hackathon is small. What innovations / cool business logic did they develop in the mobile app? I probably will see none. Pretty UI... maybe that was the winning shot. I am sure.

The fact that Upshot guys haven't spoken is also ridiculous. Or have they?

colinloretz2• 13 years ago

I also competed. We had from when the hackathon was announced (October 25th) to November 17th to build our submissions.

fizx2• 13 years ago

The fact that Upshot guys haven't spoken is also ridiculous. Or have they?

Unlike most of us here, perhaps they've learned not to feed the trolls ;)

fizx2• 13 years ago

To me, the most interesting part of this is buried. Whereas previously only the five finalists were showcased, now many (all?) of the losing entries are now published.

http://salesforce1million.challengepost.com/submissions

colinloretz2• 13 years ago

They reached out to all the teams for their permission to publish their submissions. Not all of the teams have agreed to do so yet.

swalsh• 13 years ago

That healthcare app is actually pretty cool, how did that not win 1st place?

jere2• 13 years ago

First place:

Upshot was created by Thom Kim, who left Salesforce after nine years in Janauary, and Joseph Turian, with whom Kim had been friends since they attended Harvard University together.

Oh that sounds fishy? As a concession, we'll just award another million to 2nd place. Oh, who is second place?

Fisher and Oliveros are employees working at Taptera, a San Francisco-based startup that received $2 million in August of 2011 from Salesforce and other investors in a Series A round of financing.

eli• 13 years ago

shrug

This doesn't strike me as inherently scandalous.

jere2• 13 years ago

Scandalous, no. The part that bothers me is that an event, presumably designed to introduce new developers to their platform, seems impossible to win unless you're either a) directly associated with the company or b) make a living developing for the company's platform already.

priley• 13 years ago

The issue is they specific said you can't start or use existing code before the date (still there in the rules PDF). I know that many very talented teams followed that rule even though theycould have used some of their older repos and did something even more impressive than Upshot. Then they respond to a forum question, weeks after the hackathon started, saying "yeah sure, just not a significant amount". Most programmers were heads down in their code and didn't check the forum. That's wrong and they did nothing to explain or correct this.

Salesforce.com Announces Two $1 Million Winning Teams for Hackathon

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