5 Innovation Contests and Hackathons that Spurred New Products

In the tech startup world, innovation happens all the time. Innovation is a resource that the world can always use more of, and like any resource, it must be harvested. To harvest the energy of the sun, you need solar panels. If you want to turn the air into electricity, you need wind turbines. If you want to turn innovative ideas in profitable businesses, you need hackathons.

Hackathons embody everything that is fantastic about the tech startup world. Hackathons take place when a handful (or many, many more) like-minded individuals come together, take time out of their days and build amazing new companies and apps just for the sake of building. But there are some pretty jaw-dropping benefits to hackathons that justify the time and energy spent organizing and participating in these events.

There are a variety of different hackathons that have spurred hundreds of great innovative new products. Below are five hackathons that carry a little more prestige than the others because of the success that the startups have achieved since their inception.

1.   Startup Weekend LA, Notable Birth:  Zaarly
Part of the Startup Weekend series we all know and love, this hackathon takes place in Los Angeles at the Coloft coworking space. Anyone is welcome to pitch a startup idea and receive feedback from other Startup Weekend attendees. Teams organically form around the top ideas (as determined by popular vote) and then it’s a 54-hour frenzy of business model creation, coding, designing and market validation. Startup Weekend culminates with presentations in front of local entrepreneurial leaders with opportunities for critical feedback.

2.   Startup Bus, Notable Birth:  txtroo
With buses departing from San Francisco, Silicon Valley, Chicago, Cleveland, New York and Miami, Startup Bus is a hackathon on wheels. Participating ‘buspreneurs’ produce different products as they travel to SWSX in Austin, TX. Not only is there a Startup Bus America but in December 2011, this style of hackathon was launched in Europe as well.

3.   Hack the Midwest, Notable Birth: Qup
Participants have just 24 hours to build and create a viable product. They can either build a team on their own or be paired through event coordinators.

4.   AngelHack, Notable Birth: Go Give
AngelHack unites developers around the country for a national hackathon where they can showcase big ideas and win seed capital from investors. It is one of the largest hackathon series with over $200,000 in prizes and $30,000 in sponsor prizes.

5.   Disrupt, Notable Birth:  Docracy
Presented by TechCrunch, Disrupt is series of hackathons that have taken place in Bejing, New York and San Francisco. Consisting of separate events over four days, Disrupt is open only to hackers and developers willing to work on projects to present. At the heart of Disrupt is the Startup Battlefield where entrepreneurs present to a judging panel of VCs, angels and general investors. What’s up for grabs?  The $50,000 prize, the coveted “Disrupt Cup”, a wealth of press exposure and new open doors.

So if you have an idea that you’ve been itching to try it out, but may not have had the time to do so, try out a hackathon. Sure you may lose some sleep, but you might gain a million dollar idea.  

Kansas City Big Thinker Profile: Michael Bleigh

 Netflix lovers rejoice, there is now an easier way to soak up the freshest content and you have Michael Bleigh to thank. Created by the Olathe, KS native, Hack the Midwest winner Qup (pronounced queue-up), allows Netflix addicts to receive email notifications when new titles are added. Like all great things, Qup was born out of necessity. An admitted Netflix addict and overall movie fanatic, Michael created Qup because he got tired of the old way he was doing things. What was he doing you ask? The old way was to use Google reader to receive Netflix’s RSS feed via mobile device. Then from those, if he’d like to add something to his queue he’d have to login to Netflix’s non-mobile friendly U/I. He wanted to create a way to be able add something to his queue with one click. Once Qup is paired with a Netflix account, this becomes a reality.

However Qup isn’t the only project in Michael's queue. As a Partner at Intridea, Michael is also an avid competitor in hackathons. He competes because he has a lot of ideas and feels that the time crunch based format gives him a chance to really try something out and see if it has legs. One of the ideas that grew legs is Divshot, created at Startup Weekend along with his brother Nathan Bleigh and designer Jake Johnson, whom they met at the competition. Though they did not win Startup weekend, they did build a great foundation for Divshot, and were recently selected as a finalist for the upcoming Crowdstart LA Competition.

*Editors Update: Divshot was just announced as the first place winner of Crowdstart LA taking home $25k. We here at Think Big would Like to congratulate Michael and the rest of the Divshot team. More info available here via Silicon Prairie News."

Divshot is a rapid prototyping tool for web apps, a drag and drop editor similar to a balsamic or mock up tool, but different in that it exports valid semantic html & CSS which can then be taken and used a basis for web apps. It leverages Twitter Bootstrap to provide a pallet of tools to build an interface. Its ultimate goal is to become the interface builder for the web. It is designed with a vision to be a tool that developers wouldn’t turn their nose up at. As a developer he feels there has never been a tool that truly outputs data in this way. As he simple puts it “(he) wanted to see if it were possible to create something that would export the same kind of markup if he were to code it by hand”.

How he Thinks Big:  by taking something that is a little bit annoying to a lot of people and making it easy. For example it may take 30sec to a minute to do all the click throughs from an RSS feed to add something in Netflix. Which probably takes 5-6 minutes a week, but that’s 5-6 minutes a week of wasting time on something that is annoying. If it is possible to spend a day creating something that solves that. Then he views that a win.