Talent scouting at the 2011 Hackathon in New York today, TCTV caught up with three alumni hax0rz and one n00b, who gave us a sneak peek of their apps and ideas.
The hax0rz in question hail from: the mobile startup GroupMe; QLabs NYC, a collective of developers and designers; and Harvard.
Following an afternoon of team forming, brainstorming, napkin doodling and the requisite pizza and caffeine uptake, their concepts include:
A couple of dating sites, one with a hyper-local twist…
Another that wants to be “the Groupon of dating and a SecondMarket for people”
An app that gets the attention of that one colleague who’s always lost in their headphones
A mobile web app that tells you where nearby job opportunities may be, based on data from you Foursquare network
Cool ideas from the Disrupt Hackathon could turn into lasting startups. They could also hit the deadpool before they gain any kind of traction, if teams don’t know how to work it through and after the event. So, TCTV asked Steve Martocci, a co-founder of GroupMe, how to maximize the hackathon experience.
GroupMe, a NYC mobile startup, celebrated the one year birthday of their app today. Backed by Khosla Ventures, they hatched it at the 2010 Disrupt Hackathon in New York, of course.
Some of Martocci’s suggestions:
“Don’t listen to me talk, go and build something… Focus on what you’re good at, and solve a real world problem. Do as little work as you can – it gets stressful – use the tools that you have (like Twilio) to make it happen.” And after Hackathon? First, “Sleep.” Then, use the tickets to TechCrunch Disrupt, to “Walk the floor, show people what you did…[and] get decent exposure to investors.”
Watch the video for more (above) and check back for more photos and videos from Pier 94 where the hack is on.
We’re also broadcasting the Hackathon demos, live on Sunday.
To add your Tweets, photos or videos to the community pool, tag them with #tcdisrupt and #hackdisruptNYC2011
GroupMe helps people stay connected and get together better with their friends. GroupMe’s two core offerings are: GroupMe, the group mobile messaging service, and Experiences, a service for finding, planning and purchasing group activities. GroupMe is based in New York and was founded by Jared Hecht and Steve Martocci in May 2010 at the TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon. In August 2011, GroupMe was acquired by Skype, which was subsequently acquired by Microsoft in October 2011. For more information, please visit...
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