Disrupt SF Hackathon 2012

San Francisco, California | September 8 - 9, 2012

From The Hackathon: Advise.ly Provides Peer-To-Peer Career Advice On Demand

Romain Dillet

Romain Dillet is a writer at TechCrunch. Originally from France, Romain attended EMLYON Business School, a leading French business school specialized in entrepreneurship. He covers many things from mobile apps with great designs to complex tech achievements. He is a pop culture devotee. He now lives in Lyon and likes to cover New York startups as he used to live there. → Learn More

Sunday, September 9th, 2012
hack-10

At the TechCrunch Disrupt SF Hackathon, a presentation on stage was very polished and caught our attention. Advise.ly provides peer-to-peer career advice on demand. It uses both the LinkedIn API and the Twilio API to first find people with the same career background and then initiate a phone call. The site is already live and working, which is impressive for a 24-hour hack.

First, you authenticate with your LinkedIn account and enter your phone number. It then uses your LinkedIn information to find close matches on the service of people who help you when you are at a turning point in your career. Then Twilio initiates a call. It’s as simple as that.

“We felt that this was a pinpoint and that there was an opportunity,” said John Milinovich, who works at Google and is part of the team. “We arrived here yesterday and we just focused on the execution,” he continued.

They don’t know what the next step is, but they are really excited by the opportunity they got here. Yet, they knew it would be a long and tiring night. But adrenaline makes up for the lack of sleep.

Parth Shah (VMWare), Uzair Ali (Box.net) and John Milinovich (Google) met at Yahoo where the three of them used to work. Andrew Look (Shopzilla) and Nathanael Smith (Perch) were members of the same fraternity at UCLA with Milinovich. When asked if they would take part in the Hackathon next year, the answer was “Absolutely, we count down the days.”

Here’s their presentation on stage: