Israel-based Trollim has won the best International startup category at TechCrunch 50. Here’s the skinny on what they do:
Trollim has created a competition platform and social network for programmers that assesses their coding skills through coding battles. Users are identified as “trolls” on the platform and once a user signs up, he or she fills out a profile that includes their age, location and coding language skills (C++, Ruby, PHP etc.). Trollim then gives the user 3 to 6 pieces of code, or a “test,” to fix to asses their baseline level of skill and based on the results of this test, the user is given a skill level of 1 though 5. Once a user has been assigned a skill level, he can then start challenging other programmers on the site to one on one battles, where trolls have to fix different pieces of code, or “rumbles,” where multiple programmers participate in a battle. As you win battles, Trollim’s proprietary algorithms will evaluate your skills and increase your coding skill level. Trollim says that you can search for users by country, skill level or age, letting users battle a variety of other programmers. Users can also see statistics and metrics on their skill level and improvement. You can also publish your ratings as a widget to a blog or web site.