HackerRank Launches A New Social Platform For Coders Based Around Puzzles And Real-World Problems
HackerRank, a new social platform for coders, is launching at TechCrunch Disrupt today. The Y Combinator-backed company, which was founded by the same team as job site InterviewStreet, wants to create a community of hackers based around puzzles, game bots and real-world challenges. HackerRank, as the name implies, will also offer leaderboards and other competitive elements.
There will also be more puzzle-like problems on the site that the company plans to source from leading figures in the various programming language communities, but as Ravisankar told me, the team believes that coders are mostly interested in solving real-world problems.
One interesting aspect of the site is its ranking system. Problems aren’t categorized by level when they are posted. Instead, the ranking is always relative and levels from 1-10 are assigned to problems after that fact and based on how many people managed to solve the problem. Some challenges, Ravisankar noted, won’t really have a solution and are more about making existing algorithms more efficient.
Ravisankar also told me that the site is mostly meant to attract coders who are already well-versed in their respective languages and won’t target learners. The solutions to the challenges will be posted online, however, and HackerRank hopes that this will help coders learn new techniques.
To market its product, HackerRank has just launched a series of challenges for college students and also plans to host an inter-collegiate hackathon later this month.
Through its previous incarnation as InterviewStreet, HackerRank raised a $3 million Series A round led by Khosla Ventures in 2011 and the company obviously also received funding through its participation in the Y Combinator program.
Disrupt Q&A:
Q: What is the business model?
A: If we can get engaged users and a company puts up a challenge, then we can charge for this as the companies want these problems solved.
Q: I buy the premise that people like to compete, but how do you intend to build a business here? Recruiting? Accreditation?
A: We want to connect hackers and real-world problems. Before focusing too much on the business model, we want to attract a large number of engaged hackers.
This browser does not support the video element.