It’s been a long night at Arena Berlin. The building hosted a very special competition — the Disrupt Berlin Hackathon.
Hundreds of engineers and designers got together to come up with something cool, something neat, something awesome. The only condition was that they only had 24 hours to work on their projects. Some of them were participating in our event for the first time, while others were regulars. Some of them slept on the floor in a corner, while others drank too much Red Bull.
We could all feel the excitement in the air when the 45 teams took the stage to present a one-minute demo to impress fellow coders and our judges. But only one team could take home the grand prize and €4,200. So, without further ado, meet the Disrupt Berlin 2017 Hackathon winner.
Winner: Quick Insurance
Quick Insurance is the easiest way to purchase an insurance product for all your valuable stuff. Let’s say you go skiing for a week with a very expensive camera. In just a few taps, you can insure your camera for a week from your phone.
Runner-Up #1: BillboardAR
BillboardAR lets you turn any billboard advertisement into an instant purchase opportunity. You just point your phone at any ad to get more details, find the closest store or buy online.
Runner-Up #2: Altrui.st
When you visit a site, Altrui.st is going to use your computer resources to mine for cryptocurrencies. But this isn’t a nasty hack as Altrui.st wants to provide basic minimum income to people in need. Read more about Altrui.st in our separate post.
Judges
Sabela Garcia Cuesta, Program Manager, Next Media Accelerator
Sabela Garcia Cuesta works at next media accelerator (NMA) in Hamburg providing early stage media startups a place to grow fast and scale in Europe entering first the German market. As program manager she represents NMA in Germany and abroad spreading the program’s benefits for European and Israeli startups, scouting potential applicants for the program and mingling with media executives and investors. She also guides the teams once they have come to Germany to help them reach their objectives.
Tina Egolf, CPO, Clue
Tina Egolf leads pirate ships (aka product teams). As Clue’s CPO she is currently defining the global product strategy and building the product, growth and monetisation teams for Clue, the #1 mobile app for female health worldwide. Before joining Clue, she took a detour into consulting with ThoughtWorks, worked for Podio as Senior Product Manager, founded and failed with her own startup and sold contemporary art. She also blogs about “future of work” and coordinates the Hamburg Geekettes, a network for women in the tech and startup scene.
Susanne Kaiser, CTO, just.social
As the CTO at Just Software, Susanne Kaiser is responsible for the software development of JUST SOCIAL – providing apps for collaboration and communication in organizations. She has a background in computer sciences and a technical and entrepreneurial expertise for more than 15 years. She is also a public speaker on international tech stages.
Diksha Dutta
Diksha Dutta is Lead, Communications at ElektroCotoure and an independent columnist. Starting her career as a feature writer in india, she gradually stepped into hard-core news reporting and has closely tracked the private equity/venture capital/startup space. She has worked with organisations like The Financial Express and NewsCorp India during her six-year long stint in the media industry as a full-time business journalist. Since 2015, she has been writing independently on startups for publications such as The Huffingtonpost and the Entrepreneur.com. At present, she is working on a book on the Indian startup ecosystem with Bloomsbury India which brings together fascinating stories of over 50 entrepreneurs across the country and will be released next year. A compilation of her few selected columns on startups has been published in an e-book titled “WunderNova” which is available on Amazon.
Ina Wagner, Head of Student Relations, CODE University
Ina Wagner is part of the team that established CODE, a newly founded and state-recognised university of applied sciences for digital product development that started with their study program in October 2017 in Berlin. She is responsible for every step of the student’s journey – from application and admission to them becoming a true digital pioneer after their bachelor’s degree. Before joining CODE, she was Head of HR and Head of Digital at deepblue networks, an agency for digital products in Hamburg, combining two roles that allowed her to support talents to reach their full potential. Ina also co-founded the Code+Design Initiative that organises coding camps and other events to support teenagers to choose a career in tech.