The Salesforce $1 Million Hackathon was incredibly exciting for us.  It was awesome to see thousands of developers register and come to Dreamforce to hack.  But, there have been some questions about the administration of the hackathon.  We’ve seen questions about why the winning team was allowed to submit an app that may have used pre-existing code, how the judging worked, and the eligibility of participants.  While we are conducting a thorough review of the final entries to ensure they complied with published rules and regulations, we wanted to address some of those concerns here.

Our hackathon was designed to challenge developers to create a new mobile app using the Salesforce1 Platform.  Great mobile apps use connected services to make their apps better.  We expected and encouraged teams to take advantage of existing APIs and services they’ve written to create a great mobile app.  For example, any Salesforce customer or developer is likely to have a whole set of existing customizations and logic that can be exposed to their mobile app via REST API.  We addressed the use of existing code, APIs and services in our discussion board: http://boards.developerforce.com/t5/Salesforce-1-Million-Hackathon/developed-solely-as-part-of-this-Hackathon/td-p/702029

When it came to judging the apps, we wanted to conduct multiple independent reviews of every eligible submission.  So we assembled a team of more than 80 judges, and used a team of expert developers to assist each judge’s evaluation of apps as needed.  Every eligible app entry was reviewed at least twice.  In addition, all of the final 5 teams met the eligibility requirements specified in the Official Rules: https://d259t2jj6zp7qm.cloudfront.net/images/v1384900393-Final_1M_Hackathon_2013_Rules_4_hcwqgs.pdf

We had many amazing apps submitted, and we wish they could all win $1 million.  I had my own personal favorites but was an observer, not a judge.  I want to personally extend an offer to everyone who participated in this hackathon, or really any developer with a great idea for an app on the Salesforce platform, to let us help you connect it with funding, technology and customers.  We have an entire team dedicated to helping mobile startups get their product funded, get it built, and grow revenue.  We are here to help you take these app ideas and turn them into businesses.

Thanks for being part of our community.  Once we complete our review of the final entries, we will post our findings here.  Thanks for giving us feedback, and we’ll use it to make the hackathon experience even better next time!  Keep the amazing apps coming.

-Adam