Despite it being an incredibly competitive marketplace, a car-pooling app called Hitch has won the top prize at the 2016 Dublin City University (DCU) Hackathon and will now go on to compete in Europe.
Now in its second year, the 2016 DCU Hackathon was a 72-hour enterprise boot camp that challenged participants to come up with ideas that could form the basis for a credible enterprise start-up.
Representatives from Accenture, AIB and the Irish Exporters Association of Ireland take part, in addition to mentors from numerous enterprise and software start-ups in Dublin, and it is organised by DCU’s Ryan Academy.
With 120 students from the university taking part, the Hitch team of Luke Scales, Jaime Badiola Ramos, Shane Carter, Oisín Hoy, Pedro Neto and Eva Christie came out on top at the event, which took place from 4-6 March.
The winning Hitch team from l-r: Luke Scales, Jaime Badiola Ramos, Shane Carter, Oisín Hoy, Pedro Neto (absent from photograph, Eva Christie). Image via Nick Bradshaw
The winning team received a prize fund of €1,000 plus free flights and accommodation to Berlin for a major StartUp Europe Hackathon taking place this June.
The team will also apply for a place on the UStart Student accelerator programme run by DCU’s Ryan Academy.
Speaking about the event, CEO of the DCU Ryan Academy, Eoghan Stack, said: “Hackathon 2016 is an important event as it enables students to come together in a creative and entrepreneurial environment, devise ideas and come up with a product which possesses the key elements to enable that idea to transform into a credible start-up company.”
This year’s Hackathon judging panel included Ian Lucey, founder and CEO of Lucey Technologies and the Lucey Fund; Kim Pham, head of platform, Frontline Ventures; Claire O’ Connell, science communicator and journalist with Siliconrepublic.com, and Noel King of CoderDojo.
Hitchhiking image via Shutterstock
