Staying up all night in Vegas to make $20,000 used to mean a night at the roulette wheel. Not anymore. Team 'Replay' scooped first prize in the Money 20/20 hackathon and took home a cheque for $20,000.
Used to be beer, pizza and access to cool stuff was enough to tempt developers to put in an all night shift, but with big bucks on the table, the Money 20/20 event attracted a huge crowd for its annual hackathon.
Around 620 developers participated in the Las Vegas all-nighter, spread across over 165 teams. Using APIs, SDKs and other tools made available by sponsor companies, including MasterCard, PayPal, Visa, IBM, Feedzai and Intuit, the developers selected from a choice of challenges in a bid to turn around a minimum viable product in just twenty four hours. No pre-existing code is allowed to be used in the battle against the clock.
Five teams in the runners up category took home $5,000 for their efforts. Another five teams won $20,000 each. Team Replay took the top spot as overall winner, receiving their cheque from Vinod Khosla of venture capital firm Khosla Ventures.