

YC Hacks Submissions - CSDude
http://ychacks.challengepost.com/submissions

======
zbowling
It was fun participating. YC Hacks was my 141st hackathon I've attended and
the 111th I've competed in. We didn't win this (can't win them all), but we
had a lot of fun. I can't wait until the next one. It was generally well ran
for a first hackathon.

What I'm happy to see is that technically novel hacks won and not just hacks
that are viable business ideas. (A javascript framework won a spot!)

Being a YC ran hackathon I wasn't sure what to expect. Far too many hackathons
have turned into not being about doing something fun and technically
impressive but rather mini-investment pitch sessions. There is a place for
that but it's quickly becoming a bit silly. I love hackathons where you are
judged by peers for the clever technical creations you create. I don't like
hackathons where you are judged by sponsors, mostly for using their APIs (it's
great to have sponsor prizes but that shouldn't be the reason for a hackathon
in many cases).

One thing that got me was the amount of press around this hackathon. The
outside world was watching it and you could feel it. It don't think anyone
cared internally though that was hacking. It was just as relaxed as any other
hackathon I've attended.

My wish list YC Hack next year:

\- make it 48 hours (24 hours is almost too short and any longer than 48 is
too much in my experience)

\- less distractions (too many announcements. it was good at night though, but
the music, while good, was too loud to speak to my teammates at points)

\- do mini/fast pitches instead of floor demos. we were assigned a table
outside and not many people came out there in the hot sun to see our hack.
part of the fun of making something in the weekend is showing it off.

\- keep it about this size. don't grow it. the lottery and pre-submission was
the right idea. if you have to many projects, it gets hard to demo and goes on
for hours (See TC Disrupt). The quality of apps was super high here because of
the pre-application process.

Everything was amazing though. I would say it's in the top 10 hackathons I've
attended of the 141.

Thanks most of all to Kat for organizing this thing. It was awesome.

~~~
th0br0
Interesting. I was normally quite happy at past hackathons that we only had
24hrs. (Startup Weekends or similar are different of course) But my general
impression was that you can't build more than a PoC in most cases and thus
24hrs tend to be quite sufficient. With >24hrs you often end up in
implementation hell and while that is the time required to also be able to
properly prepare the business side of your pitch, it is most often wasted. At
the last hackathon I attended (& won), we went from idea to PoC in ~12hrs (of
24h)...

------
nodesocket
I like surge ([http://challengepost.com/software/surge-pricing-as-a-
service](http://challengepost.com/software/surge-pricing-as-a-service)) -
Surge Pricing as a Service. Though it is quite niche, it can provide value
that companies are willing to pay buckets for. That is, assuming it works. :-)

~~~
michaelrbock
Thanks :)

The initial version uses the Google Prediction API as the machine learning
backend, and obviously some tweaking would need to be done to the model to get
it to 99% right, but I'm confident that for verticals like event tickets this
service would be very useful. Imagine Coachella tickets _not_ selling out
within 5 minutes or a play at a local theater having an automatic discount the
night before the show if half the seats are still unfilled.

~~~
nodesocket
Can we run through an example of how this works? Let's say I have a website
that sells Super Bowl tickets. I open sales at market price of $1999.00. Then,
does every time a purchase happen I send you a post event such as:

    
    
        {"item": 150242, "price": 1999.00, at: "2014-08-03T12:40:34Z"}
    

Then when rendering the product I call into your api to fetch the surge price
adjusted value `/v1/150242` and get back:

    
    
        {"item" 150242, "quantity_left", 48, "surge_price": 2033.00, "original_price": 1999.00, "percent_change": 1.7 }

~~~
michaelrbock
Yup, that's basically right.

We also have implemented a "real-time" aspect whereby the price can also
fluctuate based on the number of users currently viewing/purchasing an item
vs. the average number of users usually viewing the item (for example when
Outside Lands begins selling their tickets at 10am PST). Other factors taken
into consideration (as of now, but more to come) are: inventory_remaining, and
profit_margin (i.e. how much you make on each sale).

------
stevewillows
I love the idea behind Gather --
[http://ychacks.challengepost.com/submissions/25793-gather](http://ychacks.challengepost.com/submissions/25793-gather)

They could monetize by allowing certain restaurants and events to purchase
priority.

~~~
prawn
What if the restaurants/events/clubs "pitched" for that group? So if you had a
decent sized group willing to spend and they were having a quiet night, they
might offer you a free bottle of wine with dinner. A competing restaurant
might offer 2-for-1 meals or a welcome drink.

~~~
stevewillows
Restaurants and venues could gain some additional traffic for off-peak hours
using these incentives -- sort of a late-night happy hour that requires the
group to check-in through the app. Pretty smart.

~~~
prawn
And I think it's inevitable that an attractive or high-spending group would
receive favourable "bids" from venues. That's happening already in club queues
around the world, but at least this way you might waste less time waiting or
at least get better treatment at a second-tier club than be snubbed at the
most popular spot. Ugly reality of trends in that world, maybe.

