Last week we hosted the final BattleHack of the 2015 series in Tel Aviv, Israel. 25 teams came together to compete for the last spot at this year’s Final including the defending 2014 World Champions as well as first time and seasoned hackers.
BattleHack Tel Aviv, held at nightclub Reading 3 in the in the heart of Tel Aviv Port, saw teams hack for over 24 hours whilst enjoying the luxurious treats of Jachnun and shawarma, hummus and tahini alongside plenty of other local cuisine staples. API partners Estimote, Heroku, Pusher and SendGrid offered round the clock support for teams using their technologies.
I was joined by 5 fellow judges; Ofir Leitner – Founder at Mobile Monetization Summit; David Sayag – VP of R&D at Gett; Ruth Polachek – Head of Citi Accelerator/Chairwoman & Founder of She Codes, Vered Raviv Schwarz – COO, Fiverr and Gil Canaani – Partner at 2B Angels, and together we crowned Team SAVR the eventual winners.
Team SAVR is an Android app that helps prevent car accidents by raising awareness of bad driving behavior. Powered by Estimote beacons and NodeJS on Heroku, the app tracks when a user is driving a car, and punishes them for texting while driving. The app automatically transfers a fine to a pot for every transgression; this could be used to donate to a good cause or build up a savings account for a loved one.
The second place winner, Engage, is a mobile app that facilitates emotional engagement in advertising. Using QR codes and a simple mobile app, the team combined PayPal, Braintree, and Estimote to allow anyone to interact with an advert anywhere, enabling organisations to engage with audiences out-of-home to support their cause.
The third prize went to team Paceifier; an Android app that tracks the driving behaviour of your children. Combining the speed, acceleration and any aggressive breaking, the app is able to automatically add and subtract money from a pot that can then be transferred to the child or to a charity when good driving skills are shown. Powered by Rails, Javascript and Android, Paceifier connects rewarding children for proper driving with paying for good causes.
It was great to be back in Tel Aviv for our third consecutive year; the standard of hacks in Israel never fail to impress. We’re now looking forward to seeing what all our teams create at the World Finals in just over 4 weeks’ time.
BattleHack Tel Aviv crowns Team SAVR as the winners to compete at the World Finals
Team Savr will represent Israel at the BattleHack World Finals, competing for a $100,000 USD Grand Prize
Tel Aviv, October 9 – Leading global payments providers PayPal and Braintree crowned Team SAVR as the winners of BattleHack Tel Aviv 2015.
The home of the 2014 champions hosted the final hackathon of the BattleHack 2015 series with over 25 teams coming together to determine which team will defend the country’s title in this years’ World Finals.
Team SAVR, a mix of old college friends and co-workers from all across Israel who came together at BattleHack for the first time, created an Android app that helps prevent car accidents by raising awareness of bad driving behaviour. Powered by Estimote beacons and NodeJS on Heroku the app tracks when a user is driving a car, and punishes them for texting while driving. The app automatically transfers a fine to a pot for every transgression, that can be used to donate to a good cause or build up a savings account for a loved one.
“We were so happy to win the prize for the best integration of Estimote that we didn’t think we would have a chance to win the 1st place prize!” said Hila Yonatan, one third of the winning team. “It was a great hack and we’re super excited to represent Israel at the World Finals”.
“The standard of hacks created at each one of the BattleHacks was impressive and Israel never fails to impress us with their coding skills” said John Lunn, Senior Director at Braintree_PayPal. “Team SAVR was another example of the great talent that Tel Aviv has to offer. I have no doubt they will go on to create another great product at our World Finals”.
Team Engage placed second with their app that facilitates emotional engagement in advertising. Coming in third was Team Pacefier with an app that tracks the driving behaviour of your children with financial reward for safe driving.
BattleHack is a global competition that will visit cities around the world and culminates at the World Finals in November. The winning team will be awarded $100,000 USD, an axe trophy and the coveted title of being the ‘Ultimate Hackers for Good’.
John Lunn, Sr. Director, PayPal