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One of the comments, kinda what I already expected: "Spoiler: One of those guys used to work for Salesforce! (not kidding, they announced it during the demo).

One of the comments, kinda what I already expected: "Spoiler: One of those guys used to work for Salesforce! (not kidding, they announced it during the demo). The French guys were followed around during the entire hackathon by a salesforce camera crew (I was sitting right next to them, some of the salesforce people even came over to help them submit to be sure they got it in before the last 5 min was up, kinda knew they were in from day 1). One of the finalist teams didn't make the check-in time, so they extended the check-in by a few hours (saw that one coming too). And last but not least, the healthcare app. Although I liked the app, it was way too polished given the team size, and the time allotted (I mean wow, very professional if it were true), but the fact that they were using lots of logos (with trademark) of some big insurance companies in their demo and video (specifically in the rules, unless of course all those big companies gave written consent in the 3 weeks), kinda figured they were getting a leg up. The bluetooth app, that one I thought had value, and was innovative (albeit not realistic in facial recognition). I would have voted for that one if I could. You could tell it was just a dog and pony show on the 2nd day. Some people were helped, some werent. Then, when you submitted, all you got was a "sorry, your not chosen" -dear john- canned email... Nothing telling you where you could have improved, nothing saying what your score was, no information at all. Just a simple 'sorry'.... Turned out to be a huge waste of time, energy, and money. Wont be coming back, that's for sure."

goldenkey 13y ago
Not to mention it cost $500 to enter, meaning negative EV, not as bad as the lotto, but still a losers' gamble.
- yeukhon 13y ago
  This part I just don't get it. Why? Salesforce is not a small startup. It can definitely afford a 100k hackathon.
  - trentmb 13y ago
    The Web-Startup Tool Mindest.
  - ReligiousWacko 13y ago
    Not startup but still losing tons of money.
    - yeukhon 13y ago
      i don't know the actual number. They might have a negative net income for a little while due to expense but according to this news, growth is going up. Plus, if you look at Facebook's Tools Engineering position it mentions Salesforce.com so I think the company has a pretty good outlook. Plus, coming, 100k for food and facility is not that much to them when they are giving up 1M. http://finance.yahoo.com/news/salesforce-coms-revenue-growth-accelerates-234800113.html http://finance.yahoo.com/news/salesforce-coms-revenue-growth...
- andyakb 13y ago
  An entry fee does not make something negative EV. $1,090,000 was added to the prizepool. If it was literally 100% guaranteed that the winner was pre-selected, then it would be -EV if >180 teams entered and all had the same chance of winning a prize. If the event was not rigged, then it is clearly +EV for even medicore participants.
- jmacd 13y ago
  It did not cost $500 to enter. It was either $99 or Free (there was a free entry promotion for most of the time during the run up to the hackathon).
  - goldenkey 13y ago
    I was wrong. Still though, that $99 fee is _per_ person. You'd probably have 2 or 3 people on your team. That's $300 in that case. And if I'm correct, I remember them saying that a 1-person team would have very low chances of winning. Not to mention that the competition is not a 1-day event, it is just a 1-day showing, the winning team put a month of work in addition to what they already had completed as a base. I am not one to take such large gambles when the tables are clearly not in my favor. The whole thing reeks of pre-arranged cronyism.
  - philthesong 13y ago
    even if it was free...... how about time?
  - DanBC 13y ago
    All entrants had to be a registered attendant of Dreamforce 2013. Are people including that cost too? http://salesforce1million.challengepost.com/ http://salesforce1million.challengepost.com/ > You are, and each of your team members is, a registered attendee of Dreamforce 2013. See the Dreamforce website for event registration information. How much did that cost? DF14 says it's going to be $799 https://www.salesforce.com/dreamforce/DF13/register.jsp?d=70130000000tFvi&internal=true https://www.salesforce.com/dreamforce/DF13/register.jsp?d=70... I think, but I don't know, that DF13 was the same price? Maybe the 5 is just a key-rollover error from the $99?
  - dlotus 13y ago
    Very few people registered at even the $99 hacker pass level, which is why they ended up making it free. Nobody who wasn't already going to DF paid the full conference price to participate in the hackathon. Quit with the hysteria.
- schmerdy 13y ago
  I don't know what you paid $500 for. The hackathon was free. Zero. $0. Early on they charged $99 for a developer pass, but they reimbursed me and my team members.
jorde 13y ago
People also complaining that their apps didn't get any hits during the evaluation period [1]. If this is true, which it seems like to be, it is pretty shameful business from Salesforce given that people clearly used a decent part of their week in order to participate. I feel bad for Heroku employees who promoted this. Edit: According to one of the judges [2], they only saw and evaluated the 5 Salesforce selected apps. Also the app gallery only shows the five winners [3]. No matter how the finalists were chosen, this is not how you run a hackathon. [1]: http://salesforce1million.challengepost.com/forum_topics/2644 http://salesforce1million.challengepost.com/forum_topics/264... [2]: https://twitter.com/alexwilliams/status/403723331007832064 https://twitter.com/alexwilliams/status/403723331007832064 [3]: http://salesforce1million.challengepost.com/submissions http://salesforce1million.challengepost.com/submissions
- jmduke 13y ago
  that people clearly used a decent part of their week in order to participate And $499.
  - Jd 13y ago
    Hacker pass was $99 list price and often given out for free.
- philthesong 13y ago
  People gotta group up and sue them
vyrotek 13y ago
I'm not really surprised. Salesforce held contest a few years ago for some of their Apps and based it completely on Facebook Likes of YouTube video presentations. Some teams were definitely felt favored. Some were let in well past the entry due-date (giving them more time to submit better presentations). Other products were bogus and nothing more than photoshop mocks. And some companies cheated and purchased thousands of likes over night (they were caught and disqualified). It was a serious mess. The funniest part was seeing how the companies all had thousands of likes while the actual views of the videos were barely in the hundreds.
- drakaal 13y ago
  I'd like this one. I sell Facebook likes. If you were offering a $1M prize I'd "sell" you a lot of Facebook likes. It would be like if all of England liked me. Which they probably do even if they don't want to admit to it. I also sell Youtube views, so I could make sure it would be less funny than what you describe. Popularity contests should be done in person. Harder to cheat if you have to get people to the venue.
coppenheimer 13y ago
This is ridiculous. Really sounds like a bunch of sniveling losers. I participated in the hack, lost don't regret it at all. Well, a little bit because i hate staying up late. next time will plan ahead.And I'm a former salesforce employee and personally know a bunch of the dev relations team. No leg up there. I thought our submission was pretty good, didn't win, oh well. It's almost as if these commenters believed they were promised the million and have been ripped off. I don't think that is the right way to think about this, if your app is so great keep it going make your own million.
- priley 13y ago
  I had a great time too. But it unfortunately does look they started Upshot (their startup) way before the hackathon was even announced.. pretty messed up: http://www.meetup.com/Salesforce-com-Integration-Analytics/events/136920332/ http://www.meetup.com/Salesforce-com-Integration-Analytics/e...
  - xauronx 13y ago
    About a week before Dreamforce, Salesforce had a call with their "premiere partners", and were very unsure about their own rules. They ended up saying "You can submit an existing app or product, but you'll only be judged on your contributions for the hackathon", which was a huge red flag of BS. In light of all of the news, I almost feel like they knew the winner at that point and were trying to cover their tracks a little bit.
    - eskimoroll 13y ago
      Wow, that's messed up. My team and I could have tacked on Salesforce to our existing product (like several of the top teams), but we read over the rules several times and made the conscious decision to build everything from scratch so that our entry would count.
      - xauronx 13y ago
        Yeah, we knew this was going to happen after hearing that. We should have just aborted, but decided to be hopeful that it would be tastefully handled. I guess that was too much to hope for.
chaqke 13y ago
given the copious amount of US laws regarding giveaways, it's probably illegal too. did it for fun because of a coupon code, but I feel sorry for anyone who paid the full price of admission. if they were going to rig it anyway, why sell hackathon-only tickets? that's pretty malicious.
jcrei 13y ago
So was this just one of those hackathons made to keep internal employees happy? I mean, I'm sure there's plenty of people inside Salesforce who have big dreams and ambition, and would be thinking about starting their own companies. So does Salesforce put on a show just for these people to feel good about themselves? And of course to get the prize money. But why open it to the public then?
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
Jd 13y ago
Bluetooth guy won a couple of previous hackathons and was accused of favoritism even then.
awol_77 13y ago
I know the developers of the healthcare app personally. They competed properly and within the rules, day and night, in preparation for the demo. They have the professionalism and the "wow" factor that you mentioned. Just because you may think it's too polished to be done in a few days by a few people, does not make it so.
- tedivm 13y ago
  There's proof of these allegations- they apparently demo'd the app at a Salesforce meetup several weeks before the competition started. See- http://www.meetup.com/Salesforce-com-Integration-Analytics/events/136920332/ http://www.meetup.com/Salesforce-com-Integration-Analytics/e... So maybe, since you have this personal relationship with them, you can get the developers to come here and explain how that happened?
  - mynameisvlad 13y ago
    Upshot is not the Healthcare app. They're separate.
karawoodard 13y ago
At least you got to compete. All the girls wanting to compete at Launch Hack got rejected. All hacks are rigged. All the ones worth winning anyway.
- bcjordan 13y ago
  Serious question—are "hackathons" starting to be known as "hacks"? Have heard it a couple of times now.
  - karawoodard 13y ago
    I think so. Several hackathons are just call somethingHack. Like LaunchHack. Unrelated to your comment. Nice to know I got voted down for pointing out sexism. I thought I was on YC not Reddit.
- huu 13y ago
  Do you have a link for this? I can't find any information on it.
colabi 13y ago
Do you know which finalist the check in deadline was extended for ?
colabi 13y ago
NEW BREAKING NEWS> THIS THING WAS FULLY RIGGED. HEALTHCARE.LOVE CAME FROM SALESFORCE PORTFOLIO COMPANY. Violates: Neither you nor any of your team members are an employee of salesforce.com or its related companies as of September 1, 2013 or during the Hackathon; nor an immediate family member (parent, sibling, spouse, child) of or household member to an employee.

goldenkey 13y ago

Not to mention it cost $500 to enter, meaning negative EV, not as bad as the lotto, but still a losers' gamble.

yeukhon 13y ago
This part I just don't get it. Why? Salesforce is not a small startup. It can definitely afford a 100k hackathon.
- trentmb 13y ago
  The Web-Startup Tool Mindest.
- ReligiousWacko 13y ago
  Not startup but still losing tons of money.
  - yeukhon 13y ago
    i don't know the actual number. They might have a negative net income for a little while due to expense but according to this news, growth is going up. Plus, if you look at Facebook's Tools Engineering position it mentions Salesforce.com so I think the company has a pretty good outlook. Plus, coming, 100k for food and facility is not that much to them when they are giving up 1M. http://finance.yahoo.com/news/salesforce-coms-revenue-growth-accelerates-234800113.html http://finance.yahoo.com/news/salesforce-coms-revenue-growth...
andyakb 13y ago
An entry fee does not make something negative EV. $1,090,000 was added to the prizepool. If it was literally 100% guaranteed that the winner was pre-selected, then it would be -EV if >180 teams entered and all had the same chance of winning a prize. If the event was not rigged, then it is clearly +EV for even medicore participants.
jmacd 13y ago
It did not cost $500 to enter. It was either $99 or Free (there was a free entry promotion for most of the time during the run up to the hackathon).
- goldenkey 13y ago
  I was wrong. Still though, that $99 fee is _per_ person. You'd probably have 2 or 3 people on your team. That's $300 in that case. And if I'm correct, I remember them saying that a 1-person team would have very low chances of winning. Not to mention that the competition is not a 1-day event, it is just a 1-day showing, the winning team put a month of work in addition to what they already had completed as a base. I am not one to take such large gambles when the tables are clearly not in my favor. The whole thing reeks of pre-arranged cronyism.
- philthesong 13y ago
  even if it was free...... how about time?
- DanBC 13y ago
  All entrants had to be a registered attendant of Dreamforce 2013. Are people including that cost too? http://salesforce1million.challengepost.com/ http://salesforce1million.challengepost.com/ > You are, and each of your team members is, a registered attendee of Dreamforce 2013. See the Dreamforce website for event registration information. How much did that cost? DF14 says it's going to be $799 https://www.salesforce.com/dreamforce/DF13/register.jsp?d=70130000000tFvi&internal=true https://www.salesforce.com/dreamforce/DF13/register.jsp?d=70... I think, but I don't know, that DF13 was the same price? Maybe the 5 is just a key-rollover error from the $99?
- dlotus 13y ago
  Very few people registered at even the $99 hacker pass level, which is why they ended up making it free. Nobody who wasn't already going to DF paid the full conference price to participate in the hackathon. Quit with the hysteria.
schmerdy 13y ago
I don't know what you paid $500 for. The hackathon was free. Zero. $0. Early on they charged $99 for a developer pass, but they reimbursed me and my team members.

jorde 13y ago

People also complaining that their apps didn't get any hits during the evaluation period [1]. If this is true, which it seems like to be, it is pretty shameful business from Salesforce given that people clearly used a decent part of their week in order to participate. I feel bad for Heroku employees who promoted this. Edit: According to one of the judges [2], they only saw and evaluated the 5 Salesforce selected apps. Also the app gallery only shows the five winners [3]. No matter how the finalists were chosen, this is not how you run a hackathon. [1]: http://salesforce1million.challengepost.com/forum_topics/2644 http://salesforce1million.challengepost.com/forum_topics/264... [2]: https://twitter.com/alexwilliams/status/403723331007832064 https://twitter.com/alexwilliams/status/403723331007832064 [3]: http://salesforce1million.challengepost.com/submissions http://salesforce1million.challengepost.com/submissions

jmduke 13y ago
that people clearly used a decent part of their week in order to participate And $499.
- Jd 13y ago
  Hacker pass was $99 list price and often given out for free.
philthesong 13y ago
People gotta group up and sue them

vyrotek 13y ago

I'm not really surprised. Salesforce held contest a few years ago for some of their Apps and based it completely on Facebook Likes of YouTube video presentations. Some teams were definitely felt favored. Some were let in well past the entry due-date (giving them more time to submit better presentations). Other products were bogus and nothing more than photoshop mocks. And some companies cheated and purchased thousands of likes over night (they were caught and disqualified). It was a serious mess. The funniest part was seeing how the companies all had thousands of likes while the actual views of the videos were barely in the hundreds.

drakaal 13y ago
I'd like this one. I sell Facebook likes. If you were offering a $1M prize I'd "sell" you a lot of Facebook likes. It would be like if all of England liked me. Which they probably do even if they don't want to admit to it. I also sell Youtube views, so I could make sure it would be less funny than what you describe. Popularity contests should be done in person. Harder to cheat if you have to get people to the venue.

coppenheimer 13y ago

This is ridiculous. Really sounds like a bunch of sniveling losers. I participated in the hack, lost don't regret it at all. Well, a little bit because i hate staying up late. next time will plan ahead.And I'm a former salesforce employee and personally know a bunch of the dev relations team. No leg up there. I thought our submission was pretty good, didn't win, oh well. It's almost as if these commenters believed they were promised the million and have been ripped off. I don't think that is the right way to think about this, if your app is so great keep it going make your own million.

priley 13y ago
I had a great time too. But it unfortunately does look they started Upshot (their startup) way before the hackathon was even announced.. pretty messed up: http://www.meetup.com/Salesforce-com-Integration-Analytics/events/136920332/ http://www.meetup.com/Salesforce-com-Integration-Analytics/e...
- xauronx 13y ago
  About a week before Dreamforce, Salesforce had a call with their "premiere partners", and were very unsure about their own rules. They ended up saying "You can submit an existing app or product, but you'll only be judged on your contributions for the hackathon", which was a huge red flag of BS. In light of all of the news, I almost feel like they knew the winner at that point and were trying to cover their tracks a little bit.
  - eskimoroll 13y ago
    Wow, that's messed up. My team and I could have tacked on Salesforce to our existing product (like several of the top teams), but we read over the rules several times and made the conscious decision to build everything from scratch so that our entry would count.
    - xauronx 13y ago
      Yeah, we knew this was going to happen after hearing that. We should have just aborted, but decided to be hopeful that it would be tastefully handled. I guess that was too much to hope for.

chaqke 13y ago

given the copious amount of US laws regarding giveaways, it's probably illegal too. did it for fun because of a coupon code, but I feel sorry for anyone who paid the full price of admission. if they were going to rig it anyway, why sell hackathon-only tickets? that's pretty malicious.

jcrei 13y ago

So was this just one of those hackathons made to keep internal employees happy? I mean, I'm sure there's plenty of people inside Salesforce who have big dreams and ambition, and would be thinking about starting their own companies. So does Salesforce put on a show just for these people to feel good about themselves? And of course to get the prize money. But why open it to the public then?

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

Jd 13y ago

Bluetooth guy won a couple of previous hackathons and was accused of favoritism even then.

awol_77 13y ago

I know the developers of the healthcare app personally. They competed properly and within the rules, day and night, in preparation for the demo. They have the professionalism and the "wow" factor that you mentioned. Just because you may think it's too polished to be done in a few days by a few people, does not make it so.

tedivm 13y ago
There's proof of these allegations- they apparently demo'd the app at a Salesforce meetup several weeks before the competition started. See- http://www.meetup.com/Salesforce-com-Integration-Analytics/events/136920332/ http://www.meetup.com/Salesforce-com-Integration-Analytics/e... So maybe, since you have this personal relationship with them, you can get the developers to come here and explain how that happened?
- mynameisvlad 13y ago
  Upshot is not the Healthcare app. They're separate.

karawoodard 13y ago

At least you got to compete. All the girls wanting to compete at Launch Hack got rejected. All hacks are rigged. All the ones worth winning anyway.

bcjordan 13y ago
Serious question—are "hackathons" starting to be known as "hacks"? Have heard it a couple of times now.
- karawoodard 13y ago
  I think so. Several hackathons are just call somethingHack. Like LaunchHack. Unrelated to your comment. Nice to know I got voted down for pointing out sexism. I thought I was on YC not Reddit.
huu 13y ago
Do you have a link for this? I can't find any information on it.

colabi 13y ago

Do you know which finalist the check in deadline was extended for ?

colabi 13y ago

NEW BREAKING NEWS> THIS THING WAS FULLY RIGGED. HEALTHCARE.LOVE CAME FROM SALESFORCE PORTFOLIO COMPANY. Violates: Neither you nor any of your team members are an employee of salesforce.com or its related companies as of September 1, 2013 or during the Hackathon; nor an immediate family member (parent, sibling, spouse, child) of or household member to an employee.