The 2016 Small Business Tech Hackathon (aka #SmallBizHack) has wrapped up, but we think it’s just the beginning for a wave of new innovations that will transform the lives of small business owners around the world in the coming months and years. If you missed it, here’s a recap of some of the excitement and innovation. Stay tuned to our Events listings for news of the next #SmallBizHack coming your way.
#SmallBizHack 2016 Winners
Put together 180 hackers with 5 API partners, add some inspirational talks and practical workshops, plenty of food, cool tech gear, workspace, support staff and unicorns, and what do you get? Thirty-two teams pitching their mind-blowing innovations that leave our four judges hard-pressed to choose just a few winners.
Challenge 1: Create a new solution that saves a small business time or money
- First place: Seatjoy: A virtual workforce for small businesses. Create additional cash flow via loyalty, order-ahead, and online payment features. Manage time by running errands, automated and intelligent reports, and increases sales via targeted marketting campaigns. (Used Google’s API.ai, QuickBooks Online API, Square API)
- Second place: Emburse: Assisted QuickBooks Online reconciliation. (Used QuickBooks Online API)
- Third place: Gather Assist AI: An AI that helps you quickly locate related records. (Used Google’s Api.ai, QuickBooks Online API)
Challenge 2: Create a new solution that saves a non-profit time or money
- First place: Deary: A service app built on top of Alexa that enables seniors to access important services currently out of their reach. Residents of subsidized and non-profit senior housing use Deary to verbally report safety concerns, maintenance issues and order food. Deary provides seniors a friendly companion to solve critical problems in a hands-free manner while decreasing overhead and staffing costs to the non-profit housing provider. (Used Google’s API.ai, Postman, QuickBooks Online API)
- Second place: Donatoday: Increase donors engagement with non-profit organizations, bringing a seamless experience for the donation process. (Used QuickBooks Online API)
- Third place: Aasha: Assists non-profit organizations to smoothly transition from paper-based POS transaction and manual inventory management to smart-phone/Web based platform. (Used QuickBooks Online API, Square API, Google’s Api.ai)
API Challenge: Best use of QuickBooks API
- Winner: Datamaid: Analyze and clean-up your QuickBooks Online data. DataMaid identifies anomalies within your customer and vendor records, analyzes your transactions for common problems, and sweeps for potential duplicates.
API Challenge: Best use of Api.ai
- Winner: Gather Assist AI: An AI that helps you quickly locate related records.
API Challenge: Best use of Square API
- Winner: Aasha: Assists non-profit organizations to smoothly transition from paper-based POS transaction and manual inventory management to smart-phone/Web based platform.
API Challenge: Best use of Jibo API
Two teams tied for this prize:
- Winner: Entrify: Facial recognition to play entrance music when you enter the office. It also plugs into TimeActivity to become a biometric timesheet.
- Winner: Jibo Donor: Jibo donor encourages everyone to be nice.
Thanks to our Partners
Special thanks to our API partners — Square, Jibo, Postman, and Google’s Api.ai — who joined @IntuitDev and QuickBooks to inspire and encourage these creative hackers to go beyond the obvious and build new and interesting solutions that small business and non-profit customers will love. If you missed the hack and want to learn more about how you could use their APIs, check out this post.
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