John Lunn, Senior Global Director, Developer Network, PayPal & Braintree
Hackers were treated to a lip-smacking array of favorites such as taco al pastor from El Tizonzito, pizzas from Pizza Perro Negro and midnight grilled cheese sandwiches from the El Tostón food truck.
Rodrigo Arevalo, CEO of Uber Mexico, Ruben Olegnowicz, with Reactor 105, and Martha Garcia, Managing Partner and Developer at MyStore Xpress, joined me on the judging panel as the teams presented their hacks. While it was a tough battle, it was solo hacker, Jose Luis Rodriguez, who emerged victorious with his app Bringer.
Bringer allows you to share your travel plans with friends and family, so they can request and pay for gifts and souvenirs via PayPal. As a frequent traveler, Jose Luis often found himself forgetting to purchase gifts for friends and family, so he created Bringer so he could easily keep track of all of those requests.
Second place was awarded to Team Raccoon, who created the Tutoreandome, a platform that allows you to request and pay for virtual classes with teachers in real time using PayPal. And, third place went to Team Icalia Labs who created TanTan, which enables people without an Internet connection to use SMS for social media websites and email.
By conquering BattleHack Mexico, Jose Luis will be flown to PayPal Headquarters in Silicon Valley at the BattleHack World Finals, to compete against other teams for the grand prize of $100,000. We’re looking forward to seeing what Jose Luis will come up with at the World Finals as a solo hacker.
To find out more about BattleHack visit: https://2014.battlehack.org/