John Lunn, Senior Global Director, Developer Network, PayPal & Braintree

 

With the World Finals of the BattleHack 2014 only 2 weeks away, Moscow concluded this year's 14 city series across four continents in a spectacular fashion. In the presence of one of our 2013 BattleHack World Final winners, hackers formed 31 teams and coded against one another for a sleepless 24 hours.

 

Co-working space DI Telegraph hosted BattleHack in the old Central Telegraph building in the heart of Moscow. Hackers enjoyed traditional Russian food including Pilaf Uzbec, Pirozhki, Borsch and Pemlmeni, and were entertained by a traditional folk music ensemble.

 

The judges, including Alexander Vasiliev, CEO of Apps4all.RU; Diana Moldavsky, entrepreneur & tech/mobile executive; Dmitri Bourkovski, VP of International Business Development at Xsolla; Gary Fowler, Co-Founder and Chief Marketing Officer at GVA LaunchGurus; Konstantin Savenkov, COO of Zvooq & Bookmate and I, had a hard time choosing a winner. In the end, it was Team Brutal Skaters who won first place.

 

Team Brutal Skaters -- Artem Arakcheev, Pavel Osadchuk,Pavel Zolotarev and Alexander Semion -- created an app using Relayr’s WunderBar that used the device's sensors to track skateboard moves and allows skaters to compete with friends, set challenges and place bets. Once a challenge is completed, the payments are made through PayPal. In just over 2 weeks, they will be joining winners from San Francisco, Miami, Berlin, Toronto, Boston, Warsaw, Chicago, London, Tel Aviv and a few others in the race to win $100,000 USD at BattleHack World Finals.

 

Closely behind team Brutal Skaters was team Parmesan in second place, winning Playstation 4 consoles. Team Parmesan created an app allowing the user to request delicacies from travellers abroad to return back to Russian with foods no longer shipped to Russia, such as parmesan cheese and jamon, and pay via PayPal. In third place was Team Eristika who created AppDare, which enabled users to set up challenges, and dares with their friends, and make bets on them. Team Eristika, who also integrated PayPal to facilitate the payments for the bets, took home Polaroid cameras.

 

Now we move to the next and final stage of BattleHack 2014, an epic showdown between the 14 city winners at the World Finals in San Jose on November 15th and 16th!

 

To find out more about BattleHack visit: https://2014.battlehack.org/

Original author: PayPal-Forward