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

This past weekend, we hosted the second installation of BattleHack 2015 at the beautiful Cross Campus in Santa Monica. The Los Angeles Hack, took off in great style with 29 teams competing in the 24-hour hackathon.

Hackers were given the red carpet treatment with an exquisite array of Southern California favorites. This included Umami Burger, the iconic Kogi BBQ, Pink’s Hot Dogs, Bru’s Wiffle and a variety of local craft beer as they transformed their ideas into functioning mobile and desktop apps.

In the end, Team DropLock comprised of Israel Torres, Brandon Whitney and Ethan Wessel were awarded first place and will go on to represent Los Angeles at the World Finals in November. Inspired by personally experiencing laptop theft, the team decided to make DropLock, a desktop app that monitors network information on the laptop.  If stolen, when the thief attempts to gain access to the laptop, they are  given the choice to either purchase the laptop through a Braintree integration, or donate it to the owner’s designated charity through Just Giving. Team DropLock also integrated Pebble's APIs, so the user can report a stolen laptop directly from their watch, leveraged DropBox for data collection and integrated Sendgrid for email delivery.

In second place, Team No Strings Attached created a mobile hardware hack that connects a visually impaired user with a runner so that they can run outside with speed and confidence. Team No Strings Attached took home Xbox One consoles. Team What’s In, was awarded third place for the their mobile app that allows users to scan and identify ingredients in products that might cause an allergic reaction and offer alternative allergy free options.

Team DropLock will compete for the $100,000 grand prize at PayPal Headquarters in Silicon Valley at the BattleHack World Finals in November. Next up, BattleHack Singapore!

To find out more about BattleHack visit: https://2015.battlehack.org/