Virtual Piggy, Inc. (VPIG), provider of safe youth payments technology, Oink, has announced the winners of its Hackathon competition. The company accepted 100 entrants into its coding event held the weekend before Computer Science Education Week.
One of the first youth-only hackathons in the United States, the Oink Hackathon's entrants were between the ages of 12 and 19, and developed a broad range of ideas. The Grand Prize winner in the Under 16 division created an app that enables busy students to more effectively plan and schedule their time. The Grand Prize winner in the 16-19 division created an app that enables individual sellers to use Bitcoin currency.
The judges, which included billionaire entrepreneur John Paul DeJoria, Steve Heffernan, a founder of Zencoder and David Lord, the CEO of JumpStart, were impressed by the strength of the ideas and the quality of the code.
The Grand Prize winners will receive $10,000 towards their higher education and a $5,000 scholarship to a school, or coding charity of their choice, as well as potential internships at Oink. Additionally, Oink network merchants and coding schools also participated in the prize pool including; Claire's, Fathead, JumpStart, K'NEX, Digital Media Academy, Goldcoast, Zing Revolution and Code School.
"If you want to know how to build products for the teenage market - just ask them," said Dr. Jo Webber, CEO & Founder of Virtual Piggy. "The originality of their ideas was truly impressive, with a teenage focus being applied to music, online purchasing, product reviews, gaming and time management."