[The following is a guest post from AngelHack’s own Erica Huston, who traveled all the way to São Paulo for the hackathon.]
You guys aren’t gonna make this easy, are you? One thing that’s becoming pretty obvious from the four MasterCard Masters of Code events held so far: everyone is bringing their A-game to these sold-out events.
From left to right: “Chico” Carrizo, Daniel Quadros De Miranda, Anderson Pereira, and the two brothers Daniel and Pedro Scocco.
The doors open at Hotel 115, flooding the downstairs hallway with developers from all over Brazil and greater Latin America. We “Keepers of the Calm” are watching our programming counterparts delight in early morning cups of coffee (I’ve already had 3). I can see their brains already begin to churn with digital schemes and adrenaline as we sit down and listen to great words of wisdom in the hunt for growth and innovation.
Not to my surprise, we had a full house, not only of awesome people, but of ideas. There were 28 projects in total to come out of the weekend. MasterPass API was our sole entertainment and energy drinks our exclusive stimulation. Developers were absorbed in thought and code for 24 hours, only interrupted by thoughts of the next meal on our menu.
It was a close run between our two final teams, Bolsa Capital and Sollos, but Bolsa Capital came out on top.
After a 6 hour brainstorm sesh, they had solidified their soon-to-be-winning plan: Create an online marketplace for helping vendors get paid by their customers more quickly, by selling the debts through Simplify Commerce to financiers (at a slight discount).
Judges loved it. Simple. Encourages trade. And uses existing MasterCard infrastructure.
Bolsa Capital will be joining us in Silicon Valley for the Grand Finale Masters of Code Competition. The team of five guys are nothing short of talented and know how to incubate, produce, and execute ideas on their feet. They wish other regional teams they meet in the tech valley later this year good luck and leave us with motivation parting words- “Go Big, or Go Home.”
