Salesforce announces its $1M hackathon winner

The winner of Salesforce’s $1 million hackathon extravaganza is an application called Upshot, which helps salespeople create and edit reports on the go.

The winning developers, Thom Kim and Joseph Turian, are long-time friends, who originally met at Harvard University.

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The hackaton’s judges were asked to select the top application, based on the user experience, design, and how well it integrated with the Salesforce platform.

After the winner was announced on stage, Salesforce chief executive Marc Benioff, and cofounder Parker Harris took to the stage to sign the $1 million check.

“This hackathon was unique, not just in the large prize, but because it gives developers a real shot at building their businesses on top of a huge app ecosystem which Salesforce has developed over the years,” said Brandon Kessler, the chief executive of ChallengePost, the startup that developed the technology behind the hackathon.

The runners up were also awarded cash prizes and gained exposure for their apps:

• Healthcare.lov came in second, winning $50,000
• $25,0000 was awarded to Hirebase, a service to highlight resumes
• $10,000 prize to Salesfetch, a service for finding information across different services to help salespeople with leads
• The $5,000 fifth prize was awarded to 2lemetry for a service that detects the identity and background of people as they approach a trade booth

Last year’s hackathon winner RingDNA went on to raise $3 million in venture funding for its app that turns an iPad into a mobile call center.