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It's a wrap: 154 developers, 40 team pitches, 14 finalists, 4 winners!

If you were at QuickBooks Connect 2015 earlier this week, you heard Intuit founder Scott Cook announce the winners of the $100k Hackathon on the main stage on Tuesday morning. Did you miss it? No problem, you can watch the announcement here:

But let me back up just a bit! On Monday morning (day 2 of the hack), Scott Cook came to share his insights on entrepreneurship and answer devs’ questions with an eye toward helping them remember the importance of always focusing on customer benefit in their products. This was a rare and valuable opportunity for the hackathon developers to get personal attention and time from this brilliant industry leader.

Once hacking ending 3pm Monday, we immediately moved into the preliminary round judging of 40 teams across 3 tracks with some pretty impressive judges, and selected 14 impressive finalists (I’ll detail those judges and finalists in an upcoming post — stay tuned).

Those 14 finalist gathered at 7pm to pitch once again, this time on a stage in front of a packed room and three final round judges. They had a large, attentive audience of fellow devs and accountants, as well as CEO Brad Smith and founder Scott Cook! Pitches were polished, questions were challenging, and judging was hard! But the judges did select 4 winners (3 tracks and 1 grand prize), whom Scott announced next morning on the main stage at QuickBooks Connect.

Drumroll please, here’s a recap of the winners:

Track 1, Existing App: HouseCall Pro. Allows small businesses to manage a vast array of service jobs and employees all from their phone, all tied into QuickBooks Online. Built by a team of two, Reza Olfat and Roland Ligtenberg of HouseCall.

Track 2, New App: CheckOut. Dramatically simplifies the process of implementing ecommerce for small businesses, and connects it all to QuickBooks Online. Built by a team of two, Keith Palmer and Ryan Bantz from ChargeOver.

Track 3, Non-Profit solution: Pledgeify. Automates the donor pledge process to help non-profits collect more of their pledged dollars, and ties it all into QuickBooks Online. Built by a team of 5 accountants that met and formed at the hackathon: David Webb and Gregg Bossen of QuickBooks Made Easy, Robin Hall of VARC Solutions, Bill Kennedy of Energized Accounting, and Karine Woodman of 24hr Bookkeeper.

Grand Prize: Overall Winner: collbox. Simplifies the small business owner’s painful task of chasing down customers who owe them money, all tied into QuickBooks Online. Built by a team of two, Cameron Desautels and Ed Luczycki of Collective Strategies. Find out about collbox.

Congratulations, everyone!


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