The weekend after Halloween, students filed into the Turquoise Ballroom at the Memorial Union while chill jazz music played and seats were taken. The students were all waiting for the start of VillageHacks.
VillageHacks is a hackathon where winners for each track are invited to a final interview at a startup company. The hackathon was formed because its organizers wanted to help procure talent for startups while also giving students a potential job opportunity; in comparison to other hackathons, where such awards are not generally offered.
The event was the first time Startup Village, the student organization co-hosting VillageHacks, undertook such a large attendance. In the past, the group has typically hosted workshops or brought in startup founders to talk to students.
"We have already taken startups who already have a good business plan going, a good product going," Aarav Matalia, a senior studying computer science and director of community outreach at Startup Village, said. "If you're creating a feature for them, I think that's a lot more beneficial."
Matalia added that the hackathon isn't meant for beginners; the target audience is students who want to apply out-of-the-box thinking.
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At the first iteration of VillageHacks, three startups were brought to the event. The companies made one problem statement each, of which participants could choose the problem they wanted to work toward solving.
Solutions students created to the problem track they selected were then judged by representatives of the corresponding startups. Following the event, participants with the winning solution were offered a final interview with the startup.
The startup Binsr Inspect was in attendance at the event. Binsr uses AI to create PDF reports and client dashboards based on an uploaded housing inspection template. The problem statement was derived from a challenge the group encountered in their own work.
Specifically, participants are given a JSON file containing home inspection data, and the goal is to create a program that will convert the file's content into a PDF with formatted data. The JSON file contains details like issues found on home property, inspection notes, images and more.
There was even a bonus challenge for the developers to be creative with the design of the PDF where the data would be formatted.
"We do have our own template for developing the PDFs, we do have the structure (of) how the data is going to be," Hemant Dua, a senior studying computer science and founding engineer at Binsr Inspect, said. "We just need a way to represent it in a unique and creative way."
While the winners would not attend their final interview at VillageHacks, Raghav Bansal, a senior studying computer science and president of Startup Village, said the problem statements the startups offer function as a hyper-personalized assessment for the developers.
Additionally, Bansal said he and the rest of the event organizers ensured the startups involved were genuinely interested in hiring, as well as verifying the companies had the necessary funding to do so in the first place.
Approximately 120-130 students attended the event, making it one of Startup Village's largest events despite advertising primarily through word-of-mouth.
"This is the first time I'm hosting a hackathon, and it's the same with all of my teammates, and so (we're) nervous as well as interested in seeing how this pans out," Bansal said. "We might make some mistakes in logistics ... but we're going to try."
Edited by Kate Gore, Henry Smardo and Ellis Preston.
Reach the reporter at dmle5@asu.edu.
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