The Winner Of Garage48 Minsk 2015 Took Video Technology To A Whole New Level!

Garage48 Minsk 2015 hackathon was truly EPIC! As always we had a very international crowd in Minsk with participants from Estonia, Latvia, Uzbekistan, Ukraine, Finland, Turkey, UK and of course Belarus. Garage48 always loves to come to Minsk, which is why this was our 6th time in this city. Having over 100 people participating, it proves us that this region is full of ideas and ambition. However, startups that emerge from Belarus and from the Baltics, need to keep in mind that you need to think immediately about business and making revenue. As far as this hackathon stands, we are confident that our teams have a real chance! Indeed, an impressive 22 teams delivered their prototype for Sunday's demo presentations, which is a massive achievement from all the participants and mentors. We encourage everyone to keep on supporting not only your team, but also other teams, who are part of this incredible success story. Use social media and other channels to spread the word about these amazing projects. Because who knows - maybe this small reference could lead to something big?

We come to Minsk for the technical talent and this hackathon was no exception in delivering strong execution of all the chosen ideas. Janika Liiv, our tech mentor from Estonia, congratulated teams on their achievements: "Minsk is very strong in regards of technical skills and expertise. As the majority of participants were developers, all the teams had pretty solid projects to show off at the end of the hackathon.

There were some pretty neat mobile apps - Sportivity was one of my personal favorites, MustSee! and FeedMe finished also with nice looking solutions and we can't forget the winner MSQRD, who are going to take video filters to the next level. The quality and speed of their application really is noteworthy. It was also fun to see multiple projects use image recognition in their projects - from simple text recognition to live product replacement in video streams. I really hope Nagibator is going to grab a piece of that large video manipulation pie they were so lively talking about."

As far as product development goes, the design was also very strong. One of our design mentors Fred Moritz was helping to pull all the designs together, even though they would have done amazing anyway. Fred added: "Although the event lacked designers, I was surprised by the quality of the esthetic and user experience design. The few designers who participated were able to create stunning visuals, as they said, "just in 5 minutes because we didn't have much time". I was also impressed by the way everybody listened to the mentors advice - during the mentoring sessions, we could really feel that there was a dialogue happening, to find the best result together."

As we put all this technical and design greatness together, mixed with some marketing tricks and business knowledge, everyone can create top-level startups. Keep in mind:

Steve Jobs once said: "Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you."

So now since the 48-hours have passed of non-stop hacking, we still have so many emotions from the finale event, plus so many people to thank for making it one of the most prolific events ever!

First, we need to thank all the mentors who were helping the teams all Saturday and Sunday. Thank you to Ragnar Sass (Co-founder at Garage48 & Pipedrive), Janika Liiv (Founding Engineer at Clanbeat), Fred Moritz (Mobile design, web design and print design), Raigo Lilleberg (UX/UI Designer, Founder at Kreit), Bret Metsküla (Marketing Manager at Honeypot Conferences), Anton Shunkov (Technical Evangelist at Microsoft), Eugene Nevgev (CEO & Co-Founder of SplitMetrics), Max Kamenkov (Co-founder at SplitMetrics), Vadim Nareyko (COO at Viaden), Kirill Kudin (Founder & of Product at WiFi Map) and Serge Stepuro (Developer at Viaden).

The hardest decisions today were made by our jury members, who had to pick the best from the best. Thank you to:

Ragnar Sass - Co-Founder & New markets at Pipedrive, Co-Founder at Garage48

Janika Liiv - Founding Engineer at Clanbeat

Anton Shunkov - Technical Evangelist at Microsoft

Nastia Khamiankova – Imaguru, Bel.Biz

Eduard Babariko – ulej.by

Huge thank you to our long-time partner in Minsk Nastia Khamiankova and the whole Imaguru Startup HUB team for helping with the event the whole weekend and being such lovely hosts during our stay.

A special mention also to our own Garage48 organising team - Kai Isand and Ele-Riin Kullamä, who besides being the usual powerwomen, made lots of friends at the event!

We hope that all our teams will be inspired by SpliMetrics, who were also present at the event and mentoring the teams. SplitMetrics started out just a year ago from Vitebsk and are now making real revenue. Let's see who will be the next successful company coming out of Belarus.

So now let's go the winners of the evening. As we had 22 teams, we gave out more prizes than initially planned. Keep in mind that prizes are not important, as building something is the biggest prize you can get!

Overall winner

MSQRD

Prize: study trip to Latitude59 conference in Estonia

MSQRD is free and easy to use camera app that helps you take selfie-videos with different filters, effects and chat with your friends.

Team members: Sergey Gonchar - Video/Effects/Face Tracking Algorithms, Eugene Razhko - Product Manager, Tanya Volkova - Marketing, Yura Zhdanovich - Artist, Ksenya Starikova - Artist, Dmitry Kurilo - iOS Developer, Vitaly Nevgen - Developer

Runner-up + Microsoft Special Prize

QAOcean

Prize: 4 Microsoft Nokia Lumia 1520 phones

Russian uTest. Gamification crowd testing platform which helps QA engineers gain experience, and for customers - to have the quality testing of their products, apps and services.

Team members: Arkadzi Salnikau - Backend developer, Igor Kazakevich - Backend developer, Sergey Shlomen - Backend developer, Khasanboy Akbarov - Frontend developer, Mardo Soo - Marketer, Pekka Pyykonen - Visioner, Andrey Bobchenok - Founder, Project manager

Runner-up

Nagibator

Prize: 100% scholarship for TechMinsk PreAccelerator for the Winter Batch

Service for video object recognition, tracking and replacement

Team members: Alexander Mikhalchenko - back-end developer, Stanislau Trukhan - back-end developer, Egor Malkevich - front-end developer, Olga Cherkasova - visionary, Yulia Yudintseva - UX designer, Anastasia Vinogradova - marketing, Gerry Konnov - marketing

Best Business Case

DDscanner

Prize: 3 Polar Loop Daily activity monitors

DDScanner is your hand-picked selection of dive sites were you can book only actual trips - directly on your mobile device.

Team members: Kirill Belov - PM & marketing, Vitaliy Duong - Lead Android developer, Alexander Mojugov- Android developer, Evgeniy Zhokovec - back-end developer

Biggest Progress Prize

Sportivity

Prize: 3 Polar Loop Daily activity monitors

Service which connects people who want to do sport following individual workout plan developed and maintained by professional sport trainer. Also, service provide useful tracking system which helps people track their progress.

Team members: Petr Shypila - Backend Developer & Team Leader, Kanstantsin Tutsin - Backend Developer, Alex Klimashevsky - Mobile Developer, Dmitry Ivanenko - Mobile Developer, Anna Notivskaya - Marketing, Alex Shoub - Designer

The Cutest Team

Winguin

Prize: 3 Polar Loop Daily activity monitors
Personalized traveling pinguo - wingman. He knows places you like and by winging orient you there.

Team members: Alex - backend, Konstantin - mobile, Anfisa - design, Tatiana - marketing, Alexandra - marketing, Denis - pm/UI

Favourite of the Audience

BetU

Most of you bet with friends, colleagues and with someone else. How do you manage it? Write down on the peace of paper or just keep it in your mind. It's not really easy. Now you can use BetU - application which manage yours bet with your friends in few clicks! We make it easy, funny and interactive!

Team members: Alexey Dubrov - team lead & back-end developer; Egor Bukraba - front-end developer; Anthony Marchenko - IOS mobile developer; Olga Kokora - back-end developer; Katerina Moskaleva - project manager; Mykola Demchuk - legal advisor; Ragnar Sepp - lawyer;

HUGE APPLAUSE TO THE REST OF OUR TEAMS:

FINDME

FindMe - application to find people you can see on the street, in cafes, in public transport. Try it, you might be already looking for!

Team members: Vladimir Hudnitsky - Mobile, Alexey Kupreev - Marketing, Svetlana Dedunovich - Designer, Maxim Abramchuk - Back-End

MUST SEE

Travel mobile app for city guides and travelers. Any user can become a guide, create city tours and post schedule for them. Other users can sign up for specific time and join the group, get know interesting information and meet local people.

Team members: Alexey Toropov - Android Dev (Team Lead), Dmitriy Ivulyov - iOS Dev, Valentin Goroshko - Backend Dev, Katy Nemkovich - Designer/Marketer

FeedMe!

FeedMe is a website and an application that allows you to select any product from the category menu: coffee, pizza, hookah, dinner for two, a subscription for business lunches, pay it by credit card, and send it as an electronic certificate or QR code which will be scanned by waiter, and your friend will bring a gift.

Team members: Nastya Gromova - Team Lead, Marketing, PR Manager, Aleh Babashka - Full-stack Developer, Kseniya Talstykh - Mobile Developer, Natasha Spector - Marketing

STARTUPON

StartupON – online-startup pre-accelerator in Belarus. Service for Startups expertise, development and scalability, investment, support and maintenance

Team members: Irina DUBOVIK - Team lead, Dmitryj FEDOROV - developer & project manager, Ronalds SOVAS - Developer, Pavel VILUHA- PR-manager

AIWEESH

aiWeesh is online gift management platform helping wishes come true within close societies such as family and close friends.

Public Wishes mode on the contrary allows anyone to expose his most favourite and desperate wish to a wide public, where our Public Faeries will see their wishes and stories and fulfill.

Team members: Alena Rubanava - team leader/visionary/designer, Nikolay Mikulich - marketing, Roman Kapitonov - back-end, Serge Melnikov - front-end

ZYVIE

The main goal of Zyvie project is to solve the problem of self-determination in belarusian society, support belarusian language, culture, history. It's a mobile app in form of the quiz, where users can answer quastions on different categories: from belarusian historical events, outstanding people of Belarus, belarusian holidays to belarusian geography or sport. Think globally do locally, so by creating the app locally we can achieve great global results for belarusian nation.
Team members: Katerina - idea owner, team leader, content manager, Alexander - Windows phone developer Evgenia - Windows phone developer, Dmitry - IOS developer, Dima - Back end

PLACEEE
We are building mobile application for tourist quests. We are using iBeacon for indor location and tresuary hunting. And VR, AR for visualization.
Team members: Jaroslav Likhachevskiy - Team Lead/Back-end, Serge Stepuro - Mobile engineer, Elisaveta Likhachevskaya, German Prokopenko - Designer, Eugeniya Baranova - Marketolog

LICENCECHECKER

LicenceChecker automatically scans your source code dependencies’ licences and generates a human readable report which enables you to see if you have any licence issues or conflicts.
Team members: Andrey Safonov - Lead, Multideveloper, Sergey Prontsevich - Backend, Roman Lavrinuk - Frontend, Ksenia Sharapkina - UX, Marketing, Artem Kobrin - Lawyer, Marketing

CYBER.FUND

Cyber fund is a platform for investments to cryptocurrencies, which allows for investors to make a choice, based on information about cryptocurrencies, which are presented on the website of our project. Investors can keep a record of investments to cryptocurrencies and can determine the value of investment return. Target audience of our project are investors - individuals and professionals, which invest to cryptocurrencies.
Team members: 3 members on hackaton and 5 more developers at the distance

NALANGA

Game based education system for child, parents and teacher.
Team members: Alexey Kruchenok CEO, mobile development, Artem Bogush, mobile developer, Nikita Dudnik, artist, Gerry Konnov, marketing, buisness developer

EYETILECT

EYETILECT, visual object analyzing application to find your specific audience and benefit from programmatic display ads.
Team members: Sait Hasan Arslan - Developer, Kaan Karadag - Developer, İlhan Çelebi - Developer, Artsiom Samusevich - Project Manager, Tatjana Mändla - Marketer

WHERE'S MY MONEY?

Mobile application created for the Windows phone which helps you split money expenses within group, organize paybacks.
Team members: Yevhenii Sabanin - backend., Dan Kutsyna - frontend,designer., Dasha Marmalukova - Marketing, Rustam Nadrshin - Mobile developer, Viacheslav Todorovych - visionary.

BELARUS STOCK MARKET DATA ANALYSIS TOOL

We provide Belarusian stock market data infigraphics.
Team members: Makarevich Aliaksandr, team lead, back-end, Aleh Kliauzo, back-end & front-end dev

EightyDaysApp

System which automatically plans your tour by choosing cheapest transport and tours.

CODING PANTHERS

Platform for high quality tests with random question for every new coding applicant for hiring.