The focus of this weekend hackathon was to dedicate on encouraging more women to choose the entrepreneurial path. We at Garage48 have always been strong supporters of this trend and have witnessed and followed quite a few new female leaders being born out of our hackathons. Garage48 Empowering Women is a hackathon series, which has ran for 3 years now.

Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Estonian Development Cooperation as well as the tremendous help from our very good partner N-iX.

Helen Ennok (Economic Affairs Development Cooperation and Humanitarian Aid)  who gave the opening words on the final event said: “This topic is really important to us. So I would like to thank you all and as we say in Estonia ‘participating is more important than winning’. So I hope you feel the same way and that you keep working  on your ideas with the same passion after the hackathon as well”.

We were happy to host a very cool council of mentors from Ukraine and Estonia. Joseph Carson (Cyber Security Expert | Digital Forensics | Keynote Speaker | Adviser | Visionary | Author), Triin Preem ( Entrepreneur and Manager of the Innovation Centre @SEB ), Ragnar Sass( Co-founder @ Garage48, Co-founder @ Pipedrive, Co-founder @ Clanbeat, Founder @ LIFT99 ), Helen Kokk( UX & Service Design Lead @NORTAL ), Aleksandra Varnaeva( Mobile Interaction Designer @Mobi Lab ), Maido Parv ( Visual Designer @Microsoft ), Andrew Pavliv ( CEO & Founder @ N-iX, Serial entrepreneur ) and Liis Narusk( Co-Founder / CEO @ELEVATE by Garage48 ).

A big thank you to all the mentors on behalf of the team and participants!

This event was a record event for Garage48 because it was the first time, where we had more female participants than men.  So we were absolutely stoked, that you all joined our three day long hackathon in Lviv . All the energy and happiness was so intense that the emotions were visible in the final live as well. If you didn’t get a chance to watch it then, it is still available in our FB http://bit.ly/empowherlive

All the teams were selected to pitch via a random selection. Every team had 3 minutes and the jury had the chance to ask one question per each team, because we had 19 teams to pitch.   Pitching was followed by a long and passionate discussion among the jury, who finally came up with the following decisions. 

For the first time in Garage48's history, we chose 2 winners

, because the votes by the jury were divided 50-50 and both of the winning teams showcased tremendous progress in developing their prototypes over the weekend.

So are you ready? Here it goes:)

Winner:

  Be With Me

An app to bring magic to any relationship. The happiness is in small things and sometimes all you need is just a little hint. By using calendars and notifications the app will help couples find ways to let each other know that they are loved, reminding things that are really important.

Prize:  Latitude59 tickets, co-working space provided by Startup Depot

Team:   Vasyl  Hukalyuk (Psychology Expert), Igor  Rokytzkyy (Back-end developer), Dmitry Smolnyi  (Front-end developer), Ksenia  Terentyeva (UI / UX Designer), Alla  Krivosheyeva (UI / UX Designer), Orysia  Feduniak (Marketer), Dmitry Krivosheyev (Back-end developer)

Winner: 

 Footy

Data-based service, which will help the online shoe store customer to find perfect shoes for his / her feet. Your customer will be confident that the proposed pair will fit his feet right and you will reduce your "free shipping and return" costs, and as a result get higher income. 

Prize:   Latitude59 tickets, Product School by Startup Depot and 2 months of co-working space by I Hub Lviv

Team:  TEAM: Vladyslav Ursul (Visioner, Developer), Andrew Zhuravchak (Developer), Anatolii Hryhoriv (Marketologist)

Special Prize :

 Event on Fly

Whether you are a person who wants to organize your anniversary or wedding, or a professional event manager, you always face the problem of using dozens or even hundreds of different websites and spending days on choosing a venue, catering or cleaning service providers. Our goal is to simplify the life of you as an organizer on the one hand and another to give vendors the opportunity to get customers for their services. We want to create a web application that will give you the opportunity to make this cooperation as easy as booking a apartment on airbnb or Booking.com

Team:   Vasylynaya Mytsak (Marketeer, Business, Team Lead) Marta Manchur (Full-Stack Developer) Marta Maksymyak (Back-End Developer) Sofia Huts (Marketeer, Full-Stack Developer) Liudmyla Kocherzhenko (UX / UI Designer)

Special Prize from N-iX 

Facecard 

We have developed an innovative product - a mobile platform that allows you to improve customer service through personalized communication, and the ability for customers to communicate with their favorite brands in real time, which gives companies an understanding of how customers relate to the brand and where customer loyalty is moving. The product is designed to build strong relations and a real loyalty between the business and the customers. 

Prize:  Team tickets to the 2018 IT Arena

Team:   Yuriy Holuzynets - Business developer, Alina Cherkas - Community manager, Stanislav Berdnyk - Back-end developer, Nor Kagramanian - Mobile developer, UI designer

Special Prize  

OwlRead

Our idea is to create a platform to encourage children to become more intelligent every day. We will provide a solution that will force children to read more, to read regularly, to read with clear intent and interest. We provide children with delightful content in the form they used to have it - through game apps. Generally speaking, this is the gaming of the whole studying process. Also, interactivity, character development, challenges and the reward system will keep up the children's willingness to read regularly and to remember and digest the information they have acquired.

Prize:  2months long acceleration program from Lviv Business School 

Team:  Dmytro Zhluktenko - tech lead, visionary Anastasia Lavronenko - BA Alexander Demianenko - full-stack developer Alex Zholob - full-stack developer Anna Fedoryshyn - BA, PM 

Special Prize  from N-iX

 TidyUp

Cleaning service as an app from people to people

Team:  Neighbor swing back-end, Village swing front-end and design, Sven Pipar marketing, Marina Vice visioner, business

Special Prize from Civitta

  FestyMessi

Simple, cheap and flexible solution to manage guests of festivals.

Prize:  Erasmus Young Entrepreneurship voucher worth 3500€

Favourite of the Audience Prize 

MyMentor

Help orphans to develop brilliant careers in high-demanding jobs by providing mentorship with real

professionals. We offer free-of-charge, merit-based access to mentor database.

Prize:  Special goodie bags were put together by Very Good Security.

Team:  Olena Stoliarova - front-end developer, Victoria Shchutska - front-end developer, Roxana Danek - marketer, Myroslav Terlak - marketer. 

In  the end of the day it is all about the power and energy. This is why Garage48 is the best, because you learn by doing. It doesn’t matter if you win or lose a competition, what matters is

that you believe in your idea and follow your dream with hard work and passion. Like our beloved co-founder and host Ragnar Sass said: “ I was the biggest loser in Estonia because my first startup failed badly,  but I did come out of it by following in what I believe in. I have probably failed more than I’ve succeeded. Now I’m a startup angel. I’m trying to support the unique teams that work together well and believe in what they are doing”.