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Origin

In 2006, Colin Nederkoorn initiated a public contest prompting programmers to develop a means for running the Windows XP operating system through an Intel Mac. Programmer Jesus Lopez eventually won the competition, which had accumulated over $13,000 in donations. ¹ Seeing this competition, Kessler soon developed ChallengePost as a means through which similar competitions could be facilitated and promoted.²

At first, the company allowed any individual or organization to post a competition. Over time, their scope evolved. In 2015, ChallengePost changed its name to Devpost and focused exclusively on helping software engineers participate in hackathons, and eventually to find jobs.³

Funding

In August 2011, ChallengePost raised $4.6 million in Series A funding from investors including former Apple executive Bob Borchers of Opus Capital and Qualcomm founder Irwin Jacobs.⁴

Hackathons and Jobs

Devpost now powers the majority of the world's in-person and online hackathons (software competitions), and helps software engineers find jobs, in service of the company's mission "To help developers find fulfilling work." After 2019, the platform saw a surge in online hackathons hosted on the platforms due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Notable clients

In 2010, ChallengePost was named the official online "challenge platform" of the U.S. federal government, previously overseeing the NYC Big Apps contest in conjunction with the city of New York, as well as Michelle Obama's Apps for Healthy Kids challenge in conjunction with the U.S. Department of Agriculture.⁵

Devpost customers include Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, IBM, Intel, Cisco, Atlassian, Twitter, and others.

See also

• HackerEarth

References

1. Kim-Mai Cutler, "ChallengePost launches problem-solving site with Wozniak, Betaworks onboard", Venture Beat, June 29, 2009 https://venturebeat.com/2009/06/29/challengepost-launches-problem-solving-site-with-wozniak-betaworks-onboard/ ↩

2. Lydia Dishman (November 29, 2010). "Innovation Agents: Brandon Kessler, Founder ChallengePost". Fast Company. http://www.fastcompany.com/1701327/innovation-agents-brandon-kessler-founder-challengepost ↩

3. "Devpost Reveals Student Hacker Preferences". www.i-programmer.info. Retrieved 2025-02-05. https://www.i-programmer.info/news/204-challenges/8833-devpost-reveals-student-hacker-preferences.html ↩

4. Peter Kafka, "Crowdsourcing Platform ChallengePost Raises $4 Million", All Things D, August 8, 2011 http://allthingsd.com/20110808/crowdsourcing-platform-challengepost-raises-4-million/ ↩

5. Erick Schonfeld, "ChallengePost Becomes A Government Contractor", TechCrunch, May 27, 2010 https://techcrunch.com/2010/05/27/challengepost-government/ ↩