DP Hacks
Backed by Afore Capital, Civilization Ventures, Comma Capital
Partnered with Levo, S44 Automotive, Venture Camp
Build products to help the Penn community thrive,
Solve problems you and your friends face daily.
FORMAT
DP Hacks will kick off with an in-person event on Sunday, October 13 and culminating with presentations and judging on October 20th
Technical Track
Design products which help solve a problem that affects some portion of the Penn population! You will be able to build projects that affect you day to day.
Use web design, artificial intelligence, or any other technology that you need to make some positive impact for the school. Past winners have gone on to develop YCombinator startups!
Winners will work with DP engineers to integrate their projects into the Daily Pennsylvanian website, giving them access to our 5 million+ views a year! Tons of free traction for your product, and regular analytics reports so that you can keep your resume up to date!
Winners will be given first round interviews by our well established startup partners. This is a great chance for you to show that you're a developer who moves fast and builds people-centric products, and potentially get hired for it!
First Place
$600 + First Round Intern Interviews at 1 of our established startup partners ($1000000+ ARR, 3+ years in operation)
Second Place
$400 + First Round Intern Interviews at 1 of our startup partners who have raised $10 million+ and successfully exited previous startups
Third Place
$200 + First Round Intern Interviews at 1 of our startup partners who are revolutionizing clinical retention and healthcare
LOGISTICS
- Eligiblity
- All Penn students are welcome to enter either track of DP Hacks, regardless of previous experience. Technical and Pitch development workshops will be provided throughout the week of the hackathon.
- Registration
- Teams will be made of between 3-5 students. Registration is on a first-come, first-served basis, with the first 20 teams to register for each track being prioritized, and additional teams being promoted off the waitlist if opportunities arise.
- Teams must consist only of currently enrolled University of Pennsylvania students, and each student can compete in either the technical track OR the pitch track.
- Kickoff Event
- DP Hacks will kick off with an opening event on October 13th where particpants will get the chance to hear from and network with our keynote representative and representatives from our sponsors.
- Teams will also have the chance to attend our workshops on web development, integrating artificial intelligence into your projects, and developing cohesive picthes. Detailed instructions and rubrics for each track will be presented at the Kickoff as well, along with information on how to join our Slack workspace.
- Development Week
- Spend the next week brainstorming, building, and refining your products before the final pitch day! There will be office hours for both tracks scattered throughout the week to help teams complete their projects.
- Technical Track Deliverables: Presentation, Relevant Code, Documentation
- Presentation Day
- Present all the hard work you invested in the past week to our panel of professional and student judges, as well as all the other participants. Breakfast and Lunch will be provided, with presentations starting at 10:00 AM and winners being announced at 1:00 PM
Example Project
Penn Course Search uses Natural Language Search to give Penn students truly comprehensive and detailed course recommendations. It allows students to effectively search for and find classes that suit their interests without having to search through Path@Penn.
Penn Course Search is an artificial intelligence model using vector embedding, natural language processing, semantic search, and web development in React to fulfill needs for students on campus.
Our Partners
Daily Pennsylvanian
Afore Capital
Civilization Ventures
Comma Capital
Levo
S44 Automotive
Venture Camp
Levo
Levo is working to elevate caregiver experience and increase retention rates for health systems around the country. Through their customizable text-based surveys and practical insights, Levo helps build better company culture that encourages employees to stay while saving costs for customers. They're already partnered with several of the country's largest health provider networks, and are expanding rapidly!
S44 Automotive
Our vision is to disrupt automotive retail for consumers and manufacturers by connecting the consumer buying journey with the manufacturer's supply chain through predictive analytics. Our personalization API & co-pilot solution guide shoppers in their product discovery while our predictive ordering solution helps manufacturers stock the right cars at the right dealer, at the right time. In partnership with two leading OEMs in North America, our solutions are already driving multiple sales & production processes and have yielded double digit lifts for several marketing & sales KPIs.
Venture Camp
Founded by M&T graduate Ben Hsu after raising over 10 million dollars from Kleiner Perkins for his previous startup, Venture Camp aims to build the next generation of entrepreunerial talent through startup bootcamps. With multiple successful past camps and several internal technical projects running, as well as mentorship from Open AI and Google engineers, tech interns at Venture Camp are able to work on exciting projects udner great mentorship.
