Pitney Bowes SMB Challenge

Do I need to pay any money to register for the Hackathon?

No. You do not have to pay anything to anyone to register yourself for any Hackathon on Hackerearth.

Do I need to have any specific qualifications to be a participant in the Hackathon?

If you love to code, you are more than welcome to participate in the Hackathon.

Do we need to have the entire idea fully working?

The entire idea need not be fully implemented however, the submission should be functional so that it can be reviewed by the judges.

Since there is no specific technology mentioned, are there any restrictions on using number of pre-built libraries?

There is no restriction to use any language, technology stack, or libraries. You can use any of them to create the web/mobile application.

Do I need to give a demo for the product that I have built?

If you want you can submit a small presentation or video that demos your submission, however it's not mandatory, and only good to have. In case you are one of the winners, you might be invited to give a demo of your application at a physical event, details of which will be shared with sufficient advance notice.

Who will own the IP(Intellectual Property) Rights to the product that I have built?

All submissions to the Pitney Bowes SMB Challenge remain the intellectual property of the individuals or teams that developed them. By registering, the Participants are consenting to the terms of the SMB Challenge, and entering a submission, however, the Participant agrees that Pitney Bowes reserves the first right of refusal to acquire the intellectual property for a period of one year starting on the date of announcement of the winners of the Pitney Bowes SMB Challenge.

Who all are eligible for Prizes?

All participants making their submissions are eligible for the prizes.

Do I need to register as a team or as an individual to be a participant in the Hackathon?

An individual registration form must be completed by all team members to participate in the Hackathon.

Can you explain open innovation theme?

Open innovation covers any hack which can help SMB in their businesses and are not part of the other themes listed.

Where can you submit your hack when you are present at physical event or remote?

Teams from San Francisco area are invited for the physical event whereas teams from other parts of the world can submit their hack through Hackerearth Portal.

I live in Bay Area do I need to be present? What is the benefit to be present at the physical event?

There will a lot more things at the event like AWS developer Kit, PayPal experience booth, PayPal and Freshworks Swagger and technical experts who will assist you in building/improving your hacks. It's an amazing opportunity to meet other great developers. We hope to see you at the event.

Where can I get developer credits for the Pitney Bowes and Freshworks APIs/products?

Free Credits already available on PB Developer Portal(the current one). For more info please visit here

Do Pitney Bowes position their Tablet/CSD offer to compete on the POS landscape?

It's a great use-case. We have retailers who today use the CSD device that can definitely use the machine as a POS device if there were POS related apps on the device.

Does it have to be a single app or can be multiple apps integrating one system?

We accept both single application and multiple application integrated into the form of a single system. It's totally up to the developer how they want to build their hack.

Do you allow and/or encourage multiple idea submissions?

Yes we do allow multiple idea submissions.

Do we have to develop Full concept at the time of submitting the hack?

There would be marks for completeness, the POC/hack should showcase the idea.

Do we have to use all the APIs? Is it compulsory to use Pitney Bowes or any other partner APIs in the prototype?

You are free to use any APIs - internal, partner, or external ones. We are showing the PB ones, and partner ones, since we're providing special access to them as part of the upcoming hackathon.

My idea is fitting into two categories, like SMB and e-commerce shipping. Is it fine to take part in both using the same idea?

Only one idea would be considered in a theme.

I'm a participant from India, my APIs such as OTP for mobile verification won't work for international phone numbers, How I'm supposed to solve it?

For the demo, you can mock/hardcode them. If the core idea of your app is fetching OTP and log in, then you can provide the test numbers we can use to test it out.