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How One Startup Turned a $5,000 Contest Into Millions

July 14, 2012 /

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Bear Paw Development Corporation is a private non-profit organization created for the purpose of administering programs to help improve regional economic conditions in Hill, Blaine, Liberty, Chouteau and Phillips Counties and the Fort Belknap and Rocky Boy's Indian Reservations.

Last year, San Francisco startup Jetpac offered a $5,000 purse to anyone who could teach a computer to discern which of tens of thousands of vacation photos were any good. More than 200 contestants entered. The second-place winner’s code now lives at the core of JetPac’s iPad travel app, which sifts and displays your Facebook friends’ best travel snapshots to inspire your next excursion.

On Thursday, the company announced that the results of the $5,000 contest had essentially netted them $2.4 million in venture capital funding, mainly from Khosla Ventures and Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang. That’s some math Jetpac doesn’t need to outsource to appreciate.

Jetpac’s fundraising represents a striking success for data science as sport–an approach that first drew attention when Netflix offered $1 million to whomever could best improve their movie recommendation algorithm. Ironically, Netflix never used the winning code. Not so at Jetpac.

By Marcus Wohlsen

Full Story: http://www.wired.com/business/2012/07/how-a-startup-used-a-5000-contest-to-raise-millions/

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