Team Miami heads to Silicon Valley for PayPal's Battlehack this weekend with a combination of business savvy, technical prowess and the heart and soul of the Caribbean. Originally from Cuba and the Dominican Republic, Team Miami members bring music in their veins. Two of its members co-founded Vinylfy, a Miami startup that services the community of Vinyl-aficionados, the other, an entrepreneur, and experienced Zumba dancer.
Team member Rafael Bonnelly explained what they are going to create at Battlehack to attempt to win the $100,000 prize: “We want to help consumers save time by making faster, more informed and healthier decisions when they’re eating out, improving their eating habits by offering nutritional information and calorie consumption through publicly available data and analysis of the user’s habits.”
Bonnelly is a writer, media consultant and entrepreneur with 30 years experience in the US, Europe, Latin America and Asia, were he most recently performed volunteer work. Rafael is a member of a 150-year-old political and media dynasty in the Dominican Republic.
José L Pimienta and Osniel Gonzalez are the younger members of the team, who learned how to code in Cuba, the hard way. It made them into a formidable team, that bring to coding the philosophy and resourcefulness of their countrymen, capable of great creative work with limited resources.
José and Osniel are two crack developers who visualize, write and assemble code at lightning speed. They were the majority partners of the Miami Team that won the 2013 Miami Battlehack and came in third in the Worldwide contest last year in San Francisco. This year, they won it again, and they're coming back with a mission: to win Battlehack World Finals 2014!
Team Miami promises to fight vigorously and valiantly to win Battlehack, but if we don't win, we will still have the music!
Submitted by Team Miami. Team Miami will compete against 13 other teams from around the world Nov. 15-16 in San Jose for a $100,000 grand prize. Good luck!
Update: Team Miami (below) won the @estimote partner prize at the hackathon. The $100,000 grand prize went to the team from Tel Aviv, with two hackers, Shai Mishali and Pavel Kaminsky. The winning team created AirHop – a collaborative consumption application for consumers to share carrier or wi-fi access.
