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Cinco de Wyncode: 250+ people pack LAB to celebrate new coders

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By Juha Mikkola

Many are saying that 2015 is the year of coding (and for the foreseeable future), and it's fast becoming one of the most important and desirable skills here in South Florida.  

This trend was reinforced at Wyncode’s Pitch Day V last night, or as we called it, Cinco de Wyncode.  The vibrancy and enthusiasm of the Miami tech community never ceases to amaze.  More than 250 people packed into The LAB Miami ready to be wowed by the ideas from the 20 students who participated in Wyncode’s fifth cohort. 

Once again, we saw firsthand the real appetite that exists out there for product and service development, as well as the many interesting ideas and agile creation coming out of the coding community.

Wyncode’s students dedicated nine weeks completely immersed in learning how to code for JavaScript, CSS, Ruby on Rails, HTML5 and more. All of the hours and hard work pays off on Pitch Day, where they present their full stack applications created in groups during the final two weeks.  Pitch Day also gives the students an opportunity to show off skills equally important to coding, their business acumen. The presentations demonstrated that Pitch Days are a direct route to new entrepreneurial thinking and that businesses would be remiss to ignore the opportunities present in these events in a time of digital disruption.

Each student group project is built from the ground up and focused on solving real-life problems across a variety of industries.  Presentations from the seven groups were nothing short of impressive.  The projects included Booksie, Therapy on Demand, Squad-Up, CoffeeBreak, FoodNag, Outnix and Muzaik. Each project was closely judged by Felecia Hatcher, Co-Founder of Code Fever and Black Tech Week, Andrej Kostresevic, CEO of Nomads, Chris Alper, Manager of PDIS Training and Employee Development at Ultimate Software, and Ivan Rapin-Smith, Director at Watsco Ventures. 

Among those checking out the new crop development talent were executives from CarHopper, ClassWallet, EarlyShares and HBO as well as investors, executives and other leaders from Miami’s tech community.

And the winner is…

After much deliberation from the judges, the winning team was a group of three guys who created an application that helps you find what sporting events are on TV at your local bar, called Outnix (pictured below).  The creators Alexis Diaz, Griffin Markay and Sean Consentino received $1000 in cash.  “We came to Wyncode to learn and have fun and we absolutely had a ton of fun,” says Markay. “We loved Pitch Day and everything they set up, we loved the challenges, and getting our teeth sunk into a real life problem, and I guess winning was a bonus.  Even if we didn’t win we’d have still walked away with a great experience.”

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The Outnix team also revealed that they had already raised $50,000 ahead of Pitch Day to help bring their app to market.

Although Pitch Day V has concluded, Wyncode never stops. Our next Miami cohort starts June 15th and we will be celebrating the first Pitch Day Fort Lauderdale on June 18th. 

Juha Mikkola is co-founder of Wyncode.

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