Topcoder: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 04:27, 7 June 2018

Revision as of 04:29, 7 June 2018

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Topcoder was founded in 2001 by Jack Hughes, Chairman and Founder of the Tallan company.<ref name=":0" /><ref name="HuffPost-foudning" /><ref name=":1" /> The name was spelled as TopCoder prior to 2013. Originally, Topcoder ran regular competitive programming challenges, known as Single Round Matches or "SRMs." Each SRM was a timed, 1.5 hours algorithm competitions, in which contestants competed against each other to solve the same set of problems. The target audience was secondary and university or college students. High value cash prizes ranging from $5k - $10k per match were secured from corporate sponsors and awarded to tournament winners in order to generated interest from the student community.<ref name=":0" />

As the community of designers, developers, data scientists and competitive programmers involved in Topcoder grew, the company started to offer software development services to 3rd party clients, contracting individual community members to work on specific tasks; though most of the revenue still came from consulting services provided to clients by Topcoder employees.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /> From 2006 ononwards, Topcoder also held design competitions, thus offering design services to thetheir clients.<ref name=":0" /> In 2006 Topcoder also started to organize Marathon Matches (MM) – one week long algorithmic competitions.<ref name=":7">{{Cite web|url=https://www.topcoder.com/blog/marathon-match-how-it-all-began/|title=Marathon Matches: How They All Began|last=|first=|date=April 10, 2018|website=Topcoder Blog|archive-url=|archive-date=|dead-url=|access-date=April 12, 2018}}</ref><ref group="note" name=":0">The first Marathon Match at Topcoder took place from May 10 to May 17, 2006: <nowiki>https://community.topcoder.com/tc?module=MatchDetails&rd=10015</nowiki></ref>

In an attempt to optimize expenses, in 2007-08 Topcoder introduced new competition tracks, and delegated more work from its employees to the community. By 2009 the size of Topcoder's staff had been reduced to 16 project managers servicing ~35 clients, while most of the actual work was done by the community via crowd-sourcing. Topcoder representatives claim that at this point their community had about 170k registered members, and the company's annual revenue was about $19m.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref name=":5">{{Cite news|url=https://www.infoworld.com/article/2653445/applications/topcoder-eyeing-smb-market.html|title=TopCoder eyeing SMB market|last=Kanaracus|first=Chris|date=October 15, 2008|work=InfoWorld|access-date=April 4, 2018|archive-url=|archive-date=|dead-url=}}</ref>