Each month Silicon Valley hosts dozens of hackathons, though Facebook hosted one with a twist on Monday. Instead of college-aged programmers that normally dominate the coding marathons, the only participants at the first women Vets in Tech event were female veterans.
Approximately 30 female veterans attended the hackathon, with the women pitching various ideas such as Bohdi therapies, an app that provides therapy to vets suffering from anxiety and Puppyness, a crowd-sourced app that would inform dog owners which stores and restaurants within their area are dog friendly.
Beginning at 7am, Facebook engineers worked with the women veterans to develop pitches and business models for a late night panel presentation with judges from GE Ventures Healthcare, Next World Capital and Facebook present.
This is the fourth Vets in Tech hackathon to be hosted after the first being hosted at Adobe in November 2012. The organization concentrates on teaching veterans entrepreneurship skills as well as connecting them with tech firms as they come back from active duty and look for employment.
