please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources . unsourced material may be challenged and removed . april 2016 learn how and when to remove this template message topcoder inc. type subsidiary of appirio industry crowdsourcing software software development design data science founded april 2001 founder jack hughes headquarters san francisco ca usa website www.topcoder.com topcoder s crowdsourcing marketplace connects 1 000 000 designers developers and data scientists from around the world with major companies including ibm amazon and nasa to enter challenges and get paid . it connects its community with customers via challenges that are hosted on the topcoder platform . challenges come in the form of design development or data science formats . some are just for fun while others produce deliverables that go directly back to the customer . the fun challenges are mainly in the form of single round matches srm and fall into the genre of competitive programming . contents 1 company history 2 business model 3 types of competitions 4 prizes 5 statistics 6 see also 7 references 8 external links company history edit topcoder was founded in 2001 by jack hughes . 1 2 in september 2013 topcoder was acquired by appirio . 3 business model edit topcoder is a crowdsourcing marketplace that connects customers to its community of design development and data science experts . customer projects are decomposed into a set of challenges . community members compete on these challenges to produce the best deliverable for the task at hand . community members earn fixed amounts of money for each challenge and may participate in various roles on each challenge eg . submitter reviewer copilot . topcoder maintains profiles for every community member . profiles represent a merit based skill assessment determined by actual deliverables produced by each individual . for example the looking at the topcoder profile database you can determine who the best java developer is . the software resulting from algorithm competitions and the less frequent marathon matches is not usually directly useful but sponsor companies sometimes provide money to pay the victors . statistics including an overall rating for each developer are tracked over time for competitors in each category . citation needed types of competitions edit algorithms srm competition length about two hours competitors are given a set usually three of algorithmic problems and have 75 minutes to correctly solve as many as they can . topcoder has been hosting algorithm competitions since 2001 . 4 marathon matches competition length one or two weeks contestants are given a particularly difficult algorithmic problem . the scoring is done by computer based on criteria specifically suited to the problem . architecture 1 day to 2 weeks competitors architect systems or parts of systems producing architectural models and proof of concepts . 5 development 1 day to 2 weeks competitors are given a design specification and must deliver working code deliverables . 5 design studio graphic design contestants are asked to show off their creative skills in a competitive environment . 6 testing 1 day to 1 weeks competitors write test plans and produce automated test suites . 5 bug hunts competitors log issues against a particular app or piece of code . 5 prizes edit topcoder initially awarded money every week to coders who did well in the weekly competitions or single round matches srms . for a while prize money was only awarded twice a year to winners and finalists of the topcoder collegiate challenge tccc which is in the spring and the topcoder open formerly the invitational which is in the fall . as of june 2005 some weekly srms began to once again award prize money being sponsored by outside companies such as google and yahoo . however since august 2008 topcoder returned to giving money prizes only to winners and finalists of other tournaments . citation needed currently topcoder continuously pays community members based on their earnings in challenges . each challenge is posted with specific monetary and non monetary rewards . statistics edit as of may 8 2016 topcoder has more than 1 000 000 registered members . 7 see also edit acm international collegiate programming contest icpc codechef codeforces facebook hacker cup google ai challenge google code jam hackerrank icfp programming contest internet problem solving contest online judge spoj uva online judge references edit diamandis peter . topcoder s 5 steps to building a global workforce community . the huffington post . retrieved 15 april 2016 . company overview of topcoder inc. . bloomberg.com . retrieved 15 april 2016 . techcrunch report appirio buys topcoder . retrieved 2014 01 15 . topcoder . competing in an algorithm match srm topcoder . www.topcoder.com . retrieved 2016 09 06 . a b c d topcoder . competing in development challenges topcoder . www.topcoder.com . retrieved 2016 09 06 . topcoder . competing in design challenges topcoder . www.topcoder.com . retrieved 2016 09 06 . community overview . topcoder.com . retrieved 3 may 2016 . external links edit official website topcoder open content hub business data for topcoder inc. google finance yahoo finance hoover s sec filings retrieved from https en.wikipedia.org w index.php title topcoder & oldid 744109525 categories programming contestshidden categories articles needing additional references from april 2016all articles needing additional referencespages using infobox company with unsupported parametersall articles with unsourced statementsarticles with unsourced statements from april 2016 navigation menu personal tools not logged intalkcontributionscreate accountlog in namespaces article talk variants views read edit view history more search navigation main pagecontentsfeatured contentcurrent eventsrandom articledonate to wikipediawikipedia store interaction helpabout wikipediacommunity portalrecent changescontact page 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