US-based IT incubator looks to expand in Phl

MANILA, Philippines - US-based AngelHack is looking at setting up shop in the Philippines to take advantage of the rich pool of Filipino talents.

AngelHack co-founder and chief executive officer Greg Gopman said in statement that the world’s largest hackathon competition is looking at opening an office in the Philippines after it was impressed with Filipino developers.

“It makes sense to open an office here. The Philippines is emerging as one of the top regions in terms of developer skills. I can’t tell you how far ahead the Filipino developer community is from its counterparts in other countries,” Gopman stressed.

He said Filipinos’ strong tech talent and affinity with the American culture and language make the Philippines a viable location for his technical team.

The AngelHack challenge is a series of 24-hour coding marathons which has brought in more than 10,000 developers in 32 cities in Asia Pacific, North America, South America, and Europe.

The company has completed AngelHack Manila where more than 250 developers joined. It was organized and sponsored by wireless services leader Smart Communications Inc. and business incubator IdeaSpace Foundation, Inc.

AngelHack Manila coincided with the hackathons in Washington DC, Seoul, Bogota, Jakarta, and Kuala Lumpur, but Gopman chose to attend the Philippine event.

 â€œSmart and IdeaSpace really made this event crazy, in a good way. This is one of the biggest turnouts we’ve had so far, and I think this will produce one of the best teams that we’re going to see during the finals,” Gopman explained.

Gopman was impressed by the winning team at AngelHack Manila, a group of developers from Davao and Pampanga who built a web application that allows businesses to instantly create an Android mobile app using content from their Facebook pages.

 â€œIt’s a huge problem for small businesses to go mobile, and no one’s solved it. They [Team PageSnapp] created something that would help these businesses make apps easily, and they did this in a super simple way. It’s a very unique application. It’s one of those things that other people have tried to do but have not figured out how to do simply,” he added.

He noted that the team that won at AngelHack Singapore was also composed of Filipino developers.

 â€œSo there will be two - not just one - teams representing the Philippines in Silicon Valley this September,” Gopman said.