Topcoder

Topcoder, Inc.

Type	Subsidiary of Appirio
Industry	Information Technology Staffing Software Outsourcing services
Founded	April, 2001
Founder	Jack Hughes
Headquarters	San Francisco, CA, USA
Website	www.topcoder.com

Topcoder is a company that administers contests in computer programming. Topcoder hosts fortnightly online competitive programming competitions—known as SRMs or "single round matches"—as well as weekly competitions in graphic design and development. The work in design and development produces useful software which is licensed for profit by Topcoder.

Topcoder was founded in 2001 by Jack Hughes.

In September 2013, Topcoder was acquired by Appirio.

Topcoder sells software licenses to use the growing body of components that have been developed in competition and also acts as an outsourcing center, allowing companies to farm out custom design and development tasks to Topcoder competitors. Competitors involved in the creation of these components are paid royalties based on these sales.

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.

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.

As of May 3, 2016 Topcoder has more than 997,507 registered members.

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