The payment of the prize value is the responsibility of you, the sponsor, to pay out at the time of your winner announcement. We recommend having the prize money ready prior to launch in a non-interest bearing account for quick and easy payment.
You can also elect to have HeroX hold the prize money and pay it out on your behalf. Contact us if you're interested in learning more!
When you create your crowdsourcing project, you get to decide the award that will inspire innovators to solve the problem.
For a small problem, maybe $1,000 will be all it takes to inspire someone to solve it. A world changing breakthrough in renewable energy or medicine, the prize may be in the millions. You may also elect non-monetary based incentives such as opportunities or experiences, trips, coaching or credits.
HeroX also has crowdsourcing design services that can help you with this step. Submit our Contact Us form and we'll be happy to tell you more.
All the great crowdsourcing projects started with a breakthrough that someone wanted to see in the world: transatlantic flights, safe methods for preserving food, or a private space industry.
If you know the breakthrough you want to achieve, you can use our platform right now and get started. Build the whole project right on HeroX, engage the community and even start crowdfunding if you want.
If you’re inspired by the concept of a crowdsourcing project, but you’re not sure where to start, can help with the design, marketing and administration of it.
Crowdsourcing has inspired breakthroughs in all areas of society and technology: the first non-stop flight across the Atlantic, the first clock that sailors could use to know their location, a faster way to clean up oil spills.
But smaller breakthroughs are important too. Maybe you need a better algorithm, or know of a problem that needs fixing in your local area.
If you can see a problem, or can imagine how the world could be a better place, you should create a project on HeroX.
No idea is too small, and no idea is too big!
Absolutely. We’re the trusted platform for some of the world’s largest companies and organizations who have successfully run incentive challenges. Organizations like the NASA Tournament Lab, The Rockefeller Foundation, Forbes and even XPRIZE themselves!
A HeroX project is the perfect way for a company to create a breakthrough in innovation or crowdsource positive social impact.
Crowdsourcing provides a powerful new way to do research or solve a problem in their industry. Instead of relying on an internal research team, you open it up to the whole world.
And here's the best part, you only pay out the award when the breakthrough has been achieved. You only pay for success.
would be glad to help you figure out how crowdsourcing would make a powerful addition to your company's innovation.
The best time of year to launch a project is between September and early May. In general, we've found it difficult to launch challenges in the middle of summer when most people take vacations.
As for what day of the week, we recommend Tuesday through Thursday. Launching over the weekend, or on a Friday or Monday, may not get the exposure a middle of the week launch would receive.
You decide what breakthrough needs to be accomplished to solve your problem and determine a winner.
You choose the judges and the submission criteria. Do people need to create a prototype of the solution? Present the best algorithm? You can also let the crowd decide, with public voting.
Our custom judging interface allows you to assign judges, oversee the scores, and choose the final winner. You have all the control.
You create the project or competition, but an innovator will create the breakthrough. Who owns the new solution, prototype, or algorithm?
You decide when you create your HeroX page. We offer 4 different types of intellectual property agreements, depending on what you want to achieve.
Whatever works best to create the breakthrough you want to achieve!
If you don’t know what kind of project or competition to create, let the crowd decide. Create an “Ideation" project, where you award a small prize to the best idea to crowdsource a solution to.
Let the crowd compete to offer up the best ideas, and you can even let the crowd vote on their favorite solution.
Then select the solution that matches the innovation that you want to bring into the world, and turn that into a larger sponsored project.
would be happy to help brainstorm some ideas to get you started.
Depending on the size and complexity of it, we recommend at least 3 months for your project to run. That’ll give time for everyone to discover it and for innovators to develop their solutions.
We’ve seen smaller projects and competitions run for 6 weeks. For massive breakthroughs, you might want to run it for a year (or sometimes two!)
Thanks to our years of experience, we understand what it takes to create and run a crowdsourcing project. We’ve created a robust platform that can take you from start to finish. From creating your project page, to collecting submissions, evaluating them and announcing your winner(s), it's all done on HeroX!
In addition, you have access to our community of innovators that will work on a solution for you right away.
HeroX is a commercial spinoff from the XPRIZE Foundation. We're the place that anyone, anywhere can create a crowdsourcing project. If you're inspired by the success of the grand XPRIZE challenges, like the Google Lunar XPRIZE, or the Qualcomm Medical Tricorder Prize, HeroX has the platform for you to make your own!
Click on the 'Login' link at the top of our homepage. At the bottom, you'll see a 'Create a New Account' button. Click on that and enter in your email address and a password, or use Google or Facebook. It's completely free to sign up!
When you sign up to create an account, check the box that says, "Email me updates from HeroX!”
You can also enter your email address in the footer of our site and click the 'Subscribe' button:
Fill out our launch form here. If you have questions, please email .
It's easy! Just click the 'Solve this Challenge' button to register. If you don't have an account with HeroX, you'll be prompted to create one.
After that, you'll review the challenge legal agreement and select whether you want to create a team, find a team to join, or submit an entry as an individual. Once you've finished those steps, you'll see a 'Begin Entry' button on the main challenge page. Click on that to access the online submission form to start your entry!
Click on the Share button at the top of the page to spread the word through social media. Other possibilities: talk about it at parties, strike up a conversation at the bus stop, write it on your t-shirt, make cards and hand ‘em out. You get the idea.
This will delete all of your personal information, however, all of your public posts or comments, and all conversations you’ve had with other HeroX members will remain on the site.
Reset your password here. Enter the email address associated with your HeroX account and click 'Submit'. An email will be sent to you to reset it. If you don't see it in your inbox within a few minutes, check your Spam/Junk folder as well.
We are committed to crowdsourcing that fuels innovation and that will make a positive difference in people’s lives. We will screen out any projects that have the potential to do the opposite. Email info@herox.com with any other inquiries.
We can provide guidance every step of the way, ensuring that your crowdsourcing project is clearly defined and is positioned for maximum impact and exposure.
Schedule a call with our team here to learn more.
Absolutely! There are two ways to do this:
We don’t select the ideas. You can post anything that you care about. We will pull anything that is harmful or negative, but other than that, we are a platform to support your passions.
A typical project progresses from stage to stage throughout its life:
Pre-registration - Before a project is ready to accept submissions, competitors can pre-register for it. This is an optional stage you can implement before you're ready to launch into 'Enter'.
Enter - The project is now ready for the crowd to submit their solutions to the problem.
Submission Deadline/Judging - The ability to submit a solution closes and the submissions are evaluated by a panel of judges based on the criteria outlined in the guidelines.
Voting - An optional phase where the crowd can vote on submissions to help determine a winner.
Won - The winners are announced and the crowdsourcing project is complete.
We don't recommend sponsoring a project and then participating in it. However, you're welcome to participate in any of the other challenges on HeroX that you're interested in!
Launching a crowdsourcing project involves attracting innovators to it. If it means setting up the page on HeroX, that means completing the intro video, the guidelines, FAQ's and anything else that a potential innovator would need to know. It also means that it's a time for getting the word out to the world which can involve various marketing activities including online and offline channels.
It is important to build a crowdsourcing team. Many hands make light work.
That will be up to you and how technical the Crowdsourcing Project is. Generally, it can take three weeks for simpler challenges and up to a few months for larger scale ones.
It’s up to you! There are several factors to consider, such as the type of project (ideas vs. prototypes), the award, and the degree of difficulty. Generally, challenges will run anywhere between 3 months to a full year (or longer!)
Remember, you want to ensure there's enough time for participants to hear about the challenge in the first place and then develop their submission.
No restrictions, but we recommend that the size of the award should match the risk and complexity. If relevant, also consider whether you will be sharing the intellectual property with the winner(s), letting it become open source, or requiring that it be transferred to you.
Money isn't the only reason people participate in crowdsourcing projects. There are other benefits as we discovered from polling our community:
Non-monetary prizes can also inspire people to participate, such as:
If you ever have questions on how to formulate your prize, don't hesitate to contact us.
It depends on your crowdsourcing project. Are you looking for a business plan? Or are you looking for a material solution? The amount of resources, materials, and brain power needed all change your award size. Lucky for you, the crowd can help you decide what will work best. These are some of the considerations:
Level of difficulty or expertise needed
Length of project
How much a team might need to spend to achieve the goal
Mininum amount that a team would consider giving up in relation to intellectual property (all vs. only a portion)
We recommend, when possible, awarding consolation prizes to the participants who got closest to solving your challenge, or had the most creative solution. This way, your community will feel like their efforts didn't result in anything.
If all of the submissions you receive end up being completely incomprehensible or low-quality, please contact our team to see how we can help relaunch your challenge to make it a success.
The range is very vast -- there are examples of competitions with only 10-50 participants and some that draw thousands. We can't predict that! However, if the goal is to attract many, than your promotional and outreach plans will need to reflect a strategy to get them.
Your HeroX page provides the ability for people to sign up to receive email updates from your organization on your Crowdsourcing page. You'll be able to download the contact information for all of the people who sign up.
We have a number of tools available, which you can view in our Knowledge Base and Platform Walk-Through. You can also email with any specific questions not addressed in the Knowledge Base.
On a daily basis you want to ensure you're doing the following:
Each Crowdsourcing Page will include specifications on participation requirements.
Yes, please do!
Every Crowdsourcing Project will have clearly defined judging or winning criteria at the outset. An objective judging team and process will be put in place.
The judges’ decisions are final. However, you're welcome to contact the sponsor directly with any questions or comments by posting in the challenge forum.
It will depend on the sponsor, but awards are typically distributed between 30 and 60 days from the winner announcement.
Intellectual property rights will vary by Crowdsourcing Project. Please review the legal agreement or guidelines of the project you’re interested in to find out more.
Yes, you can withdraw from a Crowdsourcing Project at any time and for whatever reason. Just hover over the 'Following' button in the upper right corner and click it to unfollow and unregister from the project. Please note that if you've drafted or submitted an entry, this will be deleted as well. This action cannot be undone so make sure you're ready to withdraw before proceeding.
No, we don't recommend this.
HeroX is a for-profit spin off of the XPRIZE Foundation. It’s a platform that allows anyone to launch a Crowdsourcing Project in an area they care about. We are powered by the crowd. It lives at the intersection of crowdfunding, competition and collaboration to drive social innovation. The game we're up to: Creating an innovation platform to fund unsolved problems.
HeroX uses a crowdsourcing platform to solve problems through customized projects or competitions. There are 5 steps:
Problem declared: You state a problem
Guidelines written: You set the parameters and metrics for contestants to be measured against (or HeroX can help you to do that, for a fee.)
A team is brought in to administer and manage it. They handle team recruitment, management, judging, testing facilities, etc.
Teams submit their solutions
Judges review proof-of-concept submissions objectively and award a winner.
Crowdsourcing occurs throughout. We use the crowd whenever we can as we believe outside minds build the best solutions.
Our success rate is close to 92%, with just a few sponsors or creators choosing to cancel their Crowdsourcing Projects during operations.
No. We are a for-profit company that focuses on making a positive contribution to our world. HeroX is a Public Benefits Corporation, which is defined as “a for-profit corporation intended to produce a public benefit and operate in a responsible and sustainable manner.”
We are at the forefront of crowdsourcing projects and competitions. HeroX will allow you to use our efficient and effective platform to dramatically lower the cost and time to market of innovation, research & development, and marketing. With our public facing platform and our knowledge of competition-based problem solving from our XPRIZE heritage, we can significantly improve the productivity, transparency, and results of your philanthropic efforts.
We run a completely virtual office with team members currently in Canada, USA and Ukraine.
Today’s world is filled with solutions. Even within the realm of crowdsourcing our brightest minds are focusing on fundraising and presenting their own solutions. What if we reversed this process and let our brightest minds not only solve problems but identify them as well? You come to us with an area you would like to improve and we’ll show you how to take it from there.
With Kickstarter and Indiegogo, someone has a solution but needs funding to help launch it. Although Kickstarter and Indiegogo both use the power of the crowd, they do so in the reverse of what we do. They are a platform for people who already have a solution to a problem (and are looking for money to go out and fund future production of that solution). HeroX is a platform for people who don't have the solution yet, but are willing to put up the money in order to bring the best solutions.
