One of the reasons we started Spreedly was to make it easier to get a business up and running ASAP, so when the Rails Rumble rolled around this year Spreedly just had to be involved. For those not familiar with it, the Rails Rumble is a yearly competition in which a few hundred teams compete to see who can build the best application in 48 hours using Ruby on Rails. With a full complement of prizes, plenty of trash talking, and lots of sweaty palms, it’s the geek equivalent of the weekend basketball tournament! Having competed in it a few times in the past I can tell you it’s crazy intense and loads of fun.

Now, creating a working application within 48 hours is pretty impressive, but how much more impressive would it be if that application was actually able to make money? We think it kicks the awesomeness up multiple levels, so we’re putting our money where our mouth is and offering two Spreedly Kickstarts as prizes, one to the overall winner of the competition, and one to the winner of a special Spreedly-judged “Ready-to-Earn” category. We’ll be looking for a number of different things when picking the Ready-to-Earn winner, including:

• a clear business model,
• an application that offers real value, and
• a working Spreedly integration.

Of course, the best part of Spreedly is that you can hook an application up to it at anytime without paying us a dime – just grab a test site and have at it. This means that everyone competing in the Rumble can take Spreedly for a spin and make their application that much more polished by having it already collecting revenue by competition’s end. Nothing says “real application” like “we’re already charging for it”!

A quick anecdote: not long after we launched Spreedly, two of the Spreedly co-founders (Duff and Alex) decided to build an application together to scratch an itch that they had. They cranked out No Kahuna in a bare 40 hours, including it being able to collect money. While they might be a little biased, they’ll both tell you that there’s absolutely no way they could have gotten so far in such a short amount of time if not for Spreedly.

And that’s why we think that the Rails Rumble and Spreedly are like chocolate and peanut butter and are so excited about being a part of the Rumble this year. All the coolest Rumble teams will be using Spreedly to get that extra edge in the competition – don’t miss out!