That part made me cringe too. "Actually, we are in charge now. You just haven’t realized it yet." is a complete joke. Whom ever pays the bills is in charge, and if you work for anyone that ain't you.

I believe the entire ecosystem of "hackathons" to be a scam for Billy like people to exploit naive developers. In fact, if one reads the terms of many corporate sponsered hackathons, the corporation (I'm lookin at you Intel) backing the event claims usage rights to any ideas pitched.