i don't know the actual number. They might have a negative net income for a little while due to expense but according to this news, growth is going up. Plus, if you look at Facebook's Tools Engineering position it mentions Salesforce.com so I think the company has a pretty good outlook. Plus, coming, 100k for food and facility is not that much to them when they are giving up 1M.
I don't know what you paid $500 for. The hackathon was free. Zero. $0. Early on they charged $99 for a developer pass, but they reimbursed me and my team members.
I was wrong. Still though, that $99 fee is _per_ person. You'd probably have 2 or 3 people on your team. That's $300 in that case. And if I'm correct, I remember them saying that a 1-person team would have very low chances of winning. Not to mention that the competition is not a 1-day event, it is just a 1-day showing, the winning team put a month of work in addition to what they already had completed as a base. I am not one to take such large gambles when the tables are clearly not in my favor. The whole thing reeks of pre-arranged cronyism.
Very few people registered at even the $99 hacker pass level, which is why they ended up making it free. Nobody who wasn't already going to DF paid the full conference price to participate in the hackathon. Quit with the hysteria.
An entry fee does not make something negative EV. $1,090,000 was added to the prizepool. If it was literally 100% guaranteed that the winner was pre-selected, then it would be -EV if >180 teams entered and all had the same chance of winning a prize. If the event was not rigged, then it is clearly +EV for even medicore participants.