Connect, Build, and Empower organizations to change lives across the world.

At Opportunity Hack, you can network, share ideas, and build solutions that enable impact and social innovation!  Join a team that will hack solutions for any of the problem statements listed by our partnering non-profits! 

Hello Hackers, for the common good!

Welcome to 2021 Opportunity Hack with this year's theme of "Economic Empowerment for All".  We define Economic Empowerment as: having the agency, skills, resources, and opportunities needed to compete equitably in markets, and achieve long-term economic security.

Our sponsor, PayPal, has recently announced their commitment of $100 Million to advance financial inclusion and economic empowerment of women and girls, which adds to its $530 Million to support Black businesses, strengthen minority communities and fight economic inequality. 

This year, we want to focus on problems from non-profits that focus specifically on economic empowerment of underrepresented groups.

Unlike most years where we do this in-person in San Jose, Chennai, Ireland, Singapore, Phoenix, and Timonium - this year, we've worked with DevPost to create a 100% online global hackathon.

Our Ninth Annual Opportunity Hack is now open for all to register. Please note that ONLY THE FIRST 300 participants will be accepted on the day of the kickoff.

With the pandemic, it has made it hard for us to get together as we normally do each year.  We successfully had our first virtual hackathon over summer 2020 where we worked with volunteer interns on non-profit problem statements.  This allowed us to test out how working in an online-only environment would be. In the fall, we held Opportunity Hack 2020 that succesfully provided solutions to four non-profits in the few months that followed the hackathon.

Visit our hackathon website to learn more!

Schedule of events 

Be sure to check our website for the most up-to-date information

• Check-in will be from 8:00 am until 10:00 am PST on October 18th. 
• At 9:00 am PST, we'll have our opening keynote address streamed live over YouTube.
• 11:00 a.m. It's time to get your hack on! You have from now until 12:00 pm PST on Monday, October 25th, to create a minimum viable product as part of your video demo for the judges!
• We will have daily check-ins between teams, mentors, and Opportunity Hack volunteers using Slack.
• At 12pm PST on Monday, October 25th, it's time to let the keyboard rest. You'll want to have your prototype ready, a video demo created, and your code committed.

Detailed Agenda

 Monday (10/18)

• 8:00 am PST Check-in begins
• 9:00 am Opening address and keynote
• 9:30 am Project Pitches
• 9:45 am to 11 am Team-Project assignment
• 11:00 am Check-in closes - no new hackers are able to join after this point
• 11:00 am Hackathon Begins
• 12:00pm Mentor lunch check-in
• 9:00 pm Devpost project submission initially created, Git repo project up-to-date with all team members
• 6:00 pm Mentor evening check-in

Tuesday (10/19)

• Mentor check in to Opportunity Hack Core Team morning/lunch/evening

Wednesday (10/20)

• 9 am Teams demo their progress thus far to mentors
• Acceptance criteria evaluation
• Mentor check-in with the core team morning/lunch/evening

Thursday (10/21)

• Mentor check in to Opportunity Hack Core Team morning/lunch/evening

Friday (10/22)

• Mentor check in to Opportunity Hack Core Team morning/lunch/evening

Saturday/Sunday (10/23-24)

• Morning mentor check-in
• Lunch mentor check-in
• Evening mentor check-in

Monday (10/25)

• 8:00 am Mentor check in to Opportunity Hack Core Team
• 9:00 am Final Project Submissions Due
• 9:00 am Judges Checkin 
• The Core Team to share all the videos and related codebase, documents to all the judges.
• 9:00 am - 11:00 am Online Judging Model
• 11 am Round 1 judging/deliberation of 4 minute video and DevPost/GitHub submissions (Internal Review by Core Team)

Online Judging Process

https://help.devpost.com/hc/en-us/articles/360021798712-Online-judging-How-judging-works-for-judges

Tuesday, October 26, 2021

For the top teams selected in Round 1, we wanted to provide a live demo and Q&A element to judging where we have two different timeslots available to support work/life balance of people throughout the globe.

For this portion, PayPal will provide judges and teams will live demo using Microsoft Teams.

• 9am-10am PST Round 2 live demo: top teams selected from Round 1 - 8 minute demo 2 minutes for Q&A
• 5pm-6pm PST Round 2 live demo: top teams selected from Round 1 - 8 minute demo 2 minutes for Q&A

Wednesday October 27th, 2021

• 9am PT | Overall and Sponsor Winners Announced  | Sponsors connect with Winners on how they will receive their Prize

Problem Statements 

Hackers will be working to solve these problems for non-profits this year: https://www.ohack.org/hackathon/non-profits

Sponsors

PayPal

We believe that now is the time to reimagine money, to democratize financial services, so that managing and moving money is a right for all citizens, not just the affluent. We believe every person has the right to participate fully in the global economy. We have an obligation to empower people to exercise this right and improve financial health. As a leader in Financial Technology, we believe in providing simple, affordable, secure and reliable financial services and digital payments that enable the hopes, dreams and ambitions of millions of people around the world. 

PayPal is sponsoring prizes for the best three hackathon projects as voted on by our judges.

Experis

Experis is the global leader in professional resourcing and project-based workforce solutions. We accelerate organizations'​ growth by intensely attracting, assessing, and placing specialized expertise in IT, Finance, and Engineering to precisely deliver in-demand talent for mission-critical positions, enhancing the competitiveness of the organizations and people we serve. | Visit www.experis.com to learn more.

Experis is sponsoring the shirts that will be mailed to hackers who complete the hackathon.

Judges

Tetiana Steblova

I studied at National University of Ukraine (Kyiv Polytechnic Institute) in 2010 and then post-graduate in 2013 in Computer Science. I’m passionated and experienced software engineer with 13+ years of hands-on development and team management, adept in bringing forth expertise in design and delivering solutions. I participate in wide range of activities like a pre-sale, discovery, development, production release, post-production support, managing and guiding local, remote and mixed teams spread around the world in both - product development and customer-specific solution implementation activities. Currently I work for NetCracker Ltd and on my own project https://colaba.pro. I was invited experts and trackers at the DemHack3 hackathon (https://demhack.ru/) and as a judge on Major League Hackathon (https://mlh.io) every Sunday I’m also the winner and finalists (the final will take place in December 2021) of the EdTech hackathon at the Digital Breakthrough, The One team - https://leadersofdigital.ru/event/63005/case/608650/results, the winners in case and winners of the super final SMZ Hack 2.0, the winners of the International Aviahackathon-2021 in the case and took 2nd place in the total hackathon in the super final, Demhack2.0 winners, and Privacy Accelerator 2021 alumni.

Dmitry Kaltovich

I'm experienced lead software engineer who has spent extensive time designing and developing high load systems. I am Passionate about achievement and growth in the product development sector, seeking to utilize analytical and prioritization skills combined with keen attention to detail to create an environment of forward-thinking and deliver clear results. I’m currently working in Sber - the biggest bank in Russia as a lead software engineer and I’m co-founder of fintech startup https://colaba.pro as well. Also, I have experience as an expert at Demhack3.0 https://demhack.ru/, Hacks-ai https://hacks-ai.ru/hakaton/rostov-na-donu and as a judge on hacks series at Major League Hackathon (https://mlh.io). I’m also the winner and finalists of the EdTech hackathon at the Digital Breakthrough(biggest competition in Russia), The One team - https://leadersofdigital.ru/event/63005/case/608650/results, the winners in the case and winners of the super final SMZ Hack 2.0, the winners of the International Aviahackathon-2021 in the case and took 2nd place in the total hackathon in the super final, Demhack2.0 winner, and Privacy Accelerator 2021 alumni.

Albert Lie

Albert spent his past 5 years as the Founding Engineer & Tech Lead @ Xendit (YC S15, Accel, Stripe for Southeast Asia that recently became the 1st YC unicorn in SEA). Prior to that, he co-founded a civic technology NGO (ala Code for America), partnering with World Bank and US Embassy.

My bio: https://bit.ly/albert-lie-adrian-bio 

Hemant Bachhawat

I am an Engineer by heart who like to solve problems and also love working with people. I have taken part in previous Opportunity Hackathons twice as mentor.

Anton Yakutovich

I'm working as a Software Developer in Test and have 8 years of professional experience in different fields (virtualization, enterprise servers monitoring, clustered file systems, ETL pipelines for Big Data analytics, GIS). I'm interested in API testing, Big Data processing and all kinds of back-end services.

Nicolle Mathews

My day job is working as a software engineer in the Site Reliability and Cloud Engineering (SRCE) organization.  I've been fortunate enough to participate within several of our Innovation Initiatives. One of these is organizing our annual Opportunity Hack--a hackathon focused on solving non-profit's technical problems which open-source, full-stack, innovative solutions. I've participated as a hacker in 2018 and this is my third year as part of the core planning team. Other innovation related things include being an Innovation Ambassador for the Scottsdale site and one of the co-hosts of the Global Brainstorming Series which kicked off in June.

Bhavya Shankar

Bhavya is Product Manager in Financial Services at PayPal, leading various initiatives to contribute to PayPal’s mission of democratizing financial services. She comes with extensive experience in Product & Technology leadership, business strategy & growth. She has also hosted hackathons for PayPal and is an active member working with many non-profits that includes domains like payments, e-commerce, education, to name a few. She also has worked at Texas State Health and Human Commission to generate automated food stamps benefits for the financially underserved. She likes building simple and effective, innovative solutions helping non-profits serve the community to make the world a better place.

Tanny Men

I have been humbled by great experiences having lived, studied, and worked in 5 different countries, speaking three languages, and learning to engage with people from Tanzanian street hawkers to Swiss middle managers to Chinese diplomatic attachés. I am a product and project manager with over 5 years of experience in digital technology development and consulting services in the U.S., China, and Tanzania. My diverse worldview and global experiences have made me adept at learning, working, teaching, and relating in unfamiliar situations and unknown territories with tact and finesse. In the last three years, I've designed process-oriented techniques to develop product requirements, brand strategies, and competitive analyses to drive value for small and medium-sized companies and their core products. Because of my astute ability to observe the nuances of users' needs, I am able to meaningfully communicate and build digital solutions for clients across national borders. I work best to lead and support fast-moving, outcome-oriented teams of cross-cultural, cross-functional individuals.

Prasanna Vinjamuri

I currently lead In-Store payments and commerce strategy helping PayPal build a strong in-store presence. At PayPal, I have helped grow and optimize experiences for Merchant and Developer segments, in both Payments and Commerce areas. I had the privilege of being the first PM to start the PayPal Shopping team, and led it through the acquisitions of Jetlore and Honey. I led the Gift Card portfolio across sales, marketing and ops; a portfolio of products that focused on Unifying our different brands, and most recently led the Merchant Integrations. Prior to PayPal I have built and led teams in startups and large companies in different areas such as advertising, gaming and location services. I hold an MBA and MS in Engineering & CS.

Vamshi Krishna Dasarraju

I am a Program Manager with a background in Logistics, Risk Management, and Fintech. I have a strong passion for Technology and using tech to enhance the world as we live. I enjoy challenges that push me to Think Big and Think Outside the box. I  am committed to helping cross-functional teams excel through effective communication, emotional intelligence, and helping them stay organized.

Saikrishna Kotha

Since, Joining PayPal I was instrumental in transforming Global network foundations into a stable and modern platform. I consistently led with a clear vision and has empowered the team across PayPal to fully leverage the global network capabilities. As PayPal moves into a period of massive scaling, toward 1B daily active users, my job is ensuring that PayPal’s network is ready to support the delightful delivery of PayPal products and services anywhere in the world.

Vinod Sirimalle

I build technology products. I am currently leading a product management team at PayPal to build commerce products for Small Businesses  Over the years, I built products in embedded systems, enterprise software, consumer internet products, and voice/AI products (Alexa). I regularly participate in hack-a-thons. When I worked at Yahoo I was the Yahoo chairperson for Random Hacks of Kindness, a non-profit organization that organized hackathons to build products for good. I also won best hack awards for Yahoo Weather mobile app, which eventually won the Apple Design Award.

Timofey Krestyanov

5+ years of experience in building Mobile apps developer, I have worked on Android (java, kotlin), and iOS(swift) projects. I worked my way up from a programmer to a lead of mobile development and managed a team of 6. Currently, I'm a Lead Android developer (Kotlin) in the Sberbank team.

$10,000 in prizes

• Common Export/Import Format
  How easy is it to export/import the data within your system as a CSV? Common data format (CSV) so that it can be easily exported and imported Why CSV? Single most popular database in the world, ensures portability between other systems
• Scope of Solution
  How big an impact will your solution have on the community? 1. Scale of the problem? 2. Productivity gain? 3. Complexity of problem 4. Has it been done before? 5. Alternative solution? 6. Does it solve the problem?
• Documentation
  Good documentation on how to use and setup their system 1. Is there Instructable-level documentation? 2. Is the product easy to use? Is the UI simple/beautiful? 3. Is it easy to understand/navigate through the product?
• Polish
  1. How much work is left? 2. Is this a prototype or a working solution? 3. Can NPOs utilize the solution tomorrow? 4. Auto-deploy capability (e.g. one-click deploy from Heroku) 5. Can this solution be used by more than 1 NPO?
• Security
  Did you consider security? We are looking for any role-based access controls, OAuth, and proof that usernames/passwords or any personally identifiable information is securely stored