Recap of Melissa at VenusHacks 2024

The Melissa Team proudly sponsored UC Irvine’s largest women-centric hackathon, “VenusHacks”, for the first time last weekend on May 24-26, 2024. This exciting event drew 177 enthusiastic participants, each eager to showcase their data prowess over a 36-hour hackathon. 47 project submissions were submitted on Day 3 at 10:00 AM for judging.

The Melissa Edu Team - Jessica, Sara, Theresa, Ha, Ruoxuan, Gillian & Daniel

VenusHacks Participants

On Day 1, Melissa set up an engaging sponsor table where attendees received 40 oz. tumblers plus a sheet of exclusive Melissa Education stickers. Those who visited Melissa's table were also briefed on Melissa’s data challenge, which tasked participants with demonstrating their creativity and expertise using Melissa’s APIs, such as the Global IP Web API or Global Address Web API. Melissa’s very own Chief Data Officer, Daniel K. Le, also kicked off the event with an inspiring keynote speech during the opening ceremony.

Speaking to VenusHacks Attendees

Melissa Edu Team Members Speaking to VenusHacks Attendees About the Portal & Challenge

Daniel Slide for the VenusHacks Opening Ceremony Keynote

The winning team for the Best Use of Melissa APIs was Moove, consisting of Leilani Bascos, Isaac Nguyen, Robert Gilmore, and Alexander Yin. To view their project submission, click here. Moove was rewarded with exclusive Melissa swag, 40K Melissa Credits — valued at $60 to use for Melissa Lookups and Cloud APIs, and $50 Amazon gift cards! Congratulations to Moove! Click to view all Melissa project submissions.

In addition to swag, Melissa provided a demo of their Education Portal at the sponsor table. This online portal offers students and teachers free data sets, including international data. Interested students can sign up for these valuable resources by creating a free Melissa account using their .edu email address

The Melissa Edu Team at the Melissa Table at VenusHacks

Since 1985, Melissa has been a leader in global intelligence solutions and helping organizations unlock accurate data to build compelling customer profiles. More than 10,000 clients worldwide across industries — including retail, education, healthcare, insurance, finance, and government — rely on Melissa for comprehensive data quality and ID verification software (i.e. data matching, validation, and enhancement services) to foster meaningful customer relationships.