From Full-Time Employee to Appreneur - The Story of HackerEarth
“The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.” — Walt Disney
THE 7-STEP STARTUP SUCCESS FORMULA - DR. ANU KHANCHANDANI
Every entrepreneur’s journey is a mix of failures and successes. The probability of failure is higher, however, there is a way to grow and keep growing until you build a successful startup. This book is one such guide to help you with 7 formulas for your success.
Transcript
Continuing on my obsession these days with Appreneurs, here is the story of Sachin Gupta who transitioned from a software developer to appreneur and founded HackerEarth.
Sachin worked as a programmer in Google and Microsoft before he decided that he had had enough with the Corporate culture. The world was moving towards Startups, and it was time for him too.
Founded in November 2012 by Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee alumni Sachin Gupta and Vivek Prakash,[7] HackerEarth began its journey as MyCareerStack[8][9] a social interactive platform geared toward technical interviews. Initially, the learning platform was aimed at leveling the playing field for technical interviews for campus students via tutorials on concepts in programming, blogs, interview questions, an online code editor, and a discussion forum.
Later, Sachin and Vivek pivoted this idea to create an automated technical assessment software product[1] that helps in hiring skilled developers cost effectively — and launched the product in February 2013. Two years later, HackerEarth launched its innovation management software;[10] an upgraded version was released in early 2018.
Sachin is a graduate from IIT Rourkee, calls himself a hard core programmer and finds it fun. Vivek and he created this discussion platform and realised that there was a huge gap in terms of the talent that was available in India in the software development arena and the kind of recruitment strategies that were used by companies. That was a problem they could relate to and wanted to capture the opportunity.
As per their research the demand and supply ratio of programmers to jobs was huge. On top of that only 20% of the graduates every year were actually employable, besides they were distributed all across the country so finding them was hard and then assessing them was hard.
When they were invited to the GSF accelerator they were totally unprepared but still cracked it due to their passion. They were programmers, had no idea about business or marketing strategies.
GSF accelerator helped them on that front and today HackerEarth claims its international revenues have more than tripled and now constitute one-third of its revenues. To better tap the US market, HackerEarth has announced that it will set up offices in San Francisco. Sachin will be moving to the US as part of the expansion plans, while Vivek will continue to oversee operations in India.
And the rest as they say is history!
The seed of HackerEarth was sowed in an observation made by Sachin and Vivek – the gap between the demand and supply of programmers. They gave it a solution and created not only an innovative platform for programmers but also a solution to both programmers and companies alike to find the best match.
Lesson learnt – Observe, find a problem, create an app which provides a solution and start on your appreneur journey.
Do visit my website www.thegreycells.com to Book an Appointment with me if you want to discuss how you can pivot your Startup in case you are facing similar challenges. It would my pleasure if I can contribute in your Startup’s success in any way that I could.
So, Until Next Time – Ciao and have a great life!
With over two decades of experience in the software technology arena, having worked in multinational and SME companies in India, USA and Singapore in the capacity of programmer to CTO – I felt now was a good time to give back to the world what I have learnt in this journey. Even if it ends up benefitting a few of my readers by giving them insight or solving a technical issue, I think I will have achieved my mission!