About me

2021—

Co-founded Highbeam to automate finance for ecommerce business founders. Moved to New York.

2019-21

Moved to Vancouver, BC to work as a Software Engineer at Alloy. Really enjoyed my time in beautiful British Columbia going on endless number of hikes and bike rides along the beaches.

2014-18

I landed in Canada to pursue undergraduate studies at the University of Waterloo. I originally enrolled in Software Engineering but transferred into Computer Science in my senior (fourth) year.

2010-13

While in high school, I took part in a lot of activities and competitions—the most noticeable one being Google Code-in ’10 and ’11 which opened up new opportunities for me. One thing led to the other and I became a part of the organizing team of GSF India Accelerator, led a team for the F1 in Schools competition, and much more. More in my blogpost: Sixteen.

2008

I was re-introduced to WordPress yet again. This time it was OrkutPlus for which I made Orkut bots and toolkits (not live anymore). The bots were written in Visual Basic and then PHP. OrkutPlus needed forums, so we settled with bbPress. I tried porting a social bookmarking plugin named SexyBookmarks to bbPress and released it as Social It in 2009.

2007

My family moved to Gurgaon and I enrolled in Amity International School, Sector 46. I started taking part in cyber/tech-related olympiads that were held in my school.

I started a hacking community named Hacking D Worldd… (case, spell, and dot-sensitive) on Orkut. I remember doing every possible thing on the internet for that community.

I was re-introduced to WordPress when I was blogging for a friend. I saw the administration interface and remembered that I had seen something like that before. I saw that it was powered by WordPress. I didn’t know that you could actually have a site that is powered by WordPress and hosted on your own servers.

2006

The first time I won a programming competition — the programming language being Logo. I teamed up with my friend Shobhan.

2005

I started my first blog livetech.wordpress.com (on WordPress!). I didn’t know the plagiarism laws and I generally used to copy paste the content from other blogs. Soon enough I got bored and deleted the blog. Over the previous few years, I had been receiving various prizes in group singing, calligraphy, art, etc (things at which I’m not good at now). I also used to read various Roald Dahl books.

2002

I got to know about email and asked my dad to set up an email account for me one night. My first email id was on Hotmail and my father narrated me the story of how the guy who started Hotmail got rich by Microsoft acquiring his service for around $40 per user (as he used to narrate it). When he was off to office the next morning, I opened up the computer, figured out what was sign in, sign up, compose mail (didn’t know the meaning of the word compose, found out when I actually clicked into it). I soon switched over to Yahoo! mail and used to hang out in Y! Messenger chat rooms. At that time we used to have a dialup connection.

2000

2000 was probably the year when I had my first real encounter with computers when my dad brought it into our house. I have distinct memories of playing games off floppies and CDs like RoadRash, Duke Nukem, Claw, Mario, and Midtown Madness. I would spend hours designing pixel-perfect sceneries in MS Paint and trying out the software that came in the CD with the monthly magazine. I was very curious to find new things on the internet, have a presence online where people could reach out to me and had the urge to make the computer do what I wanted it to.

I was enrolled into Bal Bharati Public School, Pitam Pura. I’ve lots of good memories of the place that I’ll cherish for life!

1999

My parents tell me that I got a prize in a drag and drop competition. I really don’t remember doing that though — I don’t even remember more than ten days of the two years I went to Mother’s Pride, a playschool for kids.

1995

Initial commit.

35 comments

  1. Hey Gautam
    Best of luck and good you have portfolio website now. I have seen your work and IMHO people have all the reason to hire you.
    Best of luck with all new ventures..
    Regards
    Harsh

  3. Hi Gautam, I am really impressed to see your blog site.
    Wish you and your web site a grand success.
    Regards,
    Suresh.

  9. Hello Gautam,
    I saw your comment on TechCrunch, and came to see your website. Good going, and All the Best!
    Are you on Facebook? If so it would be good to connect.

  10. Hi, got you from intenseDebate plugin on WP site.
    Nice that you develop and contribute to open source community

  11. Hey Gautam,

    I had seem you many times on bbpress forum, but never knew that you are 15 years old(young!).

    All the best for your future..

  12. Hi Gautam,
    You r going very fast dude. You don’t know me but as U have maked ur fan list. I m one of them…Keep it Up….

  13. Hey Gautam! Accidentally landed upon your site and then remembered that I read about you on Devil’s Workshop but didn’t know about the awesome work you have done for WP and bbPress.

    Good going bro. Wish you a good luck! 🙂 Keep rocking!

  16. Hey Gautam, u r doing great ventures and projects, Best of luck for all upcoming works bro 🙂

  17. Congrats Gautam .. It was nice reading about your and i am proud i was with you among one of the old group OUG 🙂

    All the best for your future 🙂

  18. Dude you are going great ! Wish i could grow that fast ! anyways will try to have a techie kiddo lyke u:)
    All the best for great future ahead man!

  21. Many beginners are inpired by you like me, so keep up you work and update you bio to inspire more! 🙂

  22. Well done, I really inspired to see your blog so nice, Have a great future:) all the best

  23. Hi Gautam,

    I got to know about you on GSFIndia.com. You have great future friend 🙂 good to see such talented chaps in india. Well Gautam, I am passionate about entrepreneurship and currently working on my startup and looking for technical co-founder. I need a guy with the qualities which you have.

  24. Very well done and its good to see you growing with such quality skills is something awesome… keep up the good and hard work

  25. Really dig your design here Gautam! How have you been so strong in coding? And, do you recommend setting up a bbPress forum or some other provider…?

  27. I saw you have developed an android OCR app using tesseract. I am now doing the same thing. I think you are brilliant at this young age.

  28. Cool Man!

    I’m really impressed after reading your Bio. Every teen should be greatly inspired by you. 🙂

    Thanks,
    Sai

  29. Very well done and its good to see you growing with such quality skills is something awesome… keep up the good and hard work

  32. Hey Gautam,

    Good work!

    You achieved a lot in such a small time. Inspiring.

    Can you please clean up few dead links like Discover I?

    1. Hey Gautam,
      Good work!
      You achieved a lot in such a small time. Inspiring.
      Very well done and its good to see you growing with such quality skills is something awesome… keep up the good and hard work.

  33. Hi, i just read your blog properly…. such amazing way of presentation.
    Wish you all the best.

  34. lol @ “Initial Commit”

    Wait, so that means you were like 13 when you were helping me with SexyBookmarks??? Jeez dude. You’re gonna go places for sure! 🙂

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