Harishankaran

Check it out, we’re talking about Harishankaran, this guy’s the real deal in the tech world. He’s a YC S11 alum, co-founder and CTO of HackerRank, which is basically the gold standard for coding problems and hiring tech talent worldwide. But his story? It’s all about spotting problems, jumping in, and just crushing it.

So, he started out at IBM, working as a software engineer, but he wasn’t just there to grind. Nah, he was already thinking bigger. He went to NIT Tiruchirappalli, got that B.Tech in CS, and then he jumped into open source with Google Summer of Code and interned at Novell, little things that showed he was passionate about coding and community from early on.

Then, here’s where it gets interesting. Harishankaran and his co-founder Vivek Ravisankar saw how broken campus hiring was, all those endless interviews, bullshit screening, no real way to find the best talent fast. That lightbulb went off, and they jumped into building InterviewStreet, which later became HackerRank. They knew there had to be a better way, and they wanted to democratize programming, make it accessible, fair, and global.

Getting into YC was a grind, they tried multiple times before finally making it. But once they did, everything changed. YC gave them the boost, the funding, the network. They got backing from big names like Vinod Khosla, and suddenly, this small idea to fix hiring turned into a giant platform used by companies and developers all over the world.

What’s crazy is, Harishankaran’s process isn’t just about building a company. It’s about seeing a problem, having the guts to build a solution, and sticking with it through all the rejection and tough times. He’s all about making programming more accessible, bringing people together, and turning coding into a global community. That’s his mission, to make sure anyone, anywhere, can jump into tech and prove themselves.

Long story short? Harishankaran is a coder’s coder, a problem-solver who saw a bullshit problem, and turned it into a movement that’s changing how tech hiring works. He’s the kind of founder who’s not just in it for the money, he’s in it to make a real impact. That’s why he’s so important.