Naman Singh

Naman entered his first hackathon when he was only a sophomore in high school. Knowledgeable of the age range of typical attendees, he felt daunted by the idea of not building anything of value. But, by the time VTHacks was up, he had learned so much in only 36 hours. He had a finished mobile game by the end, which he published to the app store. The game was a hit among his friends, Naman’s first glimpse into the impact of a hacker. He became obsessed with hackathons, enrolling whenever he could and building bigger and bigger projects. He remains a storied vet of every VTHacks event since 2015 and he’s got no plan to stop. His combined app downloads add up to over 3,000, and he’s amassed 80,000 users on his websites.

During a break between VTHacks events, Naman entered HackUVA at the University of Virginia during his senior year of high school. With two years of competitive hacking to bring to the table, he built DrawPlatformer, an app that converts hand-drawn pictures into a platformer video game map. The game was a hit among the fellow hackers. Attendees crowded around the table and fought for markers to have a chance to build their own map and play online. DrawPlatformer won first place, giving Naman the confidence he needed to zoom through future events while taking time to enjoy himself.

The community that Naman was now fully a part of opened his eyes to how much impact one person can make with technological knowledge. The valuable skill of hacking under pressure becomes a totally new important skill when applied to real-world issues. For instance, when the Covid-19 pandemic hit, he saw a lot of his friends face hardship as more and more job opportunities were lost. Seeing the work that his peers put into their passions go seemingly unnoticed inspired Naman to build and launch MassApply, a job searching tool that helps students discover actively hiring tech companies, contact verified recruiters, and manage their job applications.

Just two weeks after the MassApply launch, a stranger reached out to Naman. They thanked him for providing the service that led to them landing an interview and their first ever job offer.  The support was overwhelming, assisting over 10,000 students with their job searches. From then on, Naman knew how powerful of a tool hacking was for making a positive impact.  Because MassApply took off in the way that it has, Naman has focused his mission on dedicating all of his time to the service in order to bring jobs to his peers amidst the pandemic.

Though he spends so much time working on personal projects, Naman knows the benefits of working as a team. Hackathons have instilled the value of teamwork in the workplace in him, making these events the perfect training grounds for the workplace. He’s been able to bring this experience to the workplace through internships with great companies like Reddit and Opendoor. It’s important to Naman to give back to the community. Seeing how passionate his fellow hackers are only makes him want to help them more, and have fun while doing so. They’ve all helped him so much that it feels wrong to not reciprocate in ways that work for him. This is why he dedicates his time to MassApply, a service that he knows will have staying power outside of the pandemic, when tech jobs rear their heads more frequently once again. For the rest of his life, Naman wants to bring his unique style of helping to all communities, no matter the situation.