Harsh Tomar

Builder

Lead Software Engineer @ GoHighLevel

I turn ideas into shipped products — some pay rent, some are just 2am experiments.

02Signals

What I'm thinking about

ThreadJun 2026

Most “AI products” are a prompt in a trench-coat

The moat was never the model. It's distribution, the workflow you slot into, and the data nobody else has.

EssayMay 2026

Shipping small is a cheat code for confidence

After a failed startup I stopped chasing the next big thing and started shipping tiny ones. It rewired how I work.

IdeaApr 2026🟢 up for grabs

Changelogs that read themselves to your users

Auto-generate a 30-second audio/video changelog from git history + release notes, posted in-app and to socials.

All signals →
03 — Journey

How I got here

Small-town kid

1996 — 2015

  1. 1996

    Etawah

    Born in a small town in Uttar Pradesh. Good at studies, but always hanging with the back-benchers.

  2. 2007

    First computer

    A computer landed at home in 6th grade. I spent every hour of it on games and Hollywood movies.

  3. 2009

    The internet arrived

    Got online around 2009. The whole world cracked open.

  4. 2012

    Off to Kota

    Left for Kota after class 10 to grind for the JEE.

  5. 2014

    The itch

    Started reading about code in Kota. Something clicked: computers weren't only for playing.

Falling for code

2015 — 2019

  1. 2015

    First real laptop, first CLI

    Bangalore for engineering. Taught myself C/C++ from YouTube a semester early and shipped a CLI calculator.

  2. 2016

    A new language by building

    Python, Java, JavaScript — learned each by making things: a Notepad that reads your text aloud, and Tamasha to scrape movie links.

  3. 2017

    HURLS & tiny tools

    Shipped HURLS, a URL shortener (~20k links), plus tools for myself like an attendance-manager that let me bunk class and still hit 75%.

  4. 2018

    Backtick

    Started my own thing: Backtick, a Slack-meets-groups for campuses. The dream was making college communication effortless.

  5. 2019

    Dropped out

    Made it through college but never cleared that last backlog. Left Bangalore without the degree and didn't look back.

Learning the trade

2019 — 2022

  1. 2019

    Freelance & first taste of marketing

    Built apptart (website-to-app) and sites for small businesses and picked up the marketing side of shipping, not just the code.

  2. 2020

    First real job

    Joined Zoop.one as SDE-1. Saw how products are actually built inside a company and how engineering bends under scale.

  3. 2021

    Dyte: real-time at scale

    Joined YC-backed Dyte building audio/video APIs. Went deep on WebRTC, SDK design, and the messy problems that only show up at scale.

  4. 2021

    InstaTweet

    Side-built InstaTweet: beautiful tweet screenshots for Instagram. Grew it to 20k users and 80k shots, until Elon switched off the free Twitter API.

Building for real

2022 — now

  1. 2022

    DocsGenie, and a hard lesson

    Built a RAG chatbot to integrate any API in plain English. Applied to YC, got rejected; my co-founder left; I shelved it. Learned to bet on myself.

  2. 2023

    Came home, went remote

    Moved back to Etawah and joined GoHighLevel remotely. Decided to build small, niche micro-SaaS to rebuild my own confidence.

  3. 2024

    Throwing things at AI

    A WhatsApp job-hunter bot, scraped-and-sold angel-investor lists, a string of small AI tools: experiments to find what actually sticks.

  4. 2025

    WhatsBoard

    Shipped WhatsBoard: connect WhatsApp to Monday.com with a QR code, via the Monday marketplace. Scaled it to ~$1.1k MRR and counting.

  5. 2026

    Married my person

    Married my college girlfriend in 2026. Ten years after we first met.

04Connect

Let's build something.

Building something, hiring, or just want to trade ideas? I'm easy to reach.

© Harsh Tomar · built from scratch