From Developer to Serial Entrepreneur: Michael Morris, CEO of Torc (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Is it all word-of-mouth that developers found out about you?

Michael Morris: Word-of-mouth. I referenced that Social Network movie because it mostly started in Computer Science departments at universities across the globe. Once we got a foothold in the US, it started going globally. Once we went global, it expanded. There was a point in time when we were adding about 50,000 people per quarter to the community. It was hugely viral growth. We did a great job of celebrating the top talent. That helped.

Sramana Mitra: That was helping their careers.

Michael Morris: Yes, it was almost an early version of influencer marketing.

Sramana Mitra: By the time you got to this $20 million in revenue, how many developers were part of the Topcoder network?

Michael Morris: About 400,000.

Sramana Mitra: What did you do after?

Michael Morris: In 2011, I got antsy. I wanted to go to the next level. I left and I went to start another company in a similar space in the Salesforce ecosystem called CloudSpokes. We did really well the first year. We got good traction and a good community following. Now we knew what we were doing. It took us a million dollars to get things off the ground. We had so much innate knowledge about how to build communities and how to get work done. The funding for CloudSpokes came from Appirio. They funded us.

Sramana Mitra: Now that you’re saying. I remember when I interviewed Appirio for this series, he mentioned Topcoder. He acquired Topcoder, right?

Michael Morris: After about a year and a half of growing CloudSpokes, we acquired Topcoder. We brought the two together and merged them. That was in October of 2013.

Sramana Mitra: That was all part of Appirio though?

Michael Morris: Yes, Appirio was the backer. They financed the entire thing. Then we ended up getting acquired by Wipro in 2016. We were running fairly independently. We’re still reporting to the Appirio CEO, but we ran it as an independent business. The thought was that they may be more valuable independently.

Wipro bought both of them. Appirio went into the consulting organization, and Topcoder went into the CTO organization as a platform. I stayed for three years. Then COVID hits extending it to about four years. We got it to about a $50 million business at that point.

Then I decided that I wanted to go back to the build phase. I just love small companies. My time at Wipro was fantastic. I learned a ton. I learned a lot about working in a big organization, but I wanted to go back to the build phase. This is where it gets exciting.

In the process of selling Topcoder and Appirio, one of the people that I met was the CEO and Chairman of Cognizant at that time – Frank D’Souza. Frank and I ended up having a strong relationship together. We ran into each other at the airport. We just started brainstorming about what’s next. We met in Boston at a hotel lobby and we started whiteboarding on a piece of paper an idea of taking a community-based development model but building one that was essentially employing a million people per year on a cloud-based platform.

That was the model that we set on. I had all the expertise from the community side. Frank had all the expertise from building a juggernaut of a consulting company. We started coming together on all these concepts. We ended up deciding to go out and start another company. That’s where I am today. I’m the CEO and Founder of Torc. Frank and his private equity fund is the company that funded us.

Sramana Mitra: When did you start ?

Michael Morris: The official first day was September 2021.

This segment is part 3 in the series : From Developer to Serial Entrepreneur: Michael Morris, CEO of Torc
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