Press kit

One line

Namanyay Goel is the founder of PumpGTM (Y Combinator) and a writer on AI and software whose essays reached more than four million readers.

Short bio

Namanyay Goel is a San Francisco based founder and writer. He started programming at 13, took his first professional job as a web developer at 14, and has spent the years since building products used by millions of people, from India's most-visited independent COVID tracker to developer tools used by engineering teams at fast-growing companies. Today he runs PumpGTM, a Y Combinator-backed company building an AI agent that finds the buyers who are ready to talk and runs a founder's outreach for them. His writing on how AI is changing the craft of programming has been covered by The New York Times, Inc., Futurism, The Register, and Marketplace.

Long bio

Namanyay Goel (b. 1998, New Delhi) is a technology entrepreneur, engineer, and writer. He taught himself design and web development at 12 and by 14 was the frontend developer for MakeUseOf, a technology publication with millions of monthly readers, working remotely while finishing school. At 16 he was one of 25 Google Code-in grand prize winners worldwide.

He spent eight years running a software agency in New Delhi, shipping products for clients in the US, UK, and Dubai, and co-founded consumer and fintech products including Ayom and Metric Books. During the pandemic he built IndiaSmile, an open-source COVID tracker that served more than five million visitors at peaks of 600,000 a day.

In 2025 his essay “AI is Creating a Generation of Illiterate Programmers” became one of the most-discussed pieces of writing in software that year, reaching more than a million readers and prompting coverage from The New York Times' Hard Fork, Inc., Futurism, The Register, and creators with a combined audience above four million. He followed it with “AI is Killing B2B SaaS” in 2026, which reached the Hacker News front page and was debated on Startups For the Rest of Us.

He moved to San Francisco in 2025, was selected for On Deck Founders and the inaugural Solo Founders Program, raised a pre-seed round, and was accepted into Y Combinator (spring 2026). His first company there, Gigacatalyst, was wound down in 2026; he now builds PumpGTM, a go-to-market agent for founders. He holds a registered German utility model for a method of analysing and summarising software codebases, serves on the editorial boards of two peer-reviewed journals, and has judged international hackathons.

Ask me about

• What AI is doing to junior developers, and what “illiterate programmers” means in practice
• Vibe coding: where it works, where it quietly breaks, and the security bill that arrives later
• Why AI is killing B2B SaaS that refuses to evolve, and what customers build for themselves now
• Running a company as a solo founder inside Y Combinator, and shutting a product down to start the next one
• Founder-led sales: how early-stage companies actually find their first customers with AI
• Building developer tools that keep AI honest about large codebases
• Starting a career at 14 and what early access to the internet did for a kid in New Delhi
• India to San Francisco: the O-1 visa, immigration as a founder, and building in the US

Milestones

• 2011Start freelancing as a web designer and developer at 13.
• 2013Frontend developer at MakeUseOf (2–3M monthly readers), age 14.
• 2014Google Code-in grand prize winner; publish Webstiles, an open-source prototyping tool.
• 2016Publish a mathematical solver for Bulls and Cows; 5,500+ downloads.
• 2017Organise HackIndia and BharatHacks, two of India's largest student hackathons.
• 2020Build IndiaSmile, an open-source COVID tracker: 5M+ visitors, 600k a day at peak.
• 2025“AI is Creating a Generation of Illiterate Programmers” reaches 1.3M readers; NYT, Inc., Futurism coverage.
• 2025Move to San Francisco. On Deck Founders, Recurse Center, Solo Founders Program. Raise a pre-seed round. O-1A visa approved.
• 2026“AI is Killing B2B SaaS” hits the Hacker News front page. Accepted into Y Combinator (spring 2026). German utility model registered. Launch PumpGTM.