Dillion Verma
Software Engineer turned Indie Hacker. I love building things and helping people. Very active on Twitter.
About
At the end of 2022, I quit my job as a software engineer to go fulltime into building and scaling my own SaaS products. In the past, I pursued a double degree in computer science and business, interned at big tech companies in Silicon Valley, and competed in over 21 hackathons for fun. I also had the pleasure of being a part of the first ever in-person cohort of buildspace called buildspace sf1. I've documented most of the things I learned along the way here.
Work Experience
Bitcoin Protocol Engineer
Implemented the Bitcoin discreet log contract (DLC) protocol specifications as an open source Typescript SDK. Architected a data lake using AWS S3 and Athena for historical backtesting of bitcoin trading strategies.
Production Engineer
Implemented a custom Kubernetes controller in Go to automate the deployment of MySQL and ProxySQL custom resources in order to enable 2,000+ internal developers to instantly deploy their app databases to production. Wrote several scripts in Go to automate MySQL database failovers while maintaining master-slave replication topologies and keeping Zookeeper nodes consistent with changes
Software Engineer
Architected and wrote the entire MVP of the GeForce Now internal admin and A/B testing dashboard using React, Redux, TypeScript, and Python
Software Engineer
Co-developed a prototype iOS app with another intern in Swift for the new Splunk Phantom security orchestration product (later publicly demoed and launched at .conf annual conference in Las Vegas). Implemented a realtime service for the iOS app in Django (Python) and C++; serialized data using protobufs transmitted over gRPC resulting in an approximate 500% increase in data throughput
Software Engineer
Proposed and implemented an internal ruby API for sending/receiving commands to scooters over LTE networks. Developed a fully automated bike firmware update system to handle asynchronous firmware updates of over 100,000+ scooters worldwide, and provide progress reports in real-time using React, Ruby on Rails, PostgreSQL and AWS EC2 saving hundreds of developer hours
Software Engineer
Designed and implemented a robust password encryption and browser cookie storage system in Ruby on Rails. Leveraged the Yahoo finance API to develop the dividend.com equity screener
Education
University of Waterloo
Wilfrid Laurier University
Talks and Podcasts
Projects
Chat Collect
With the release of the OpenAI GPT Store, I decided to build a SaaS which allows users to collect email addresses from their GPT users. This is a great way to build an audience and monetize your GPT API usage.
Magic UI
Designed, developed and sold animated UI components for developers.
llm.report
Developed an open-source logging and analytics platform for OpenAI: Log your ChatGPT API requests, analyze costs, and improve your prompts. Winner of the Vercel AI accelerator 2023 (Recieved $120k Funding)
Automatic Chat
Developed an AI Customer Support Chatbot which automatically responds to customer support tickets using the latest GPT models.
micropay.ai
Developed a SaaS allowing users to generate AI art using the latest AI models like Stable Diffusion and Dalle-2.
Facial Sentiment Intensity Analysis (Undergraduate Research Paper)
Developed and trained a Deep Convolutional Neural Network (DCNN) on the ADFES-BIV facial emotions dataset to predict the intensity of human emotions with an average final prediction accuracy of 86% on unseen data.
Meme Exchange
Developed an online platform which allows users to buy and sell memes for a profit 💰.
EndlessBlock
Developed a python library which can be imported into any python game and change the difficulty of the game based on the real-time emotion of the player. Uses OpenCV and webcam for facial recognition, and a custom machine learning model trained on a Kaggle facial emotion dataset using Tensorflow and Keras.
PocketDoc
Developed at University of Waterloo's Equithon, Pocketdoc is an app where you can take a picture of your physical wound, and it returns suggested medicines or cures for the injuries or diseases identified in the wound.
University Start Page
Developed a new tab chrome extension using material design to simplify the process of staying up to date with course work.
Anotiv
Co-founded an online web and mobile app platform which delivers realtime notifications to high school students about club, sport, and classroom events happening in school.
Hackathons
Hack Western 5
London, Ontario
Developed a mobile application which delivered bedtime stories to children using augmented reality.
Hack The North
Waterloo, Ontario
Developed a mobile application which delivers university campus wide events in real time to all students.
FirstNet Public Safety Hackathon
San Francisco, California
Developed a mobile application which communcicates a victims medical data from inside an ambulance to doctors at hospital.
DeveloperWeek Hackathon
San Francisco, California
Developed a web application which aggregates social media data regarding cryptocurrencies and predicts future prices.
HackDavis
Davis, California
Developed a mobile application which allocates a daily carbon emission allowance to users to move towards a sustainable environment.
ETH Waterloo
Waterloo, Ontario
Developed a blockchain application for doctors and pharmacists to perform trustless transactions and prevent overdosage in patients.
Hack The North
Waterloo, Ontario
Developed a virtual reality application allowing users to see themselves in third person.
Hack The 6ix
Toronto, Ontario
Developed an open platform for people shipping items to same place to combine shipping costs and save money.
Stupid Hack Toronto
Toronto, Ontario
Developed a chrome extension which tracks which facebook profiles you have visited and immediately texts your girlfriend if you visited another girls page.
Global AI Hackathon - Toronto
Toronto, Ontario
Developed a python library which can be imported to any python game and change difficulty of the game based on real time emotion of player. Uses OpenCV and webcam for facial recognition, and a custom Machine Learning Model trained on a Kaggle Emotion Dataset using Tensorflow and Keras. This project recieved 1st place prize at the Global AI Hackathon - Toronto and was also invited to demo at NextAI Canada.
McGill AI for Social Innovation Hackathon
Montreal, Quebec
Developed realtime facial microexpression analyzer using AI
Open Source Circular Economy Days Hackathon
Toronto, Ontario
Developed a custom admin interface for food waste startup <a href='http://genecis.co/'>Genecis</a> to manage their data and provide analytics.
Make School's Student App Competition 2017
International
Improved PocketDoc and submitted to online competition
HackMining
Toronto, Ontario
Developed neural network to optimize a mining process
Waterloo Equithon
Waterloo, Ontario
Developed Pocketdoc, an app in which you take a picture of a physical wound, and the app returns common solutions or cures to the injuries or diseases.
SpaceApps Waterloo
Waterloo, Ontario
Developed Earthwatch, a web application which allows users in a plane to virtually see important points of interest about the world below them. They can even choose to fly away from their route and then fly back if they choose. Special thanks to CesiumJS for providing open source world and plane models.
MHacks 9
Ann Arbor, Michigan
Developed Super Graphic Air Traffic, a VR website made to introduce people to the world of air traffic controlling. This project was built completely using THREE.js as well as a node backend server.
StartHacks I
Waterloo, Ontario
Developed at StartHacks 2017, Recipic is a mobile app which allows you to take pictures of ingredients around your house, and it will recognize those ingredients using ClarifAI image recognition API and return possible recipes to make. Recipic recieved 1st place at the hackathon for best pitch and hack.
QHacks II
Kingston, Ontario
Developed a mobile game which enables city-wide manhunt with random lobbies
Terrible Hacks V
Waterloo, Ontario
Developed a mock of Windows 11 with interesting notifications and functionality
Portal Hackathon
Kingston, Ontario
Developed an internal widget for uploading assignments using Waterloo's portal app