Interview: Roger Pincombe

Pincombe was the recipient of the 2009 Individual Inventure Prize for DialPrice, an application born from Yahoo's 24-hour Hack-U competition. He represented Georgia Tech in Hack-U 2007, and won overall against other universities such as Stanford in 2008. He has won recognition from Georgia Tech for his work in Voice-over IP (the technology behind Skype) which includes DialPrice. He has worked for several big-name companies, including Yahoo, Microsoft, and B2B Technologies. He is a third-year undergrad working towards a BS in Computer Science.

What first got you interested in programming?

I actually always liked making things, you know, creating things from scratch. For example, I used to make stuff out of LEGOs a lot when I was younger. Programming was really interesting to me though, because it was like making something out of nothing. Back in third or fourth grade, when I was in [my school’s] after school program, there were these old computers that had DOS and BASIC on them. I figured out how to mess around with those languages from just the help files on the computers, and started making little things like Mad Libs, simple little games on those computers, and it just kind of grew from there. I just really enjoyed making things.

Do you remember what kind of computers they were?

They were old PCs of some sort, they didn't even have Windows on them. I don't remember exactly what kind of PC they were, but they had all these games for preschoolers and elementary schoolers. I don't know [exactly], but I know they were DOS-based.

So you've been programming since the 4th grade?

Well, I've been doing websites since 4th grade and programming since around 3rd grade, somewhere around there... Quite a while; before I was ten years old, I think.

Do you remember what programming language you started with?

I started with BASIC, Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code, and then I went to Visual Basic 5 & 6, and then went to Microsoft Visual Basic .NET, which is basically one of their newer programming languages, and then C#, which is similar to Microsoft Visual Basic .NET in terms of the platforms and also from Microsoft. Those were all the programming languages that I had done. I've also done web development with HTML, Javascript, CSS, stuff like that. I've done a little bit of Java for school, I've done a little bit of C++ for some other stuff, but mostly it's been the .NET languages like C# and Visual Basic .NET.

When you were little, did you have an idea of what you wanted to do with your programming skills?

I'd say that since I'd always been good with computers I'd known I wanted to go into something related to the computer field for work, but it's only been recently that I kind of decided I probably want to do something entrepreneurial. I hope to come up with something like DialPrice that I can turn into a company and make money off of. I also might be interested in working for larger companies like Microsoft, but uh, that's still up in the air; it depends on how the market turns out in that range. So I'm not exactly sure what part of the computing field I want to be interested in. I'm pretty interested in AI right now, but I haven't done anything with it yet that can potentially make money. It really comes down to what I can do to make a living off of. I'm interested in a wide range of possibilities right now.

Why did you choose to go to Georgia Tech?

I applied to MIT and Georgia Tech for my first two schools: my interview with MIT went horribly. I actually ended up insulting the guy by accident, something to do with listening to golf on the radio. We were talking about something like sports on the radio, and I was using an example like, “Who would listen to golf on the radio?” and he was like, “... I listen to golf on the radio.” So, (laugh) I didn't get into MIT, so Georgia Tech it was. Well, Georgia Tech is also a good school, it wasn't like I really wanted to go to MIT and didn't want to go to Georgia Tech. I kind of wanted to go to both because both have their merits. Georgia Tech turned out to be really good, because of the HOPE scholarship. The tuition cost next to nothing compared to MIT's, which would have been a lot of money. I probably wouldn't have been able to pay for it. So, yeah, Georgia Tech was a great school to get into. I was just applying to UGA as a backup when I got my Georgia Tech acceptance in the mail, which was perfect; now I didn't have to apply to another school.

What was your favorite class here?

I've had a bunch of classes, but not all that many computer science classes yet. I've actually only had about 4 or 5 computer science classes so far, because I've been doing my prerequisites and because I've been working and stuff. Probably my favorite computer science class so far has been CS 1050, which is constructing proofs, because there were some interesting algorithms in there. I had a good professor for it, Professor Lipton, who is pretty high up in the College of Computing. He has done a lot of work on different security algorithms, so I learned some pretty interesting stuff in there about encryption and similar fields. It's really interesting; it makes you think about things differently, like how to prove things that work in all case. It wasn't the most exciting class, and it was challenging, but it was interesting, and that's what counts.

What threads are you taking?

I haven't quite settled on my two choices yet. I'm definitely doing Information Internetworks, and I'm either doing AI or People. Now, Information Internetworks and AI would be one option because there's so much information out there on the internet right now. You need intelligent ways to process all of that to do stuff with it. People don't want to have to go through sorting all that information, you need computers that can manage all that intelligently for them. Information Internetworks and People would be another option because there's a lot of information out there that you need to display in a way that makes it easier for different people to access, use and do intelligent things with. So I'm still kind of torn between those two options. I guess it'll all depend on which introductory course to those threads I enjoy more.

How have you utilized the resources at Tech to help you with your projects and ideas?

One thing I really love about Tech is that they have a lot of resources for getting in touch with companies and the industry. Especially through the ACM, (the Association for Computing Machinery, an organization that I am vice president of now). They have a lot of opportunities for getting in touch with local and international companies. I participated in the Hack-U Yahoo programming competition through the ACM last Spring, March of 2008, and that was really my big break. I got first place on that with DialPrice, and that helped me get in contact with a lot of people in the industry with Yahoo and other companies. It helped me get a summer internship with Yahoo and another one this past Spring, and it definitely helped me in getting an internship with Microsoft this summer. So the College of Computing and the ACM in general have been really great for getting in touch with the industry, and I think [the ability to make] all those connections is one of the best resources Georgia Tech has.

When did you get involved with ACM?

I first heard about it last Spring through the Yahoo competition, and I joined it then. You didn't actually have to join it for the Yahoo competition, but I thought it was really interesting, so I joined it [anyway]. At the end of last spring, I got elected to be membership chair, which is basically in charge of trying to recruit more members and help members stay interested. So I've been doing that basically throughout last Fall 2008. Then this Spring 2009 I got elected to Vice President External, which means I'm in charge of contacting companies and corporations, getting outside organizations and companies to get involved with ACM, do Tech Talks, which are informational sessions, or do recruiting and office visits, stuff like that.

Wow, that sounds like a lot of responsibility.

It is, but it's also interesting, and it's pretty good for me too. Not only do I get to help out the ACM, I also get the chance to get in contact with all these companies, and that definitely helps me out with my career. It's a lot of who you know, and this helps me get in touch with a lot of people. I think it's all been very worthwhile, both for the ACM and me in general.

How have your peers at Tech influenced you over the years?

There are a lot of different people at Tech, especially in the College of Computing. I mean, there are the people who just go to classes because they have to, and they don't really find the stuff interesting, just as a means to an end. Then there are the people who genuinely find it very interesting and really want to learn more and go forward with it. I think it's probably those people, the people that really want to do stuff with what they're learning, that helped me get motivated... If someone else is doing something really interesting, I'll either want to join them and help them out with it, or if I don't like the way they're going about it, I might want to start trying to do it myself, whether it's a programming idea, a club idea, or something of that sort. There's a lot of innovation here at Tech; it's all very stimulating and helps me get ideas for my own stuff.

What would you say you've learned at Tech that has helped you out the most?

Well, honestly I haven't been in enough computer science classes yet to really get in much new information. A lot of the stuff I know I've taught myself through books or websites or tutorials or whatnot. I'd say it's kind of the breadth of stuff we've touched upon that's helped. There's been some security, some encryption, some peer-to-peer networking stuff, a whole bunch of different topics, and it's expanded what I want to look into. There were aspects of computing I'd never really looked into before that I now have some insight into, and that could help me with programming I do in more familiar areas, or it might [spark] a new idea in a new area. As far as specifics, I'd say the one thing I've really been interested in that I had never considered before I came to Tech is encryption. I'd never been interested in security before, but now that I've tried that it's an area I really want to learn more about.

Tell me more about your personal projects.

The problem with my personal projects is that I start a lot of ideas and I finish very few of them. Over the past couple of years I was doing a web application that allowed people to buy, sell, and trade college textbooks person-to-person. There are some solutions that do that now, but my idea had a different twist to it that I think could have really helped it in the industry. I was working with a friend on that, but then they kind of bailed out and I didn't continue doing it myself. Then there's DialPrice, which is the most recent idea I've actually brought to completion. I've also had some hardware ideas that I'm kind of working on still. I had this idea for something like a computer OS—not an actual operating system, but maybe another layer of operating system—that makes the interface really easy and simple to use. It does away with all these extra settings, and third party applications and stuff, [to make it easier for] people, like our grandparents, who may not really want to use computers, but need to do basic tasks...

Where did you get the idea for DialPrice? What inspired it?

It was for a Yahoo Competition last spring, Hack-U. I [spent a log time] sitting around trying to figure out what I wanted to do for this competition. What could I do that would be innovative and cool and impress the judges, and maybe even be useful? Basically I'd been doing work with Voice-over IP at the time. I had a Voice-over IP server I was running just to do some calling applications and whatnot, and I was also a member of an online forum called SlickDeals.net, [which] is a forum for people who find good deals online... They post these finds on the forum, and people will talk about it, give it a thumbs up if they think it's a good deal and vice versa. So I was thinking, how can I combine the two? [With SlickDeals], I’d go to stores like Best Buy to check out any clearances, pull out my smartphone, browse all the threads, and read up on what it says I should be looking at at Best Buy. I figured, there's got to be an easier way to do that for people who don't have smartphones. So, why not just make a phone number people call to get that information? The problem is, if you call a phone number, how do you look up an item? You can try saying the name of the item, but then you'd have to set up speech recognition, then find that exact item on a web search, and sometimes it's pretty hard to pinpoint what you're looking for. Then there are UPC codes as a barcode, which is just a twelve-digit number, and since phones have keypads, it made a lot of sense to type in that number. So I found some Voice-over IP software that could recognize numbers that were pressed on a phone (called DTMF, Dual Tone Multi-Frequency tones), and it kind of went from there. It was something I thought was useful, something I thought was interesting, and something that I could actually do, so it seemed like a natural choice.

Is there someone in the programming industry that you look up to?

As far as someone like a mentor or someone I really want to be like, not particularly, but as far as “I want to be him someday,” it might sound kind of cliché, but Bill Gates. He made something out of relatively nothing, he got into a relatively new industry, changed the rules a bit with his ideas, and made a whole lot of money off of them. Regardless of the money, though, I think that it would be cool if you could find a budding technology that's just on the fringes of being mainstream and take it that last step into being mainstream. I think that's where real innovation can be found: finding something that only Techies and [enthusiasts] can use, and then making it easy to use and ubiquitous enough that the general public can use it. He made a new technology mainstream, and I think that was really great on his part, and that's something I really want to strive to do myself.

Do you have any plans for DialPrice in the future?

The point of the Inventure prize is to help people with innovative ideas actually bring their ideas to market and create a company out of it. I do have an LLC I registered, BeTechie LLC, that will help me move forward with DialPrice. I actually had some ideas on how to turn it into a profitable idea, something like partnering with mobile carriers like AT&T or Sprint or Verizon. As far as actually moving forward with turning BeTechie into a company, I'm going to see how much free time I have while I'm working at Microsoft, and I might have to wait until the fall. I'm really hoping that it works out, that I move forward with the patent through the Inventure Prize, and turn it and BeTechie into something... I don't intend for BeTechie to be this huge, million-dollar company, I think that's a little far-fetched, but I do hope DialPrice can become something where I can say, “Hey, I made that, a lot of people use it,” and make some money off of it as well. Hopefully I can build up to a point where there are enough users and enough recognition that I can sell the application to someone like Google or some other company: that's probably the best way to make a lot of money off of it, actually. My near-term goal would be to build it up and then sell it to someone who can incorporate it into a larger business scheme.

What are you plans after you graduate?

That's still kind of a toss-up at this point. I've been working with Yahoo, and I will be working with Microsoft, but I'm not sure at this point if I really want to work for a big company like that, or if I want to try and come up with something entrepreneurial on my own, start my own company, and focus on that full-time. It seems to be the general trend that, unless they come up with some great million-dollar idea while they're in college, people go to work with Microsoft or Yahoo or something, at least for a few years, get some actual industry experience, and, if they do come up with an idea while working there, they break off to do something on their own then. That's probably what I'm planning for at this point: seeing what I can do, while getting experience at somewhere like Microsoft at the same time. If I do come up with something that I think is game-changing, that I can do something really important or really special with, then I'll probably try and go my own way. But it really depends on if and when I come up with that great idea. I'm not going to give up Microsoft for a mediocre idea; I have to come up with something that I think is really great before I'll take that risk.

Do you have any advice for freshmen coming in?

Instead of just going to classes to just learning stuff you have to learn, you need to really be passionate about what you're doing. You need to be interested in it, interested to the point where, if you see something that makes you think, “Oh, that's kind of cool,” you'll not only try to use it, but go and figure out how it's done, and maybe build it yourself. The more you try to do that—figuring out how things work and doing things yourself—the more experience you're going to get outside the classroom. Not only that, but it's also good to try and work with companies or work with organizations on campus so you have some good experience. Get an internship at a company (even if it's not your dream company), get a part-time job, or work with an organization like ACM, because that really helps your resume. So definitely try to get experience outside of the classroom.

You can learn more about Roger Pincombe at his website at www.rogerpincombe.com.

More information about his application DialPrice can be found at www.dialprice.com.

Terminology

Inventure Prize
Annual event supporting the enterpreneurship of creative ideas. One individual and one group out of numerous entrants are recognized and given a free patent license through the GTRI, support for individual company registration, and a hefty check. Hosted by GaTech every fall.

Yahoo Hack Week
Annual week-long event comprising of hosted talks, hacking lessons, workshops, ending in a Universal Hack Day competition. The competition, known as Hack-U, challenges participants to design and implement a working prototype for a hack within 24 hours. The participant with the most useful hack represents the shool against other universities later that year at Yahoo HQ. Hosted by Yahoo.

Voice-over IP
Any number of technologies utilising the Internet or other IP networks for transmission of voice communication. Because data transmitted over the internet is billed per megabyte, rather than by time, calls are considerably cheaper. Integral part of Skype.

DTMF (Dual Tone Multi Frequency)
Uses the distinct combination of two frequencies per number, which is determined by a matrix of low and high frequencies on the keypad. The distinct frequency signature of each number helps transmit information.

LLC (Limited Liability Company)
A relatively new company structure that grants its members limited liability, flexibility in tax treatment, and flexibility in membership. Ideal for an individual owner.