Teenage Indian hacker gets paid by US organization for dropping off college

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ANI Washington
Last Updated : May 19 2013 | 1:30 PM IST

An Indian immigrant is set to become the most accomplished hacker in US as he is being paid for dropping college studies and engaging himself in Silicon Valley's entrepreneurial environment.

Diwank Singh Tomer, 19 has enrolled himself with the Facebook's first investor and the co-founder and former CEO of PayPal, Peter Thiel, who is paying 100,000 dollars to 20 teenagers to launch a business of their own, ABC News reports.

Tomer, who is designing an interactive learning environment with funding from the Thiel Foundation, had dropped out from an Indian University after continuing only for less than a month when the computer science major realized that he can launch a startup to help people learn to code while learning coding basics himself.

Tomer said that he believes that dropping out is an important part of the growing up process, adding that instead of promoting students to ask questions, traditional Indian schools force the students to only appear smart.

The unconventional entrepreneur also said that people learn best when they have access to mentors and the ability to learn in a way that suits them.

The Thiel Foundation mentors the young entrepreneurs during the two year fellowship as they pursue advance studies and practices in everything from robotics to fashion but does not entitle them to join school or get employed during the period without special approval from the foundation.

Stating that the entrepreneurs have exceeded the Foundation's expectations, Thiel said that the company's intention was to help a small number of creative people learn and accomplish more than they might have otherwise.

Not fearing failure, Tomer has developed an algorithm that will respond to the user's actions, where the program will direct the user to take cues fro the ways he interacts with the site is he yearns to learn about a small area of coding, the report added.

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First Published: May 19 2013 | 1:18 PM IST

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