From developer to serial entrepreneur: Michael Morris, CEO of Torc

# From Developer to Serial Entrepreneur: Michael Morris, CEO of Torc (Part 1)

*Originally published as a 6-part series on [One Million by One Million](https://www.sramanamitra.com/2022/08/29/from-developer-to-serial-entrepreneur-michael-morris-ceo-of-torc-part-1/).*

Michael has not only transitioned successfully from developer to entrepreneur, but he has also built communities of developers and two-sided marketplaces around them again and again. Torc is his third run at the mission of enabling and empowering developers to build great careers.

---

### Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?

**Michael Morris:**

I’m from a little suburb outside of Boston, Massachusetts—the youngest of seven. We had an incredible family life, and I’m still very close to all my siblings. I had an Irish Catholic education, ending up at Boston College High School where I discovered my passion for computers. My older brother—13 years my senior—was earning a Master’s in Computer Science at UMass Lowell, and I started tinkering with his computers in high school. By graduation in 1993, I knew I wanted to pursue both computers and physics.

In college at Boston College, I majored in Physics for two years before switching to Computer Science, recognizing early that my future lay in software. My brother’s success in Silicon Valley inspired me to keep my technical edge.

---

### Sramana Mitra: What was your first job after college?

**Michael Morris:**

I graduated in 1997 and landed a role at a small Hartford-based consulting firm while living in Boston. I traveled the U.S. coding for clients—one notable project was launching barnesandnoble.com to compete with Amazon. That company grew from 80 to 650 employees in three years and was acquired for over \$1 billion. It was then I realized the real opportunity lay in cracking the “talent game”: finding, aggregating, and scaling great developers.

---

### Sramana Mitra: How did Topcoder begin?

**Michael Morris:**

In late 2001, a small group of us founded Topcoder to build a community where developers could compete, earn reputations, and showcase skills—much like university coding contests. We grew from ten founders to about 10,000 members, and by 2008 had roughly 250,000 developers in our community.

Companies like Sun, Oracle, Microsoft, and Google sponsored our competitions—investing \$100K–\$250K per event—to access fresh talent. Within three years we were generating enough revenue to sustain our team, thanks to sponsorships and project-based competition work.

---

### Sramana Mitra: What happened after Topcoder?

**Michael Morris:**

In 2011 I left to co-found CloudSpokes under Appirio’s umbrella—another community-driven platform in the Salesforce ecosystem. After 18 months, Appirio acquired Topcoder (October 2013) and merged it with CloudSpokes. In 2016, Wipro bought both, and I stayed on through 2020, growing Topcoder to a \$50 million business.

---

### Sramana Mitra: How did Torc come about?

**Michael Morris:**

In 2021, Frank D’Souza (then Cognizant CEO) and I began brainstorming a new model: a cloud-native, community-based platform employing a million developers per year. Frank’s private equity backing let us raise an initial \$5 million seed round (with Asymmetric’s Rob Biederman contributing 25%), so I could focus on building rather than constant fundraising. Torc officially launched in September 2021.

---

### Sramana Mitra: What makes Torc different?

**Michael Morris:**

We’re “Fitbit for developers,” measuring productivity data—coding vs. debugging time, file focus, GitHub history—to help each developer improve their craft. On the enterprise side, clients access vetted, cloud-native talent on a low-friction freelance or contract-to-hire model. Today our community is ~2,600 developers (500 fully vetted), serving NASA, Silicon Valley startups, and more, with \$5 million in first-year revenue.

---

### Sramana Mitra: How do you support developer growth?

**Michael Morris:**

Torc provides:

1. **Learn**: Skill assessments and curated training (partnering with platforms like Udemy/Coursera or building our own simulators)

2. **Earn**: Freelance placements (we take a cut of project fees)

3. **Return**: Mentorship—every placed developer receives a minimum of 4 hours mentoring per week, covering soft skills, DevOps, or technical deep dives

---

### Sramana Mitra: What advice do you have for developers who want to become entrepreneurs?

**Michael Morris:**

Most developers shouldn’t chase the “solo-founder” myth. Understand your strengths—mine shifted from coding to team building. If entrepreneurship calls, find your niche role on a founding team. Torc itself is the path: entrepreneurs of all sizes build their teams on our platform.

---

*End of Part 1.*