If asked during his freshman year, Sriram Hariharan never would have guessed he would create his first million-dollar acquisition before graduation.
Beginning his freshman year summer, Hariharan didn’t hear back from any internships while his friends got their offers. Instead of becoming unmotivated, he took matters into his own hands.
“Initially, I was feeling gutted. What am I gonna do over the summer?” Hariharan, a 2021 computer science graduate, said. “Then I realized very quickly that I could still learn while I was at home. At the time, I didn't know how to do web development at all. I watched a couple of YouTube videos, explaining how to start off with basic HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.”
After teaching himself these new skills, Hariharan wanted to apply what he learned to a project and figured out a perfect problem to solve: class registration.
“That last five-minute period during registration where it's just a mad dash for your classes is already so confusing,” Hariharan said. “So I decided, I'm going to make a Chrome extension.”
In under a month over the summer, Hariharan created UT Registration Plus, a Chrome extension that simplifies registration and class planning for all University students.
For each course in the UT’s course schedule catalog, students can find valuable information such as eCIS evaluations, past syllabi, and grade distributions. Students can also create potential schedules, and then be able to see which classes conflict with one another.
The UT Registration Plus Chrome extension simplifies course registration and planning for UT students.
In its first semester of use, fall of 2018, it already started to pick up speed.
“That first semester, we got 1500 users,” Hariharan said. “That was just me sending it to my friends, the Facebook page, and them sending it to their friends. I was super stoked to see it getting actual users.”
From posting on UT meme accounts to going up to strangers in the library, Hariharan took marketing into his own hands. The extension continued to grow, and now, over 60,000 students use it every registration season.
“Everyone started sending it to each other, and using it,” Hariharan said. “Eventually, it got to the point where, if you're not using it, you're at a disadvantage. Everyone else can find the classes better than you. They're able to register faster than you. So you have to have it.”
Hariharan maintained and optimized the extension until he graduated in 2021.
“A lot of the things I learned from taking data structures and taking upper-level classes, it made me realize I need to think about how to optimize this and use time and complexity in a real-world setting because my initial naive approach was very brute force,” Hariharan said. “People were complaining, ‘Dang, this thing is slow. Why is it laggy?’. It gave me an opportunity to really apply the things that I learned in class.”
This past fall, UT Registration Plus got an upgrade with a new team of students. The update includes new features such as alternate schedules, updated grade distributions, and faster course search.
Government senior Isaiah Rodriguez reached out to Hariharan last year about making some changes to the extension.
“When I was a freshman, I was looking at the extension and I knew I wanted to improve on it,” Rodriguez said. “I ended up reaching out and asked if I could redesign the entire extension.”
After, Rodriguez found a group of students to help him make these upgrades come to life.
“We weren't even a fully established org yet,” CS junior Derek Chen said. “We were meeting on Discord or renting a room in a PCL to just chill, code, and talk about our projects.”
After launching V2 of UT Registration Plus, Rodriguez and his team created Longhorn Developers, a student organization aimed to help students through technology.
“There's many CS orgs at UT. They all do a great job, but I think there hasn't been an org specifically dedicated to helping students make a positive impact at UT,” Hariharan said. “Sometimes you want to make solutions for problems that you have now, not just for your later career.”
On a day-to-day basis, Longhorn Developers maintain and optimize the extension and brainstorm new products, using industry-standard practices.
“We actually brought on around 30 people for our first cohort in the org,” Longhorn Developers senior software engineer Chen said. “The whole goal of it is because we are going to graduate, people need to pick up the project and continue maintaining it. It's also a good opportunity, especially for incoming freshmen and people who need side projects to put on their resume.”
Rodriguez, who is the Longhorn Developers president, has always had a deep interest in both politics and technology. As a government major, he is currently pursuing the Programming and Computation Certificate offered by UT Computer Science to stay connected with his passion for programming.
“The certificate definitely helped me to stay engaged with programming and developing,” Rodriguez said. “ It is definitely what enabled me to continue my passion in technology. If I didn't pursue that certificate, I wouldn't be in this position right now.”
As UT Registration has grown, Hariharan finds mentoring and guiding current students very rewarding.
“It's been inspiring for me to see the next generation take up the torch,” Hariharan said. “I have grown to love to mentor the group as somebody started off the project. I feel really proud to see the work that all the officers, developers, and all the members have done.”
Before Hariharan graduated in the summer of 2021, he took the skills he learned from UT Registration Plus and co-created another Chrome extension, InStok.
The extension to check inventory, compare prices, and set in-stock notifications in stores near users for any shopping needs. After massive success due to the release of the PS5 and Xbox Series X in 2020, Ibotta acquired the extension for millions of dollars. Besides teaching him the skills he needed for his later successes, UT Registration Plus taught him life lessons he cherishes now.
“It has given me a lot of resilience and the realization that just because you have initial setbacks, it doesn't mean that you should write yourself off,” Hariharan said. “I didn't get an internship. It wasn't the end of the world. My life wasn't over, even though it felt like that at the moment.”
Now, Hariharan’s younger sister attends UT. Whenever he returns to visit, he always gets a smile from seeing his mark on campus.
“When I'm walking on campus, I can catch a glimpse of someone's computer screen, and I always see that orange square in the corner of their browser,” Hariharan said. “You don't know how much happiness that gives me just to see that, because it's my legacy in a way. I started this spark, and to see students still maintain it, work on it, and use it. It's such an amazing thing.”