AlgoArena
We’re building the arena that makes CS learning engaging, and technical recruiting more real.
Meet the Team
Two co-founders building AlgoArena (CEO and CTO), plus the professor who's mentored us from the start.
Eli Young
Co-Founder & CEO
AlgoArena's product compass. Eli sets vision and strategy across product, growth, and partnerships, and keeps our roadmap honest. He still ships code daily, runs applied ML research at Swarthmore with the USDA Agricultural Research Service, and competes at ICPC NA South Division 2 (5th, Mid-Atlantic Regional). He founded Lock In, a cross-platform productivity app backed by a Medici Project grant from the 1517 Fund. When something feels off in the product, he notices. More on his portfolio.
Andy Luu
Co-Founder & CTO
AlgoArena's technical lead. Andy owns engineering and architecture, from real-time matchmaking to AI tooling, and sets the bar for how the codebase grows. Double major in Computer Science and Psychology at Swarthmore, studying abroad in Melbourne with CASA at UniMelb. He builds backends at ContractMatch, is a robotics RA at Haverford, runs deepfake research at Swarthmore, and shipped early product at Prologue. He brings user psychology into every system he designs.
Michael Wehar
Advisor
AlgoArena's strategic advisor. Mike shapes classroom adoption, product direction, and positioning across education. PhD in Computer Science (SUNY Buffalo), MS in Mathematics (Carnegie Mellon). Visiting Assistant Professor at Bryn Mawr, teaching intro computing; previously at Swarthmore College (2019–2025), teaching theory of computation, software engineering, and data structures & algorithms. He has mentored dozens of Tri-Co capstones (AlgoArena included), publishes in theoretical CS, and meets with us weekly. More on his website.
Where we've studied and worked
Schools, research, competitions, and organizations that shaped the team behind AlgoArena.
The problem
CS is taught and evaluated wrong
Technical interview prep is monotonous. CS classrooms can feel passive. Hiring often measures memorization instead of real skill. We kept seeing the same pattern. Low engagement, shallow feedback, and processes that don’t feel like real work or real learning.
A different approach
Make practice feel alive
AlgoArena started with a simple idea. Bring competition, pacing, and feedback loops into learning. Real-time battles. Visible progress. A reason to show up every day. Not just to grind, but to improve.
Education
Turn a lecture hall into an arena
Then we saw what happens when you bring that same energy into a course. Classroom Mode lets educators run live sessions, assign practice, and turn participation into a shared game without losing the rigor.
Recruiting
Measure real work in the AI era
AI changed the rules. The question is less whether people use AI than whether they can think, debug, and ship with it responsibly. We do not believe candidates should be shamed for using AI in the workflow. We believe teams should measure that fluency on purpose. OA Mode evaluates how people iterate and collaborate with AI in a way that is closer to real engineering than a memorized puzzle.
What's next
The future is agentic
Today AlgoArena spans classic competitive practice, live classrooms, AI-aware assessments, and an agentic builder for shipping real projects. One product, different lanes: grind fundamentals in the arena, and teach or hire for the AI-era workflow in the same place. Our goal is still to make learning engaging and evaluation reflect reality.