Founder of Gigablast
Matt Wells got a BS in CS and an MS in Mathematics from New Mexico Tech. While a graduate student he developed and implemented a site called The Artists' Den in 1996. It was on Yahoo's What's Cool twice, on Netscape's What's New once and a semi-permanent feature on Infoseek's Reference page.
In October of 1997 he started working on the search team at Infoseek in Sunnyvale, California. He stayed there for three years before moving to New Mexico and writing the Gigablast search engine from scratch in C++.
One of its major features is its cost. He built it from day one to be the cheapest most scalable search engine on the market. It can index BILLIONS of web pages and serve thousands of queries per second at an unbelievably-LOW cost.
Another major feature is its ability to index web pages almost instantly. You can even watch the index size increase in real time by hitting reload on the front page. The network machines give priority to query traffic, but when they're not answering questions they spend their time spidering the web.
A note from Matt:
I started developing Gigablast in August 2000. I wanted my code to be analogous to the Great Pyramids. Something that was built so well that it would stand the test of time. I wrote all of the code in the most efficient manner possible while still leaving room open for future growth. Each piece of the code interlocks with the other pieces very precisely, something I think I was able to pull off because I was the sole architect.
Now Gigablast has grown to several, highly-talented employees who practice the same art of code weaving. Quality, style and efficiency of the code is the top priority. We have many satisfied clients and are always looking to expand this list. Because we are still a small company we are able to offer many things large companies cannot. We can provide you with 24/7 support, with a direct line to a knowledgeable software engineer or myself, so you do not have to deal with an inexperienced customer support representative. We are highly focused and work very fast.