Introducing NinjaPear Learn more
World's laziest CEO. Before starting the highly-successful Proxycurl and Sapiengraph, Steven founded 5 other startups: Gom VPN, Kloudsec, SilvrBullet, NuMoney, and SharedHere.
When I was younger and naive, I believed that companies should have a flat hierarchy [https://nubela.co/blog/the-chinaman-i-hired-that-sneered-heckled-and-mocked-me/]. I also thought that rules were archaic and are a syndrome of corporate sluggishness. I still agree. I held a one-on-one two weeks ago, and one of the feedback I
In 2011, I left Singapore for Sweden for an overseas exchange and internship programme. And in my short year there, I found Sweden to be a homogeneous and egalitarian society. I came back a proponent of socialism, and I loved the idea of safety nets. As a young intern at
I was reading the comments on this Reddit thread [https://old.reddit.com/r/singapore/comments/es5sab/sporean_tweets_about_people_glorifying_ot_life/] on the culture that pushes Singaporeans to work overtime (OT). The third highest ranked comment [https://old.reddit.com/r/singapore/comments/es5sab/sporean_tweets_about_
It is a funny sight when tech-illiterate CEOs attempt to build tech companies. They thump the beat by appending or prepending buzzwords in their elevator pitch. But any developer worth their salt will be able to catch their bluff. LandX underwent a certain audit for compliance today, but the result
My company is a place of pleasant surprises for great employees. The bad hires relish with equal glee. Right after the first week, the poor hires must count their lucky stars as they get comfortable with our hands-free approach in the company. I enjoyed the same treatment during my first
I have had my heads (and fingers) down writing all day, all night in the past few days. The reason why you have not seen my recent posts is that the words are not legible for the laymen. I have been writing code in wrapping up SharedHere. More on that
Hey, I started a post with a non-clickbait title that sounds more sophisticated than it should. But guess what, I am betting that the usual trolls are not reading this and hating on my clickbait prowess. You prove my point that click baits work. But that is not the point
A senior engineer in the Bay Area makes US$400+k annually. And yes, I think my experience and products would seat me in that tier of engineers. I am effectively giving up a million bucks every two years by running my own show. This is 1M dollars, risk-free. (Takes
First things first, this is not a guide for murder. This post is a guide on how you can stay covert in Singapore. Specifically, a guide to good OPSEC (Operations Security) in Singapore. Having good OPSEC means knowing how to get under the radar of the Singapore authorities, and to
Startup porn dictates that you should just build the product [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21934358], and that blogging is the best form of networking [https://andrewchen.co/professional-blogging/]. Here is the holy truth -- build it, and no one will come; blog it, and no one will read
I was reading Hacker News today and came across a thread to predict future trends. One prediction was the advent of biohacking — bio-hacking beginner kits for everyone. But to "hack," or improve requires measurement. But if a diverse range of test-kits was made into a universal home kit?
This story does not have a good ending. So it's day 0 at work, and I was supposed to have three new staff to onboard. The first one got the starting date wrong so that he will start two weeks later. That is fine. People make mistakes. The
I spent the entire year writing about 2019. On the second last day of the year, I have my eyes set on 2020. So, how will 2020 be different from 2020? A culmination of habits If you are expecting a radical change, there is none. Instead, I am hoping for
Right after I graduated, I contemplated a move to Silicon Valley, and I would if public transport was like Europe's; if the homeless situation was like Singapore, and houses the price of Berlins. The bay area is great for entrepreneurs but not so much for living. But given
I have a serious crush on Nancy Pelosi. No, it is not because she impeached Trump. Because honestly I am impressed at how far Trump has come. But this post is not about Trump. This post is about Nancy Pelosi, and how she has shown me what it is like
Specifically, doing nothing. I finished my tasks for the year last week, so I tried to do nothing over the pre-Christmas weekend. I failed catastrophically. Honest to goodness, I did not know that not doing anything is this hard. It is no wonder Bach says that we Singaporeans are addicted
As a hypochondriac with self-diagnosed ADHD syndrome, I manage my restlessness with videos playing in the background. Having something (useless) in the background that is interesting enough for my brain to make multiple contextual every few seconds helps me to focus on my main task. Then I paused and shifted
Where N is usually three. Given 3, pick 2. This is a classic dilemma of compromise. That neither you nor I can have our cake and eat it at the same time. And I say that as a father that has been leaving work at six every day so I
How do you know someone does CrossFit? He will tell you. Anyways, as I was doing CrossFit today, I thought about how my workouts are manageable now in contrast to how I heaved and felt faint in the first three months of every CrossFit workout. And during the workout, I
Some topics, such as religion and politics, are better kept within the confines of heated in-person arguments. But if you notice, the products I have built over time reek of activism. NuMoney was built because fuck-you banks. Gom VPN was built because fuck-you government firewalls. Insofar that I am starting
A European telco wanted to work with us to bring Sapiengraph to fruition. The CEO found us when the CEO read our post titled "Open-sourcing Sapiengraph CCTV [https://nubela.co/blog/open-sourcing-sapiengraph-cctv/]." I had two thoughts: 1. Wow, this blogging habit is paying dividends 2. It looks like
I do not try to go out of my way to make work fun for my staff. So it makes my day when I receive random messages like these: > sorry, but fuck I'm so excited doing this hats task, i smiled a lot during the sketching phase,
Met a buddy for lunch today, and we have been great pals. So a few weeks ago, when he asked if I could help him expand his business to Indonesia, I said yes readily. I even offered to put some of my resources into helping him. Both monetary and technical
I consider myself a creative. Better yet, I consider entrepreneurship a creative endeavor because, more often or not; breakthroughs occur when a business does something uniquely different from the rest. Staying ahead of the game means consistently staying better not just by executing well, but also executing uniquely consistently. Even
I have written a few posts on giving up. Here, I wrote a story about a friend who found success through perseverance [https://nubela.co/blog/the-story-of-stupidity-and-ubersnap/]. I wrote about giving up too quickly [https://nubela.co/blog/giving-up-too-quickly/]. I wrote about a product cancellation [https://nubela.co/blog/i-canceled-sapiengraph/
