Anger
Everyone has at least one inner demon, and it is usually an embellishment of one of the seven deadly sins. My inner demon is wrath, and anger is a helluva drug. The time I screamed "get the fuck out" and have an employee fired Today I want to
The exchange is down, now what?
We will wait till Monday when the engineers are in the office. That is what. If you have been in the game long enough like I have, you will learn that it is impossible to be "always-on". It helps that NuMoney Exchange has been deprecated. Most things can
I asked my staff why he stopped taking initiative
I asked my staff why he stopped taking initiative Once, I asked my staff why he stopped taking the initiative at work. He replied that he learned not to do it because most things get canceled anyway. Then, I brushed it off as a poor attitude, until it happened to
I said no instantly when my friend asked me to build a dropshipping product -- That was when...
It was not interesting to me at all since I assumed: 1. That the entire world is already doing drop-shipping since the barrier of entry is so low 2. The top sellers on Amazon already have dropshipping nailed, and their advantage is further cemented with their SEO prowess and Amazon
How we found the age group of our users without asking for it
This is the story of how we found we found out the ages of our users without asking for the information. The Ops team needs demographics data Aldy, the CMO for LandX, made a request for on demographics data of the users we have in LandX. Seems easy. Because we
You know I am a jerk, right?
I have been using this excuse for the longest time as an excuse to speak my mind without care for the hurt that it might inflict on other parties. Last Friday, I wrote a post titled "Sales and Marketing are from Mars, and Engineers are from Venus [https://nubela.
I do not quit
I cannot remember how many times I have told myself that I will find myself a comfortable job after X stint. I do not quit. The more rejections I suffer, the more fired up I become. When I had my first profitable company stolen from me by a conniving couple
What I learned from NuMoney
> He who doesn't take risks, never drinks champagne An old Russian saying, quoted by Vladimir Putin in his Financial Time's interview on Russian intervention in Syria. And the risks I did take with NuMoney. Two years later today, I no longer have bank accounts with
Sales and marketing are from Mars, and the engineers are from Venus
I almost lost a potential hire today because of a miscommunication between the designer and the business development team during the negotiation process. But what was intriguing about the episode today was that I never had problems in hiring, and leading a team of designers and engineers. And I think
We automated our managers away.
I have not felt the flutter of excitement that I used to feel when I automated something menial away. Today I felt that again when my intern, Mario, demoed the Task Management Platform (TMP). The problem with managers In our growing company, the list of tasks being worked on by
I was in the special forces and ...
This is the line that I will preface my pitches from here on. People over product I was at the gym today, catching my breath in between sets, and I can't help but remembered the times back when I was still a Naval Diver trainee. In a span
The only easy day was yesterday
There is a sense of permanent strength in CEOs as we stride into the office every day, and I never go to work without this facade of strength. However, not every day is a bed of roses. Most days aren't. And when that tank of eternal optimism runs
The bootstrapper's hierarchy of needs
It takes 10 hours a day, seven days a week, and two years of computer time to get good at programming. For a bootstrapper, it is that, and everything else. I didn't choose the startup life, the startup life found me. I was 17, sitting on the cold
I will be happy with $3000 / month
That is a lie I earnestly believed right after I graduated. The goal was to build a product business that will make me $3000 a month, and that will mean I can spend my entire life building my business. And $3000 was the magic number that I believe I needed
I built the first Android Browser with Adblock, hit a million users. Then Google took it down
It is late and I am burning the midnight oil fixing a compatibility issue brought about because the platform that the product (which shall not be named) was based upon changed radically. The story of Javelin Browser Javelin Browser was the first Android Browser built by yours truly which came
Slack is Magical
No, It has nothing to do with Slack being the fastest growing startup. No, it has nothing to do with the fact that Slack went from product launch to IPO in just five years. As a product CEO, I have nothing but good things to say about Slack. Where do
I can see your bikini pictures
We don't have to be friends on Facebook, but I can still see hundreds of pictures of you. You do not have to follow me on Instagram, but I can download your stories and pictures even if you have a private profile. Give me a phone number, and
4867 users read my bullshit last week
Hitesh is an acquaintance that I knew from university who bullshit-ed everyone that he is a partner at a venture capital fund -- of his own companies that never worked out. Don't be Hitesh because he cannot bullshit. If there is one hack you need in life: get
We sold Bitcoins at our condo and people queued up an hour for it
This is a story of a stupid idea. In 2017, my company downsized to just Bach and me after shutting down Kloudsec and we were building SilvrBullet. Because it was only the two of us, we rented a lovely studio condo apartment 5 minutes away from my home. All we
A lesson no one taught me - Don't be a bangla
Being a programmer is both the biggest bane and boon in my entrepreneurial journey. There ought to be more tutorials on how a programmer should run a company. Because this tutorial can be easily written in a single sentence: If you want to be a CEO, don't be
My product died because it got way too many users - here's how:
A few years ago, I worked on a product called Kloudsec [https://giki.wiki/@nubela/Kloudsec]. It is a content distribution network (CDN) not unlike Cloudflare. And it was a great product. Oh, the product is also dead -- because I got way too many users. How do you even
It is better to be feared than to be loved
Right after I graduated, I had a belief that I have to "love" the company that I work at, "love" my manager, and "love" my job. It didn't help that the only company that I have ever worked in was a Swedish
I accomplished nothing today and it is probably ok
Most days at work is straightforward. An email arrives, and it will take me a few minutes to respond. Another minute and a colleague will have a question that involves a spot decision with guidance. Then there are days like today where there isn't an obvious answer to
Fuck correctness: I made my money through porn
I would not be who I am today if I had listened to what people have preached to be the "right thing". When I was 15, my mom caned me for using the computer all day. I would run home right after school so I could play Diablo
How I had my second company stolen. Also, bonus office scandal
This is my story of how I lost ownership of Unifide, my second company. I began my entrepreneurial journey in 2015 with Spawt, a Foursquare for Food. Spawt was my first full-time venture as a naive, fresh graduate. Like every virgin entrepreneur hopelessly hooked to startup porn, I believed with