Hi, I'm Jake.
Board Advisory · Strategic Advisor · Founder & CEO, Orbix
I build things. This is the journal, and whatever is useful in it for other business people.
For about fifteen years I have been building software that other people end up depending on. State governments. Banks. The kind of systems where being wrong is not a bug report, it is somebody's money or somebody's data.
Some of it worked. One platform got bought by a bank. Another one is still quietly running parking and enforcement for local councils, six years after I named it, which is a strange thing to think about. Plenty of the rest broke in ways I probably deserved.
These days I run a compliance company in Kuala Lumpur, which mostly means I spend my time on the gap between what organisations think they are protecting and what they actually are.
I write here about what actually happened. Usually the parts that do not make it into the case study.
- Jul 2026 Memento Homo I have met a number of newly appointed GLC CEOs over the years. One case has stayed with me longer than the rest, and it is not really about that person at all.
- Jul 2026 Why I pay for speed now instead of trading equity for it My first startup landed real customers across Malaysia's coworking scene, drew interest from two other countries, and got close to being acquired. Here's the one thing I'd structure differently if I ran it again.
- Jul 2026 Why I can say yes when a bigger competitor has to say no A well known training institution just quietly stepped back from a service it had run for years. The reason I can pick up work like that, and keep it, comes down to how differently my business is built, not how hard I work.
- Jul 2026 Recovering tens of millions for a state government, spending almost nothing to do it No large budget, and no twenty years of government relationships either. Here is how I went after a state revenue gap worth tens of millions of ringgit a year, and what it taught me about leverage versus capital.
- Jul 2026 Doing the opposite Someone sent me a list of thirty-three things that keep people stuck. My first reaction was smug. Then I read it properly.
- Jun 2026 How we shipped a state payment platform in four months In 2019, with no AI, a team that was too small, and a deadline that made no sense. It replaced paper parking coupons across three councils and now collects around RM800,000 a month.
I am also writing a book, Reflect, 33 reflections from shipping products, leading teams, and gaining perspective.
If you want the longer version of who I am, it is here.