Journal

Fifteen years of building technology, leading teams, and navigating business. A collection of reflections on the journey, the lessons, the trade offs, the philosophy that shaped my thinking, and what I would do differently with the benefit of hindsight.

What we could have tested with a phone number and a spreadsheet RocketValet picked up your car, took it to be serviced, and brought it back. It got real press and made an accelerator shortlist. The whole thing could have been validated in a few weeks, and we spent our best months building instead.
Deciding on things you will never be an expert in A CEO, a board member, and a minister all decide across disciplines they've never mastered. What running training programmes and consultancy projects across legal, cybersecurity, and governance fields taught me about judgment over expertise.
Does a head start actually change the outcome? 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.
My first startup made the papers. It still failed. I found the old listing for RePark this week, the parking app I built in my twenties. Real press, a first crowdfunding round, a co-founder who is still part of my story today. There is a lesson sitting in almost every part of it.
Why I stopped paying with equity My first startup, Campfyre, got close to being acquired before the deal cooled off. What I actually learned from it is that equity buys belief, not execution, and why I pay for speed now instead of trading equity for it.
Why the incumbent walked away from work I could keep 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.
The revenue already sitting inside a state's own data Pahang's tourism sustainability fee has already collected millions, but self-declared data leaves a visibility gap worth far more. What closing that gap taught me about leverage, trust, and building a team around one observation.
Perfectionism is fear with a good haircut Someone sent me a list of thirty-three things that keep people stuck. My first reaction was smug. Then I read it properly.
What we cut to ship 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.