Currently taking on one new problem · 2026

I turn paperwork
into software.

The best software ideas rarely start with brilliant ideas. They start with ordinary frustrations, paperwork, manual workflows, things everyone has quietly accepted. That's what I look for.

Ideas explored
12+
Products launched
6
Conversations with operators
100s
Still building
Daily

Philosophy

Every business has friction. My job is to find it and remove it.

Paperwork that should be a form. A spreadsheet pretending to be a system. A team copy-pasting between tabs. A founder approving the same thing twice a day. Friction looks ordinary until you count what it costs.

I sit with operators, watch the work, and build the smallest piece of software that quietly changes the shape of the day, fewer steps, fewer mistakes, more leverage. The best system is the one no one talks about because it just works.

Of everything I've shipped, the most boring one made the most money. I stopped chasing brilliant ideas after that.

"Most businesses don't need more software. They need the right software, stripped of everything that doesn't matter."
: Operating principle

Selected work

Case studies, not portfolio cards.

Each of these started with a real problem in a real business. Here's the friction, what got built, what changed and what it taught me.

  • 01 · Infrastructure · Fintech

    My Crypto Server

    Duration
    6 weeks
    Stack
    Node.jsTypeScriptPostgreSQLRedisDocker

    Problem

    Traders juggled exchange APIs, wallets, and bots across half a dozen tools, keys leaked, scripts crashed unmonitored.

    Solution

    A self-hosted control plane that unifies exchanges, wallets, and automated strategies behind one secure dashboard with full audit trails.

    Outcome

    Replaced 4 separate tools, cut deploy time from hours to minutes.

    Lesson

    Power users don't want a prettier UI. They want one trustworthy place where nothing silently fails.

  • 02 · Consumer · Hospitality

    PlayItPrivate beta

    Duration
    3 weeks
    Stack
    FlutterNext.jsSupabase

    Problem

    Bar guests shout song requests at the DJ. Venues lose tips, repeat the same tracks, and have no idea what their crowd actually wants.

    Solution

    A mobile-first jukebox: guests browse, request, and tip in seconds while DJs see a live, moderated queue with crowd analytics.

    Outcome

    Pilots saw +28% tips per night and zero shouted requests.

    Lesson

    Customers didn't care about playlists. They cared about getting their song played faster.

  • 03 · Mobility · Public data

    BusRadar Tanzania

    Duration
    10 weeks
    Stack
    Next.jsMapboxNode.jsPostgreSQL/PostGISMQTT

    Problem

    Long-distance bus travel in Tanzania is a black box. Passengers have no honest way to know where a bus actually is, and there's no shared picture of fleet movement across Dar, Arusha, Dodoma and the corridors between them.

    Solution

    A public web platform that aggregates real-time GPS from long-distance buses onto one live map, with route history, per-plate tracking, and an operator dashboard built on top of the same data.

    Outcome

    500+ buses on the map, tracked continuously across the country's main corridors.

    Lesson

    Public visibility changes behavior faster than any dashboard sold to operators. Ship the map first, the fleet tools second.

  • 04 · IoT · Mobility

    GariWatch

    Duration
    10 weeks
    Stack
    FlutterNode.jsMQTTTimescaleDB

    Problem

    Vehicle owners and fleet managers had no honest picture of where their cars were, who drove them, or why fuel kept disappearing.

    Solution

    A telematics platform that pairs low-cost GPS hardware with a clean web and mobile app. Trips, geofences, alerts, and driver scores.

    Outcome

    Fleet pilots reported 15–20% fuel savings within 60 days.

    Lesson

    Hardware reliability is the product. No dashboard saves a device that misses 3% of pings.

  • 05 · SaaS · SMB Ops

    CleanTracker

    Duration
    3 weeks (v1)
    Stack
    Next.jsSupabaseM-Pesa

    Problem

    Tanzanian dry cleaners run on paper receipts: lost tickets, forgotten pickups, no picture of daily income, and no way to know which items are still in the shop.

    Solution

    A mobile-first web app that replaces the receipt book: quick order entry, pricing, pickup status, and a daily revenue view a shop owner can actually read at a glance.

    Outcome

    Pilot shops moved off paper in the first week and could see today's income at a glance.

    Lesson

    For small operators, the win isn't features: it's replacing one specific piece of paper with something faster to use than the paper was.

  • 06 · LegalTech · Family

    WosiaPrivate beta

    Duration
    6 weeks (v1)
    Stack
    Next.jsTypeScriptPostgresAuth.js

    Problem

    Most families in Tanzania have no valid will. When someone passes, relatives are left with court battles, frozen accounts, and years of uncertainty over who inherits what.

    Solution

    A guided platform that walks anyone through creating a legally valid will in minutes, aligned with Tanzanian inheritance law, reviewed by licensed lawyers, and stored securely for the family.

    Outcome

    First cohort of families protected in under an hour each: no lawyer office visit required.

    Lesson

    People don't avoid wills because they're complicated. They avoid them because every existing option feels intimidating. Warmth is a feature.

The Problem Notebook

Notes from the field.

Before there's a product, there's a problem worth noticing. These are unedited entries from the notebook I carry into every business I visit.

Dry cleaner

Dar es Salaam

Solved
"They were still handwriting receipts on carbon paper. Customers lost them constantly, and with them, the clothes."

Built a digital receipt + ticket-tracking system. One QR per garment.

Bar owner

Mikocheni

Solved
"The DJ was taking song requests over WhatsApp while trying to perform. Tips got lost in the noise."

Built PlayIt: a tip-aware request queue guests open on their phone.

Car owners

Dar es Salaam

Solved
"People were discovering parking fines and traffic violations months later, after the penalty had tripled."

Built GariWatch: tracking, alerts, and a quiet daily summary.

Land registry

Regional office

Building
"Citizens were waiting weeks for a copy of a title that physically sat in a cabinet twelve metres away."

Building ClearVault: a digitization pipeline staff can actually use.

Parking lot

Downtown

Building
"Daily parking was tracked on a whiteboard. Monthly billing reconciled photos of the whiteboard against an Excel file."

Prototyping a phone-first check-in flow with end-of-month auto-billing.

Small clinic

Suburb

Exploring
"Patient files lived in a shoebox. The doctor remembered the regulars. Everyone else fell through."

Sketching the smallest possible patient record: barely an app.

Process

How a problem becomes software.

Same shape every time: what changes is how much listening happens at the start.

  1. 01

    Discover

    Sit with the people doing the work. Watch where time leaks.

  2. 02

    Understand

    Map the workflow honestly: not the org chart version.

  3. 03

    Prototype

    Ship the smallest thing that proves the idea is real.

  4. 04

    Build

    Engineer for reliability, security, and a quiet operations life.

  5. 05

    Iterate

    Measure what changed. Remove what didn't earn its weight.

Capabilities

What I build, in business language.

The stack matters less than what it enables. Here's the shape of the work.

Internal Business Systems

Tools your team actually opens, built around the work.

AI Solutions

Practical models that take real tasks off real desks.

SaaS Platforms

Multi-tenant products designed to grow without rewriting.

Mobile Apps

iOS & Android experiences that feel native, not ported.

Automation

The boring 80%: automated, audited, out of your inbox.

Dashboards

Numbers you'd actually act on, not vanity charts.

Inventory Systems

Real-time stock, locations, and movement: no spreadsheets.

Customer Portals

Self-serve experiences that reduce support load by half.

Payment Integrations

Mobile money, bank rails, card processors: connected cleanly.

Journey

A builder's timeline, not a résumé.

The throughline isn't job titles. It's the slow accumulation of taste for which problems are worth solving.

  1. 2018

    First line of production code

    Shipped my first paying-customer feature. Discovered the difference between code that works and code that earns trust.

  2. 2020

    First startup, first hard lesson

    Co-founded a product. Learned that distribution is a feature and clarity is a strategy.

  3. 2021

    CTO

    Took technical lead at an early-stage company. Built the team, the stack, and the bar.

  4. 2022

    First AI system in production

    Moved from notebooks to real users. Discovered that 90% of AI is data, plumbing, and patience.

  5. 2023

    Multiple products, in parallel

    Started running concurrent bets. Mobile, web, on-prem, cloud: same operating principles, different surfaces.

  6. 2024

    Operator's mindset

    Spent more time in warehouses, clinics, and back offices than at a desk. The best specs are observed, not written.

  7. 2026

    Today

    Quietly building a small portfolio of useful software. Still keeping the problem notebook.

Building right now

Not polished. Just honest.

A live look at the workbench. Some of these will become products, some will become posts, a few will quietly die. That's the deal.

  • WhatsApp Finance Assistant

    Testing

    A bookkeeper that lives inside the chat app small businesses already use. Send a receipt photo, get a clean line item.

  • Crypto Infrastructure

    Live

    The self-hosted control plane behind My Crypto Server: running in production with a small group of operators.

  • Tender Discovery

    Researching

    Scraping and structuring public tender notices so SMEs stop missing the ones they could actually win.

  • Chrome Extension for Invoices

    Paused

    One-click extraction of supplier invoices from email into a clean ledger. Shelved until the OCR layer matures.

  • Restaurant Floor Tablet

    Researching

    A waiter-grade ordering tablet that respects how kitchens actually work. Mostly napkin sketches.

  • ClearVault Records

    Live

    Digitization pipeline for institutions still living in filing cabinets. First customer onboarded.

Industries I'm interested in

If your business looks like one of these, we should talk.

I don't specialise in a tech stack: I specialise in noticing the friction inside ordinary businesses. These are the ones I keep being drawn back to.

  • Manufacturing

    Production logs, machine uptime, shift handover.

  • Agriculture

    Yield tracking, input procurement, cold-chain visibility.

  • Healthcare

    Patient records, inventory, appointment flow.

  • Restaurants

    Orders, kitchen ops, supplier reconciliation.

  • Retail

    Stock counts, multi-location pricing, returns.

  • Logistics

    Dispatch, proof of delivery, route history.

  • Education

    Enrolment, fees, attendance, parent comms.

  • Construction

    Site progress, material deliveries, payroll.

  • Financial Services

    KYC, reconciliation, internal approval flows.

About

Curious by default. Builder by habit.

Malick

I'm a software engineer, entrepreneur, and product builder. Most of my work lives at the seam between a business problem and a working interface: the part most people skip past on the way to writing code.

I've been a CTO, a co-founder, a solo builder, and an operator. The thread through all of it is the same: notice the friction, ask why it exists, build the thing that makes it disappear, then hold the bar high enough that the result feels inevitable.

When I'm not shipping, I'm usually in a notebook somewhere writing down a problem I just noticed , which is, in the end, the same job.

Based in
East Africa
Working
Globally · remote
Focus
SaaS · AI · Ops
Roles held
CTO · Founder
Currently
Independent
Open to
Hard problems

Contact

Have a business that's held together by spreadsheets? Let's fix that.

Tell me about the most frustrating part of your operation: the thing your team has quietly accepted. I'll tell you how I'd build my way out of it. No pitch deck, no agency overhead.

0/2000

Reply within 24 hours · No agency overhead · Direct line to the builder