Early Projects
Before Simplifly, before LockIn, before any of the ventures — there were years of just learning, building random stuff, and figuring out how things work. This is the messy, unglamorous part of my origin story that made everything else possible.
Scratch Era (Ages 9-11, 2020-2021)
It all started at MindChamp — a coding school in Dubai where I enrolled after asking my parents how games were built. They said "coding," and that was that.
I started with Scratch — block coding, drag and drop. It's basically Lego for programming. You snap blocks together and things happen on screen. Sounds simple, but this is where I learned:
- Logic and conditionals — if this, then that
- Loops — repeat forever, repeat until
- Variables — keeping track of scores, positions, states
- Event-driven thinking — when clicked, when key pressed
I built game collections on Scratch. Little platformers, quizzes, animations. Nothing impressive by any standard, but I was 9 and I was hooked. The idea that I could make a computer do what I wanted? That was magic.
The Python Years (Ages 9-12)
From Scratch I moved to Python at MindChamp. Real code. Real syntax. Real errors.
Three years of Python. Three years of:
- Writing functions and breaking them
- Debugging for hours and wanting to quit
- Building small projects that barely worked
- Slowly, slowly getting better
By the end of it, I felt like I was on top of the world. "Like the next Elon Musk" is how I describe it now. I knew Python. I could build things. I was 12 and felt unstoppable.
The Reality Check (Age 12)
Then I discovered there were dozens more languages. Java. JavaScript. TypeScript. And then the frameworks — React, Next.js, Node, Express. The whole web ecosystem that Python alone wouldn't cover.
That confidence spike turned into a reality check real fast. But instead of getting discouraged, I got obsessed.
The 30-Day Sprints
My approach to learning new languages was simple and brutal: YouTube crash courses, 2-3 hours every day after school, 30 days straight. No skipping. No breaks. Just code.
I'd pick a language or framework, find the best free course I could, and grind through it. Then I'd build something with it immediately — not another tutorial, but an actual project.
The Random Builds
This phase was all about volume. I built:
- Agency websites
- Markdown tools
- Photo booths
- Whatever came to mind
"Random shit" is how I describe it honestly. But each project taught me something new about the stack, about deployment, about making things that actually work on the internet.
These projects weren't meant to be startups. They were reps. Like going to the gym — you don't bench press once and call it a career. You do it hundreds of times until it's second nature.
The Transition
The early projects phase ended when I was 13 and joined Buildspace. That's when I built Tipp — my first real product with real users in mind. The shift from "building to learn" to "building to ship" happened there.
But I couldn't have built Tipp without:
- Scratch teaching me logic
- Python teaching me persistence
- The 30-day sprints teaching me speed
- The random builds teaching me deployment
Every "pointless" project was actually a brick in the foundation.
What I'd Tell Someone Starting Now
With AI and coding tools today, you don't need three years of Python classes to get started. But you still need the mindset: build things, break things, keep going. The tools have changed. The process hasn't.