From Engineer to Founder: Lessons from Building 3 Startups

I built my first company while still in university. Since then, I’ve co-founded four startups across different domains — software house, travel tech, govtech, and fintech. Here’s what I learned.

Lesson 1: Ship Before You’re Ready

My first startup, BubuStudio ID, started with a single client project. We didn’t have a website, a portfolio, or even a company name when we signed our first contract. We figured things out as we went.

The pattern repeated with Sejalanin. We launched with a single feature — a financial health score. No retirement simulator, no investment optimizer, no AI assistant. Just one number that told you if your finances were on track. That one feature validated the entire product.

If you’re not slightly embarrassed by your first version, you launched too late.

Lesson 2: Your Day Job Is an Asset, Not a Constraint

I build internal developer platforms at BTPN during the day. At night and on weekends, I build startups. This isn’t a conflict — it’s a superpower.

My platform engineering experience directly informed Sejalanin’s architecture. My bank’s security requirements taught me how to build Islamic Bali’s payment system. The CI/CD pipelines I maintain at work are the same patterns I use to deploy my startups.

The key is choosing problems that benefit from your unique intersection of skills. I don’t build mobile games. I build infrastructure, platforms, and data-heavy applications — domains where my day-job expertise is a competitive advantage.

Lesson 3: Co-founders Are Multipliers

Islamic Bali and SaveHajj are co-founded ventures. Sejalanin is solo-founded. The difference is stark.

With co-founders, you have someone to share the emotional burden. Startups are rollercoasters. On the same day, you can go from “we’re going to change the world” to “this is all going to fail.” A co-founder who’s on the same wavelength makes the lows survivable and the highs meaningful.

With Sejalanin, I made a deliberate choice to go solo. The product vision was very specific, and I wanted full creative control. But the tradeoff is real — every decision, every doubt, every late-night debugging session, you face alone.

Lesson 4: Solve Problems You Understand

SaveHajj was born from a real problem: monitoring Indonesian Hajj pilgrims in Saudi Arabia is incredibly complex. Islamic Bali came from the frustration of finding halal food in Bali as a Muslim traveler. Sejalanin addresses the reality that most Indonesians make financial decisions without understanding the long-term impact.

None of these are “sexy” Silicon Valley ideas. They’re grounded, practical problems I’ve experienced firsthand. That’s the point. The best startup ideas come from personal frustration, not trend-hopping.

Lesson 5: The Best Time to Start Is Now

I hear engineers say “I’ll start a company when I have more experience” or “when I have more savings.” The truth is, those conditions never come.

Start small. Ship a side project. Get one paying customer. Then another. Before you know it, you’re running a business.

The first product I ever sold was a simple hospital queue management system. It took two weeks to build. It wasn’t sophisticated, but it solved a real problem for a real customer. That project funded the next six months of BubuStudio.

What’s Next

I’m currently focused on scaling Sejalanin — growing from an MVP to a sustainable SaaS business. And I’m always exploring new problems at the intersection of AI, finance, and infrastructure.

If you’re an engineer thinking about building something, here’s my advice: start this weekend. Build the smallest thing that solves a real problem. Show it to someone. Iterate. That’s how every company starts.