So that it stops depending on luck.

I was born on the mainland of Penang in 1993. The first computer I remember ran Windows 3.1, and I used it for typing games and Mario.

At nine I found online games, and through them I found programming. I taught myself scripting so that I could write macros and bots for the games I played. I wanted to win, and I did not want winning to depend on luck. That idea has followed me ever since.

At twelve I was first runner-up in the under-12 category of the Penang State Touch Typist Competition, at 133 words a minute. It sounds like a small thing. It made me a faster programmer for the rest of my life.

Learning on real systems

As a teenager I was the webmaster for my guilds and alliances. I built their forums, their membership sites and their blogs. They were real systems with real users, and I learned by keeping them running.

In 2011, as a student at INTI International College Penang, I started freelancing in web development. I soon noticed that most business owners gained very little from the websites they already had. So I added digital marketing, to turn a website into something that brought visitors and sales.

Starting the business

At nineteen, after trying several jobs, I started my own business. The first clients were direct-selling companies that needed commission, referral and membership platforms. As they grew, the software grew with them into the back office: procurement, warehouse, transportation, delivery and finance. That was my education in enterprise systems.

In 2015, while I was a third-year engineering student at Universiti Sains Malaysia, I founded Webist Pro with Dato Eddy Choong. The same year we were awarded the contract to build a cryptocurrency exchange, where security and the custody of funds were the core requirement. In the years that followed I taught corporate classes, built CRM systems that helped businesses keep the customers they had paid to attract, and in 2018 turned a durian plantation into a data-driven operation.

The year it changed

By 2020 we had been delivering projects for eight years, and I could see the weakness in how we did it. Good delivery depended on who happened to be on the project. So I rebuilt the company around one decision: stop selling man-hours, and start selling a standard. How engineers are recruited, trained, measured and managed was written down and made repeatable.

Since 2023 the focus has moved to what those teams build, and to a narrow position on Data + AI: organise the data into a context layer first, connect the models and agents on top, and have a person sign off.

Today

Today I lead Technology Leadership Services. About 390 full-time engineers across Malaysia, China and the Philippines deliver it for enterprises in banking, telecommunications, oil and gas, and aviation.

I am a father of two, and when I am not with clients or my teams I am usually on a golf course.

At nine I wrote code so a game would stop depending on luck. Today I build teams so that enterprise delivery stops depending on luck.

The mission has not changed since that first line of code. I want enterprise IT capability to be something that can be planned, replicated and delivered, until it becomes an asset the company owns.