About
I have been building things for most of my life.
I am Charles. A software engineer and founder. This is the longer story of how a curious kid who modified phones ended up building production systems, a fintech, and now spends most of his time trying to understand what AI can really do.
- 01
The beginning
Before I knew what it was called
I have been building things for most of my life. Before I knew what software engineering was, I was already curious about how technology worked. I messed with websites. I modified 2go. I played with Java. I experimented with apps on Symbian phones. There was no career plan. I was just curious, and I wanted to understand what was happening behind the screen. In secondary school I started learning to code properly, and the more I learned the more I wanted to build. Software stopped feeling like magic. You could take a problem, break it down, think it through, and build something that worked. That idea stayed with me.
- 02
University
Learning by building
I studied Computer Science at university. In my first year I spent a lot of time building systems and applications to practice what I was learning in my courses. If I learned something in class, I wanted to see if I could build it. Some of it was useful. Some was probably completely unnecessary. That was not really the point. I was learning how to think, how to take something abstract and turn it into something real. That became one of the most important ways I learn. I still learn that way today.
- 03
First job
Nugi Technologies
In my second year I got my first professional engineering job at Nugi Technologies. Until then, most of what I built lived in my own world. Now I was working on systems that other people depended on. Backend systems, school portals, government websites, other production software. When your own project breaks, you can fix it whenever you want. When a production system breaks, someone is waiting. A business may be depending on it. That experience changed how I thought about software. Writing code was no longer just about making something work. It was also about responsibility.
- 04
Fintech
Airopay, and a hard lesson
I later joined Airopay and moved deeper into fintech. I was excited about the problems we were trying to solve. But the company eventually closed down after it was unable to raise the funding it needed to continue. That was difficult. It also taught me something I could not have learned from writing more code. A good product is not enough. A talented team is not enough. A real problem is not enough. Building a company needs technology, distribution, capital, timing, operations, and execution to work at the same time. I carried that lesson with me.
- 05
SQIN
Technology, skin, and trust
After Airopay I worked at SQIN, on technology that sat where software, AI, skin, and health meet. It was a different kind of problem from the systems I had worked on before. Technology was being used to help people understand something personal. That made me think more deeply about trust, and about the responsibility that comes with building software that influences the decisions people make.
- 06
Yukawa
When software meets the physical world
Then I joined Yukawa, which exposed me to some of the most interesting technical problems I had worked on. I worked on products that connected software to the physical world. Mobile, AI, machine learning, IoT, cloud, enterprise integrations, commerce, hardware. Real businesses with real operational complexity. I worked on or contributed to SWAN, Nunc, HEMRO and Mahlkönig, Dr. Barbara Sturm, and PowWow Masters. They were very different from each other. Beauty technology. Connected coffee machines. Global enterprise systems. A complete mobile app under a very tight deadline. The common thread was that the software had to work in the real world. That is where engineering gets much more interesting to me. When it connects to hardware. When users depend on it. When the clean diagram you drew at the beginning meets reality. I learned a lot in that period, probably more than I understood at the time.
- 07
Nairobi
The trip that became Myaza
Then I travelled to Kenya. It was my first time leaving Nigeria. In Nairobi I ran into something that had been abstract to me before. I needed to spend money and move through a financial system that did not feel designed for someone like me. I had already worked in fintech. I understood payment systems. But experiencing the problem personally was different. It stopped being just another product problem. I started thinking about the person who needs to pay someone in another country. The person who needs to receive money. The business trying to sell across borders. The person who just wants their money to work wherever they are. That became part of the inspiration behind Myaza, the company I co-founded. It is one of the most important things I have built. But it is one chapter in a much longer journey that started with a kid trying to understand how phones and software worked.
- 08
Now
Building with AI
Today I spend a lot of time building software and companies, and more and more time exploring AI. I use Claude. I build agents. I experiment with multi-agent systems. I use AI to write software, research, think, plan, and build. But I am not interested in repeating whatever the latest AI trend happens to be. I want to understand what actually works. What can AI do for a lawyer? For someone in HR? For a founder? How should engineers work when agents can write a real amount of the code? What happens when AI stops being a chatbot and starts becoming part of the way we work? Those are the questions I am exploring now. I share what I learn because I have always learned by building. The kid who modified phones and experimented with software is still here. I just have better tools now.
A few things I believe.
- Software is a promise you keep in production, not a demo you give in a meeting.
- A good product is not enough. A company needs a lot of things to work at the same time.
- The most interesting engineering usually happens where software meets the real world.
- Trust is the actual product. Everything else is how you earn it.
- I learn by building. That has not changed since I was a kid.
Still here?
That is the story so far. It is still being written.
If you read this far, we probably like the same things. The Build Log is where the rest of it goes. What I am building, what I am learning, what surprised me, and the tools I keep coming back to. One email when there is something worth sending. If any of this was your kind of thing, come along.
I write down what I learn while building.
If you want to follow along as I experiment with AI, build software, and figure out what comes next, The Build Log is the best place to do that.
Occasional notes from the work.
- Practical AI workflows I actually use
- Tools and systems worth your attention
- Lessons from building software and companies
- Things I learned the hard way
One email when there is something worth sharing. From Charles, no one else.
