2025 -
Kive - Generative AI
Head of Engineering. Building the AI brand engine. Making sure hypergrowth doesn't kill us.
Islahul
bio
I help ambitious founders build products and engineering organizations
from early/zero traction to scale. Currently lead engineering and
ship at Kive in Stockholm, Sweden.
A husband and a father of one. Aspiring pastry chef.
timeline
2018 - 2025
Mavenoid - AI Customer Support
Engineer. Joined as the second employee and helped reach product-market fit. Later led a remote cross-functional team focused on customer support automation using AI.
2015 - 2017
Vy Capital - Late stage VC
Analyst Programmer. Built the data analytics platform to analyze public companies and startups, and helped spin off Synaptic.com
2014 - 2015
TinyOwl - Food tech
Engineer. Built TinyOwl Homemade iOS and Android apps.
2013 - 2014
Fynd - Retail tech
Engineer. Built large in-store touchscreen apps aimed at improving product discovery, customer engagement, and sales.
2013
LurnQ.com - Edtech
Engineer. Built an assessment app.
2009 - 2013
IIT Bombay
BTech in Civil Engineering. This is where software engineering and product work started to pull harder than the degree itself.
1998
Stopped playing DOS games and started programming.
1991
Born in Bhilai, India to two computer science teachers.
principles
- Deal with the mess. It's just code.
- Intensity halves at every layer of the hierarchy. If you want more of it, start at the top.
- You haven't found the root cause until you've found the exact line of code.
- There are two ways to force culture change: slowly boil the frog or burn the house down. Both work. Pick one.
- Identify what makes a competitor serious. Safely ignore the rest.
- Most of your users haven't arrived yet. Keeping that in mind makes tough choices easier.
- Default to horizontal scaling. Start with at least two instances.
- Just look at it. Just think about it. Just talk about it.
- Sometimes, you need to thread the needle.
- Raise (salaries) without asking and you'll be able to ask without raising.