EngageKit

Empowering small creators and teams to build quality engagement pipelines on LinkedIn and boost their product/brand outbound.

Founder - CEO

GeekGrind

You failure human, go study at https://app.geekgrind.co

SAYU. STUDIO

I help you make websites that scream "holy sh*t"

- A website is an entrepreneur / builder identity
- Yours could be functional that makes buying a breeze
- Yet with award-winning design that make competitors envy

Some brands are born with vision & style. Starting small and aiming big.

Let me know if you are one of them :D

Chief Growth Officer

Crimson Education

Crimson Rise Program for young students looking to make an impact on the world.

Entrepreneurship Mentor

Stealth Startup

Founder

iVatar

Make your own digital twin and interact with your audience at scale. You can sign up now for early access at ivatar.ai.

For the moment, I'm the sole builder of this project.

Creator

A.S. Watson Group

Just a non-makeup, non-skincare, non-bodycare consumer working for the world's largest health & beauty retailer.

Sustainability Advocate

University Hall HKU

Designing online and offline presence for the oldest hall at HKU.
Our hall has the best website (by Ky Nam): https://uhall.hku.hk/

Solo Webmaster

LEAN Social

LEAN Social is a virtual study & work space that helps GenZ feel less lonely and more motivated to be productive. We offer a study-streaming ecosystem with a practical incentive system that aims to promote self-directed learning. Utilizing machine learning, the platform tracks and convert students’ learning time into tokens, which can be exchanged for gift vouchers (short-term incentives) or educational experiences like placement in a Bootcamps or MOOCs (long term incentives).

Sign up for our beta testing (website) to enjoy these features:
- Live focus room to study with strangers
- Virtual study space with to-do list and chilling backgrounds
- Track concentration & earn rewards with A.I. technology

Co-founder

STEAR - Student Think Tank for Europe-Asia Relations

- Liaise with partners to conduct trainings in research writing & policy briefs
- Keep track of (non)-numeric metrics to measure activities’ impacts & propose improvements
- Lead a quantitative & qualitative study on youth’s perspective on Europe-Asia relations

Deputy Secretary

💃 Daily tech, business, & growth ideas | 🚀 Contrarian - what the crowd does, I do the opposite | 💻 22 y/o building cool products

🙋‍♂️ Yo. I'm a GenZ indie hacker & startup builder. Check out:

- engagekit.io to boost your LinkedIn outbound and organic inbound traffic
- geekgrind.co to ace your next IGCSE and A-level exams with real exam question banks and AI tutors

And 4 more apps to launch in 2025.

Ky-Nam 🧑‍🚀

i tried to get my boys fired today.

sent a text at 9 AM Monday: “Starbucks. Now. Ship or die.”

the weak replied:

“I have a standup.”
 “My boss tracks my mouse.”

they always say no to building something meaningful.

the real ones just sent a location pin.

we took over a corner table. Set up camp for a grind session.

while their colleagues had the weekly standups 

- I shipped a new content hub for EngageKit
- my friend shipped a competitor to Notion
- some guy wrote a linkedin post with nano banana pro
- another dude is building optical lenses for VR headsets

the cafe staff looked at us like we were unemployed.

good.

if you look employable, you’re doing it wrong.

surround yourself with the most hustling and crazy people.

that's how you make it

connect with me for more useful business and tech advice 💪

24 y/o tech founder | 1m view/week | 3x Majors CS, Econ, Politic | 30 startup comp wins | Creator of engagekit.io to help you engage with quality LinkedIn connections & 10x traffic ⬇️

Cloudflare went down yesterday - the CEO Matthew Prince admitted mistake

i'm sorry, Matthew - the fault was mine.

my startup EngageKit also went down, causing frustration for hundreds of users on LinkedIn

then i remember a vibe-security workshop i host at Cloudflare

i said the 200-feature limit on the bot model was weak.

we changed the clickhouse query. pulled from the r0 database.

doubled the features. pure vibes.

the rust code saw the file. it panicked.

5xx errors everywhere. the internet went dark.

on the plus side - we all got a free global penetration test.

if you're not causing a global rollback, you're not shipping hard enough.

test in prod

and see where the weakest in your system lies

and then i woke up - everything is back to work again 

connect with me for more useful business and tech advice 💪

i put my startup EngageKit's funding into Bitcoin 4 weeks ago

yesterday, my lead investor called: "Are you crazy? We’re f*cking down 30%”

i let him finish. then I looked him dead in the eye and whispered:

“we’re playing the long game.”

then i fixed my hair and walked away from the mirror

you see, the investor is me. i’m bootstrapping. i'm my own lead investor

i bought the top at $120k
it’s now trading at $86k

the Fed is hawkish. BlackRock is dumping.

who knows it might be $50k a week from now

most founders would panic. they’d sell. 

not me. I’m doubling down from 5% of my portfolio to 10%

people say founders take the most risk. they’re wrong.

crypto-holding founders take the most risk.

we wake up, check the charts, lose a month of runway before breakfast

and then have to go build a product like nothing happened

if Bitcoin hits $150k, I’m buying a yacht

if it hits zero, I’m pivoting to AI consulting

pray for us

connect with me for more useful business & tech advice 💪

Fractional CFO | Helping Founders Scale Beyond $2M ARR with Strategic Finance & OKRs | Founder @ FounderFirst

I didn’t grow up pitching VCs or building apps.

I grew up in Dimitrovgrad, Bulgaria, where I didn’t speak a word of English and didn’t know anyone in tech.
But I knew how to spot opportunity, adapt quickly, and keep going.

At 17, I taught myself English. At 19, I earned a scholarship to study in the U.S. 
I came with a suitcase, less than $300, no backup plan, and did whatever scrappy thing it took to stay afloat.

Then on April 15, 2015, something clicked.
The startup world found me. And for the first time, I felt like I fit.
The chaos, the creativity, the responsibility - it was mine to carry, mine to shape.

What started as a leap into the unknown became a decade of building behind the scenes.

Since then, I’ve worked with more than 20 early- and growth-stage startups, both VC-backed and bootstrapped, across B2B SaaS, Fintech, and Edtech. 
I’ve helped scale revenue from $500K to $20M, grow teams from 10 to 200, and build finance and ops functions from scratch.
I’ve navigated pivots, layoffs, down rounds, near-bankruptcies, exits, and helped founders get to the other side.

In 2024, I launched FounderFirst to do exactly that: support founders and leadership teams with the structure, clarity, and tools they need to grow sustainably.

What I Do:
- Finance: Fractional CFO support, modeling, forecasting, and investor-ready reporting
- Strategy: OKRs and operating models that don’t die after kickoff
- Coaching: For founders and finance leads navigating the messy middle

When I’m not working with founders, you’ll find me planning my next national park hike or deep in a great book (suggestions always welcome).

Curious what's possible on your scaling journey?

Don't be a stranger. Book an intro call: https://shorturl.at/kjU5J

Mariya Valeva

At 34, she rang the Nasdaq bell, holding her toddler in her arms.
A $1.6B valuation.
Katrina Lake had just taken her company, Stitch Fix, public.

A company she built from her apartment floor, while pregnant. Twice.
She didn’t come from a family of founders.
She didn’t have a network of angels or tech mentors to call.
Her mother was a teacher who immigrated from Japan.
Her father, a transplant doctor who believed deeply in hard work and quiet sacrifice.

She grew up straddling two worlds - Japanese at home, American at school.
Learning early that success didn’t come from confidence, but discipline.

Years later, Katrina found herself in business school, surrounded by future bankers and VCs.
But she had no interest in finance.
She wanted to build something… useful.
The idea started simple:
What if busy women could get clothes picked out for them - based on data, but curated by a human?

She used SurveyMonkey to collect style preferences.
Tracked feedback in spreadsheets.
Packed boxes from her apartment floor.
And mailed them one by one.
This wasn’t a “tech company” in the traditional sense.
No SaaS margins. No app. No virality.
Just a belief that personalization - done right - could scale.

Most investors didn’t get it.
Too operational.
Too slow.
Too… retail.
And maybe, too female.
So she ran lean.
Proved retention.
And let the numbers speak.

By 2017, Stitch Fix was ready.
She took it public, and made history.
The youngest woman to IPO a tech company.
A new kind of founder.
One who didn’t “fit the mold.”
She just built her own.

A second-generation immigrant founder, raised to keep her head down -
who ended up showing the world what leadership can actually look like.
Quiet. Relentless. Human.
And maybe that’s what more of us need to see right now.

She cashed out her 401(k) to sell scrubs.
Ten years later, FIGS went public at $4.6B.

At the time, Trina Spear was “living the dream” on paper: 
• Harvard MBA 
• Wall Street pedigree 
• A high-paying job at Blackstone 
• Everything her Cuban refugee parents worked for

But success that looks good on the outside hits differently on the inside. She wanted meaning, not prestige. Then came the call that changed everything. A mutual friend connected her with Heather Hasson.

She had an idea, simple, but radical:
“What if we made scrubs people actually want to wear?”
Heather had seen her best friend, a nurse practitioner, wear the same boxy, uncomfortable uniform day in and day out.
Cheap fabric. No pockets. No pride.
No one had thought to make scrubs better.
Because no one had thought healthcare workers deserved better.
That single insight lit a fire.
Trina couldn’t stop thinking about it.
Within a few days, she booked a flight to LA.
Met Heather in person.
And said the words that would change both of their lives:
“I’m in.”

They didn’t have funding.
They didn’t have supply chains.
They didn’t even have a product line.
But they had purpose.
So they started small.
Selling scrubs out of the back of a car.
Showing up at hospitals during shift changes.
Swiping credit cards on the sidewalk.
Shipping orders from their own apartments.

Investors didn’t get it.
They said the market was “too niche.”
That doctors didn’t care about style.
That nurses wouldn’t pay for comfort.

They were wrong.
Trina and Heather didn’t just sell scrubs.
They built a community.
They made healthcare workers feel seen, celebrated, and respected.
And they did it profitably, sustainably, and on their own terms.

In 2021, FIGS became the first company led by two female founders to IPO on the NYSE.
$4.6 billion.

If you're building something the world doesn't understand yet..
This is your reminder:
You don't need permission.
You just need one "yes."
Maybe it's yours.

You don’t truly understand a business until you’ve had to clean up the mess.

It’s easy to give advice when you’re not the one dealing with the aftermath.
Easy to sound smart when your strategy lives in slides - not in systems, team dynamics, missed targets, or investor pressure.

But business isn’t built in theory.
It’s built in the uncomfortable.
The tradeoffs.
The reworks.
The silent pivots.
The “we thought this would work” moments.

That’s where real insight comes from - not from watching, but from staying.
From living the consequences of your decisions and iterating through them.

Because until you’ve felt the problem, your solution is just a guess.

*Video credits: simplyougrow insta

One viral thread. $2.4M in ARR.
Sounds like the dream, right?

You post. It hits.
Traffic, users, momentum - all from one channel.
That’s exactly how Copy. ai took off.
No “multi-channel strategy.”
Just one thing done exceptionally well: Twitter.
One thread. $2.4M. Done.

Meanwhile, most founders are still doing content gymnastics across five platforms… and wondering why nothing’s landing.
The difference?
Focus that compounds.

→ Merit Beauty skipped TikTok and podcasts. IG only. $100M+ in sales.
→ Lenny Rachitsky started with one Substack - now brings in $500K+/year and runs a top business podcast. → Glossier? One blog built a $1.8B brand.
→ Physics Wallah? YouTube only. Now $2.8B.

You don’t need to be everywhere. You just need to be undeniable somewhere.
I break it all down in today’s newsletter, check it out here → https://lnkd.in/ej3GB8dc 

🦃 Happy Thanksgiving - enjoy the pie, and the newsletter!

How do you raise $350M, hit a $2B valuation…
and still crash hard?

Remember InVision? The design darling that disappeared.
They had everything:
✔️ A killer brand
✔️ 7M+ users
✔️ A market hungry for collaboration tools
✔️ And yes, $350M in capital and a $2B valuation

So what happened?
They made the same mistake too many founders do after a Series A or B:
They scaled hype instead of substance.

Here’s where it went off the rails:

🚩 They stopped listening to the market.
While Figma doubled down on real-time collaboration and cloud-native speed, InVision clung to its old prototype model and released Studio years too late with bugs, missing features, and poor adoption.

🚩 They over-invested in sales, under-invested in product.
Massive sales teams. Endless marketing pushes.
But behind the curtain? A tool users didn’t love and that teams outgrew.

🚩 Their tech stack couldn’t scale.
Studio and Freehand weren’t just late, they were unstable.
Performance lagged. Collaboration broke. Teams jumped ship.

🚩 They misread their edge.
Instead of doubling down on what made them valuable, they spread themselves thin trying to be everything, while Figma was becoming essential to modern design workflows.

🚩 They burned money chasing growth, not resilience.
Headcount ballooned to 1,200. Revenue fell by 50% in a year.
They sold Freehand in a fire sale to Miro.
They went from market leader… to a cautionary tale.

→ Product-market fit isn’t static.
→ Capital can amplify dysfunction.
→ Growth only works if your foundations are solid.

And guess what?
You might already be heading toward an InVision moment.
It won’t look like a crash, until it does.
Ask yourself:
- Are we evolving, or just expanding?
- Do we actually know our operational weak points?
- Is our product irreplaceable, or just familiar?

taplio

The Battle

Ky-Nam 🧑‍🚀

Mariya Valeva

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance ScoreKy-Nam 🧑‍🚀's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreMariya Valeva's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

The Battle

Ky-Nam 🧑‍🚀

Mariya Valeva

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Ky-Nam 🧑‍🚀's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreMariya Valeva's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreKy-Nam 🧑‍🚀's LinkedIn Performance