The Journey Thus Far

The First Bet: An App to Help

Back in early 2024, my mission was simple: help small businesses with their marketing. In a country like brunei there are so many people trying to start side businesses, doing freelance work, or starting up an ecommerce store, but because marketing isn't their forte they were struggling to be consistent...

So, I built a mobile app. It had AI-powered content generation, a post scheduler, and an AI chat assistant for ideation, and the features I thought a small business would need to "do" their marketing more efficiently. Leading a team of 2 developers and 1 designer, After months of work, it launched on the App Store and Google Play.

The Whispers of a Pivot

Then came the feedback. I talked to users, friends, and mentors. A consistent theme emerged: the app helped with the how of marketing—how to schedule a post, how to write a caption—but their real, burning pain wasn't the how. It was the what and the why.

"What should I actually be posting this week?"

"Why is my competitor growing faster than me?"

"I'm posting consistently, but is any of this actually working?"

It turns out that these strategic questions were the greatest reason for the lack of clarity in many businessowners

The New Bet: From Tool to AI Strategist

I decided to evolve Mixplate from a simple "AI social media tool" into an "AI Marketing Strategist & Analyst."

The new mission is not just to help you do marketing, but to give you the strategic direction to do the right marketing. The core is a data engine that analyzes your performance against direct competitors and surfaces a single, non-obvious, deeply actionable insight every week. It’s designed to be the AI strategist you can’t afford to hire—telling you exactly where the biggest opportunity is and what to do about it.

It’s a data product, delivered in a simple, beautiful report. Early feedback from the first pilot users has been electrifying.

Why I'm Building This in Public

I've decided to share this journey—the wins and the messy middle—for a few key reasons:

Closing

Life's full of unknowns, maybe what I'm building today will be something completely different tomorrow. But the end goal stays the same: building something to empower founder-led brands everywhere.