Every month, I sit down to write these updates with one simple question in mind.
What actually moved?
Some months, the answer is a product launch. Other months, it is a hard lesson. September gave me a bit of both. It also gave me a reminder that progress often comes from places you do not expect.
Before I get into the numbers, I want to start with something personal. Something I hinted at in my last update but did not fully explain.
A New Chapter: ICT Manager at a School
In August, I mentioned a long-term commitment that was taking most of my attention. I want to be clear about what that is.
I am now the ICT Manager at a school.
And I am loving the experience.
The school is new and premium. That detail matters more than it might seem. For most of my life, I have lived in the startup world, a place where almost everything is being built for the first time. You set up systems from scratch. You make decisions that will shape how things work for years. You set standards instead of inheriting them.
I expected a school to feel very different from that world. In many ways, it does. But in one important way, it feels familiar.
I still get to work on something new.
Every day, I learn something. Every day, I get to apply what I know in ways I never imagined. Technology in a school is not just infrastructure sitting in a server room. It serves people. Students, teachers, parents, and staff all depend on it, often without thinking about it.
That changes how I think about my work. When a system works well, a teacher gets more time to teach. A student gets a smoother learning experience. A parent gets the information they need without stress. Those are the outcomes that matter.
This role is my main focus, and honestly, it has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my career so far.
So you might be asking: how do the businesses keep moving?
That question brings me to the biggest lesson of this year, which I will come back to shortly. The short answer is teams. The ventures I write about here run on the people behind them, and what I contribute happens in my own time, mostly in the evenings and on weekends.
How Solutions Are Built Has Changed
In September, I spent a lot of time thinking about how technology has evolved. More specifically, how solutions are built.
Not long ago, building a software product required a team of skilled engineers, months of development, and a serious budget. Today, the picture looks very different.
Vibe coders are building solutions that real users are using.
If you have not come across the term, vibe coding is when someone describes what they want in plain language and lets AI tools write most of the code. The builder may not understand every line. They focus on the outcome instead.
Some engineers find this uncomfortable. I understand why. There are real questions about security, maintainability, and quality.
But the trend points to one important truth.
As long as you solve a problem, people do not care about the underlying technology.
A customer does not ask which framework you used. They do not ask whether your database is relational or not. They ask one question: does this make my life easier?
If the answer is yes, they stay. If the answer is no, the most elegant code in the world will not save the product.
This has big implications for the Journey to Profitability. If building is getting faster and cheaper, then building is no longer the bottleneck. The hard parts become finding the right problem, reaching the right customers, earning their trust, and keeping them.
I have also been thinking about how AI could be intentionally integrated into the journey to profitability itself, not just into the products, but into the process of building and growing them.
But that is a story for another day.
Back to the September update.
TSL: 300 Users… Well, Sort Of
In September, To Somewhere Logistics made a massive jump to 300 users.
For a moment, it felt like a breakthrough.
Then came the spoiler.
Almost 250 of those users were bots.
They had to be flushed from the system. And just like that, the big number shrank to something much more modest.
I will be honest. That was not fun to see. But it taught a lesson every founder needs to learn at some point: not every number is a real number.
Bots do not book deliveries. Bots do not pay. Bots do not give feedback. A dashboard full of fake accounts can make you feel successful while telling you nothing about whether your business works. Worse, it can lead you to make decisions based on demand that does not exist.
So cleaning the data was the right call, even if it hurt.
Now for the good news.
The TSL team did not stop there. They went back to work and grew the real user base to 117. That means more than 50 genuine users joined in a single month.
For a young logistics platform, that is meaningful. These are real people choosing to sign up because they have a real need. It is strong validation that TSL is out to solve a real problem.
The next steps are clear:
- Strengthen sign-up checks so bots stay out
- Understand how real users are using the platform
- Turn sign-ups into active, returning users
Growth is good. Real growth is better.
ESL: Doing What It Does Best
In the same month, Eliday Solutions Ltd did what it does best.
It delivered an informational website for a client, courtesy of the team.
On the surface, that might sound routine. A company that builds websites built a website. But for me, this delivery carried a deeper meaning.
I was not the one writing the code. I was not the one chasing every detail. The team owned the project and delivered it.
A year ago, that would not have been possible. Every project depended on me. If I was busy, the work waited.
That is no longer the case, and it is exactly the kind of progress I have been working toward.
Companies Are People
This brings me to the biggest lesson of the year.
I am coming to believe that companies are people.
We often talk about businesses as if they were products, logos, or bank accounts. But strip all of that away, and what remains is a group of people working toward a shared goal.
Successful ventures are successful because of the people involved in them.
TSL grew its real users because a team went out and found them. ESL delivered a website because a team took ownership of it. Neither of those wins came from me working alone late into the night.
That realisation has changed how I think about building.
When I started the twelve-products-in-twelve-months challenge in 2025, my focus was on the products. How fast could I build? How many features could I ship? How many ideas could I test?
Those questions still matter. But they are not the most important ones.
The more important questions are about people:
- Who is the right person to own this?
- What do they need to do their best work?
- What systems will help them succeed without me in the room?
That last question is key. Good people need good systems. Clear processes. Shared tools. Defined responsibilities. Simple ways to measure progress. Without systems, even great people burn out or drift. With systems, ordinary weeks turn into steady progress.
So as we head towards the end of the year, here is where I have landed.
The only way to the bag is through the right people, and building systems along the way.
Mtejaly, NenoPress, and JazaStock
The other three products, Mtejaly, NenoPress, and JazaStock, remain in incubation.
There is no big news to share on them this month, and I am comfortable with that. As I said in August, I will not force activity just to make an update look impressive.
Each of them still needs validation and the right people around it. When those pieces come together, they will get their moment.
What September Taught Me
Looking back, September left me with four lessons:
- New things are everywhere. You do not need to be in a startup to build something new. A new school has given me that same energy.
- Problems matter more than technology. People adopt solutions that make their lives easier, however they were built.
- Clean numbers beat big numbers. 117 real users are worth more than 300 inflated ones.
- People and systems drive growth. The wins this month came from teams, not from one person.
Looking Ahead to October
October is the start of the final quarter of the year, and the plan is simple.
My role at the school remains my main focus. There is a lot to learn and a lot to build, and I am enjoying every bit of it.
On the ventures side, TSL will work on keeping bots out and turning new sign-ups into active users. ESL will keep delivering for clients and building the systems that let the team grow. Mtejaly, NenoPress, and JazaStock will continue their incubation.
And I will keep thinking about that bigger question of how AI fits into the Journey to Profitability. Maybe it will finally get its own post.
Till we meet again for the October update, stay safe.
