A software engineer who builds the product as well as the system.

Now

I am Bulela Tshulisi, a software engineer and independent builder based in South Africa. Professionally I work on Java and Spring backend systems. On my own time I design, engineer and ship products — currently Guessor, Axioms and Arkly.

I am interested in AI, learning, software products, and the economics of making software. More specifically: I am interested in what happens when software becomes cheap enough that a single person can turn an idea into a real product.

How I work

I like taking an idea far enough that it has to survive contact with users, data and production. That means reasoning about the problem, designing the thing, engineering it, shipping it, and then living with the result long enough to improve it.

I do not have a long public biography to put here yet. Education, earlier roles and the rest of a conventional about page will go in this section when I am ready to write them — I would rather leave a gap than invent a story.

Currently building

• Guessor — a social geography game from real photographs.
• Axioms — mastery-first mathematics software.
• Arkly — a personal media archive you can actually enjoy.

Currently interested in

• AI as a way to find and pressure-test ideas
• Mastery learning, not content libraries
• What a one-person software company can now look like
• Building products from South Africa, on the open internet