Proof point → Building anything new is a machine for surviving failed experiments. Here are eighteen of mine, dated and versioned.

🩻 Problem

Most portfolios show only survivors. But founder support designed by people who have never buried an idea produces programs that punish iteration - the one behavior builders must be rewarded for.

🔨 Solution

Eighteen repositories, 2019–2026, kept as a lab notebook:

Highlights

  1. project-x (2019) - the earliest production attempt: a Node.js/Express SMS backend with its deployment twin (Project-x-live). Complete with the classic early-career mistake of committing a live MongoDB data directory - a lesson never repeated.
  2. contify + qrator-api (2021) - paired Node/MongoDB startup APIs with real team process in the READMEs: dedicated Slack channels, .env handoff procedures, status endpoints. Evidence of running small engineering teams, not just solo hacking.
  3. land-dash (2021) - a TypeScript Ant Design Pro dashboard for land.ng, a Nigerian land/property play - market-specific product work.
  4. task-manager-app (2025) - React + Tailwind CRUD with Local Storage persistence and Jest unit tests - modern, interview-grade frontend.
  5. valentine-ask / valentines-day-msg - both built and shipped on February 14, 2024. Idea to deployed app inside one day.
  6. mistral-test / grok-notes (2023–2026) - immediate hands-on probes of each new AI model generation.

📜 Philosophy

Follow curiosity the day it strikes; version everything; let dead projects stay visible. “Graveyard” undersells it - old repos here get revived years later. The portfolio’s real asset is the rate of experimentation, not any single experiment.

🎓 Key learnings

  • What kills early projects: unscoped ideas, missing distribution, premature infrastructure - learned by autopsy, not blog post.
  • Team conventions (channels, env handoff, status endpoints) matter even at two-person scale.
  • Speed is a skill: same-day shipping is practiced, not innate.

📈 Output & impact

  • 18 experiments across 7 continuous years (2019–2026) - the longest-running collection in this portfolio.
  • A demonstrated idea→repo→deploy loop measured in hours.

🌍 Why this matters

The Founder Journey. Anyone funding, mentoring, or building alongside early-stage teams must know what early-stage failure actually looks like - and design support that makes it survivable. This collection is that knowledge: firsthand, dated, and humble enough to publish.

🚀 Hire me

Want an advisor who has buried ideas and shipped anyway? Let’s talk → · See also: Startup Playbooks · The thesis