About me

This page is a little self indulgent, it's all about me. Hopefully you'll find it interesting though 🙂.

Quick facts about me

• 📈 I studied Accounting & Finance at Lancaster University, UK.
• 👨‍💻 I'm turning 29 this year. Born in December, 1997. Currently based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
• 💰 I dream of being able to run a $1B+ venture builder/venture capital firm some day to enable more game-changing ventures.
• 🌍 I travel quite frequently. I love exploring and making new memories. Been to 20 countries & speak 4 languages
• 🩻 I think radical life extension is possible, and maintain a rigorous diet and exercise routine to maximize the probability of achieving it.
• 📐 My Myers Briggs personality type is ENFJ-A.
• 🙏 I'm agnostic. I believe the existence of God is, by definition, inherently unknowable. Any supposed evidence of God could just as easily be seen as proof that humanity has yet to fully understand a scientific process.

Biography
Hi, this is a brief biography of myself. A snapshot of my journey, my beliefs, and the lessons I've picked up along the way. Written in February 2025.

Who am I?
From a bird's eye view, I am:

• A builder: I execute on ideas fast. Whether it's launching startups, iterating on product ideas, or optimizing systems, my instinct is to create and refine.
• A T-shaped generalist: I believe skill stacking is the ultimate leverage. I pick up technical, business, and operational skills, not just to know them but to apply them in real-world scenarios.
• A tech optimist: I believe technological progress is the key to solving many of our biggest challenges, from environmental sustainability to social and political divides. By building on the innovations of the past, we can create a better future.

My early life

I grew up in Malaysia, caught between two contrasting realities: the traditional path of job security and stability, and the rapidly emerging world of tech, business, and global opportunities.

My parents were part of Malaysia's first generation of university graduates, navigating the country's economic transition. They weren't rich by any means, money was tight, they worked extremely hard, and were always teaching us how important it was to live within our means, to not splurge unneccesarily and to save money.

But no matter how difficult things got, they always prioritized my education, doing their best with the knowledge and resources they had.

The education system that worked for their generation, however, wasn't necessarily the best for mine. I started to see gaps in the system. 

Outdated methods, rigid structures, and a lack of real-world application. I figured what worked for them no longer worked for me.

Either way, over time, their hard work paid off. We moved into a comfortable home, firmly placing us in the upper middle class. Money stopped being a pressing concern, but the values of hard work, adaptability, and resourcefulness stuck with me for life.

School

I spent my early years in a traditional Asian education system, heavily focused on rote memorization. From a young age, I learned how to game the system, doing just enough to secure top grades while reserving my real energy for things that actually interested me. I was a straight-A student in almost everything (except Mandarin, that's a killer for me).

My family prioritized education above all else. We skipped sports, extracurricular activities, and even family dinners just to create more time for studying.

While this discipline helped me academically, it also made my childhood somewhat isolating. Fictional books became my escape. I read voraciously, which strengthened my language skills but kept me socially withdrawn.

Ultimately, I found that real education didn't come from textbooks. The best way to learn was to dive into real-world problems and force myself to solve them. This mindset would later define my approach to business and tech.

My First Taste of Making Money Myself

During college, I was busy flipping graphical calculators. It was quite literally my first real experience understanding money, supply and demand, and the fundamentals of business.

In college, graphical calculators were a necessity, new one would cost around RM800 (very expensive for most students). That's when I saw the opportunity. The second-hand market was thriving, people were selling them for RM200-300 on average, and I realized that if I could source them frequently at a lower price and resell them, there was money to be made.

The market was filled with low-quality, faulty, or even counterfeit calculators. Most transactions were peer-to-peer, buying from shady sellers was risky, getting scammed was quite common. That's where I came in. I started 1 unit at a time but over time, demand grew, I started to invest even more into buying more stock. 

Eventually, anyone who wanted a second-hand calculator in a few key private universities in Malaysia were basically transacting mostly through me.

For about a year, at the age of 18, this side hustle made me around $1,000 per month (a decent monthly salary of a fresh graduate in Malaysia). 

Through this money I learned some core business principles:

• Profits first: Understanding margins, pricing, and reinvesting profits.
• Supply & Demand: Prices went up easily when supply was low. And vice versa.
• Generate leads: To make more money, I had to find more lead sources.

I was proved to myself that I could create value by solving a problem, and turning that into income. In hindsight, it was a small venture, but in the context of where I was at the time (17), it was massive.

It showed me a different path to life than seeking employment.

Eventually though, I had to shut it down. I had a scare that the syllabus might change and calculators were no longer required, and I was holding a lot of stock. 

On top of that, I was about to leave for the UK to continue my studies.

Still, this was my first real step into entrepreneurship, it was a meaningful part of my life that shaped the trajectory of my life.

University

When I entered university, I had no real direction. 

First, I wanted to do Biotechnology. To work with genetic engineering, stem cells and those cool futuristic stuff.

Then it became Medicine. Then, Dentistry.

At 18, right after college, I felt like I had to decide my entire future within three months, otherwise, I'd be "falling behind". 

My parents were pushing me for a decision to stop "wasting time". 

My friends were all finalising their university applications.

I was pressured by societal expectations and didn't want to be the odd one out.

Finally, I settled for a Bachelors in Accounting and Finance. 

This path because:

1. I was inspired by my aunt who shared her career path becoming a senior auditor (I had no idea what this meant back then) making very good income working at a big company.
2. I was interested in doing business.
3. My parents said I needed to specialise in something to not be easily replaceable.

The irony? I had no clue how accounting worked (I'd been a science student my whole life). 

In hindsight, my choices weren't truly mine. They were echoes of the expectations and advice planted in me by the people around me.

In UK, I did what I thought was expected of me, to study hard. To make my parent’s hard earned savings on me worthwhile. We were a simple Malaysian middle class family who saved every penny we could.

And yet they spent a fortune for my education abroad. I told myself I would never disappoint them. I had one goal and that was to graduate with a First Class Honours.

I really did go all out on my grades and achieved it (I've always been good at graded assessments even if I barely understood the materials).

I’m glad I did that and it gave me the confidence that I could do it, as well as the comfort knowing I made my parents proud.

But in hindsight, it really didn’t matter.

First class honors or not. It’s just grades. Numbers on a paper. What mattered more was if I really knew what I was doing (I didn’t understand half of what was going on). What mattered more was how am I going to add value to the world (I literally had no skills). What mattered more was do I get fulfillment form what I did (nope).

I’m ashamed to even be writing this now because while on paper I was a great student, in reality I was just a faker faking it. I was just really good at assessments (Asian exam systems are harsh in that way). 

Should’ve taken the time to explore the unknown, to experiment more, to fail 10x more than I did playing things safe. I was so young and foolish. If only I knew it really didn’t matter that much at the end of the day.

Either way, I’m happy with where I’m at, just a small tweak I could make if I could’ve gone back in time.

Honestly, my time abroad was the best phase of my life. No money could buy that back. Even if I were to go back today, it wouldn’t have been the same. To see things for the first time, to experience a new culture for the first time, to simply “be”, for the first time. And I’ll always be grateful for the opportunity my parents gave me.

My 40 year old self would probably also be looking at my current 29 year old self laughing his ass off missing the 29 year old version of himself. And that’s a reminder I give myself every day to live life to the fullest, even on the gloomiest days. 

It was also in UK where I got really involved in clubs & societies (first started to just to have something to put in my resume to help with my job search). Eventually got to do a lot of meaningful activities like representing my university in a business competition, spearheaded a student venture capital fund in the university, even got invited as a judge for our annual Startup Weekend event, awarding grants to winning ideas. 

At the time, I was running the Student VC, Campus Capital, aiming to bring more funding to Northern England startups because funding was disproportionately concentrated in London. 

I saw founders passionately pitching, building, brainstorming, and iterating through failure. Over time, the startup-founder bug bit me too.

A few months later, I graduated and moved back to Malaysia to work in a venture capital firm. But sitting on the sidelines, doing market research, due diligence, and crunching numbers all day really wasn’t for me.

I faced the reality of being an entry level analyst. Nothing like the experience I had in the Student VC firm where we had to take so much ownership to build the funds presence from scratch.

Thinking back, the difference was literally night and day. With the student VC it really felt like I was building a business from scratch. That’s when I realised as cool as it seems, I didn’t want to be the financier. 

 I wanted to be in the action. I wanted to build.

But I had no money. No business skills. No marketing skills. No coding skills. Nothing. Just a fresh graduate with alot of dreams but no skills at all.

This was the bridge. The moment I went from thinking I had to follow the accounting/finance path to realizing I could build something of my own.

I had done three corporate internships at this point. Finance at a big conglomerate, auditing at a Big 4 firm, and venture capital at a corporate fund in Malaysia.

None of them excited me.

I craved the feeling I had when reselling used calculators, or building the student vc firm when I was still in UK.

That's what led me to entrepreneurship.

The tech startup world led me to one key realization: the internet changes everything. 

If you know what you're doing, you can build and scale businesses with minimal capital. That changed my entire trajectory in life.

Self-learning

The decision was simple.

I wanted to build startups. I was inspired by people like Steve Jobs, who built the iPhone, and SaaS founders who created something once and scaled it to millions, all while generating stable, recurring revenue.

During my VC days I met an indie hacker who was making $20,000-ish per month, just him, his code, and a small team of admins.

It was a dream. My bet was simple.

• Base case: Make an entry level salary ~$1,000
• Best case: My startup kicked off
• Worst case: I fail

Even the worst case was hedged because if my startup failed, I could always get a job with my new skills because I knew how in demand it was to have an engineering mind (more on that later).

Tech paid well. Tech allowed for remote work. Tech allowed me to build whatever the hell I want without anyone's permission. All I needed was my laptop + the internet.

And back then, I was dating someone who lived in a different country. I had no clue how to get a job in her country through the conventional path as finance was extremely competitive there, but I knew tech could give me the flexibility to work from anywhere.

3 reasons I made the plunge

• Tech is the common denominator for all tech startups. I want to build a tech startup. So if I learned how to build software, it won't go wrong.
• 9/10 of the top 10 biggest companies in S&P500 are tech companies. So I probably am on the right path. Think Facebook, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, Amazon and so on.
• I saw how desperate founders recruit tech talents. I know how bad the talent market is for software developers. Saw first hand in most of the startup networking events I organised or attended during my VC days, it's usually as bad as every 1 techie to 7 non-tech founders. The non-tech founders were always pitching to the techie.

Worst case scenario, I have my bets hedged. If it all crash and burns, I'll just get use my tech skills somewhere and get a job somewhere.

So, I went all in.

I started learning the moment I landed my first job in VC. Whenever there was downtime (there was a lot), I was coding.

My colleagues thought I was crazy and thought I would never amount to much.

One of them even scoffed at me and said "Wow you really have balls pursuing this, you think you can compete with the CS grads out there?".

A sarcastic way of saying "Stick to what you do and don't step out of lane, loser".

After work, I was coding. During travels, I was coding. I skipped all social activities, hobbies, exercises whatsoever. I only had 1 goal. And I frequented these materials the most:

• CS50
• FreeCodeCamp
• YouTube tutorials

They were great starting points. But after six months, I was still stuck in tutorial hell. He was right. If this went on, I wouldn't amount to much. That thought scared me so much it's really what pushed me in my lonely nights.

It feels great learning from tutorials. It's like I'm learning and it feels like I'm "getting it". But there was one problem, I was not.

I couldn't build anything from scratch. I could code along and copy all day, but when it came to writing something on my own? Blank.

Downhill

It was probably the most demoralising point in my life.

12 hours of coding every single day. With nothing much to show for. And no one in it with me. Just doing it all alone. And at that point even my ex-girlfriend got fed up with how immersed I was what I was doing I neglected her and we ended things as well (Story for another day but I wasn't really affected, I had a monster to slay - learning to code).

Whenever I met friends I had to embarassingly tell them what I'm doing while they talk about their interesting jobs, salaries, company outings, etc. Peers thinking "WTH is this guy doing?" In hindsight, it really didn't matter what they said. But when I was still in the journey trying to make it, and when I was a lot younger, these comments stabbed like a knife.

When Javascript got tough, I switched to Ruby, then Python, then whatever latest frameworks, then UIUX, then data analytics, then project management.

It was an infinite loop. A tutorial hell.

I was kinda going nowhere. I still couldn't really build anything from scratch on my own.

Fuck it

I caught my self applying for random jobs one day and snapped out of it. What the hell am I doing? Am I giving up?

At the brink of giving up, I decided to tell myself, we're 6 months in. I don't wanna prove those losers right.

I saw some articles talking about "learning by building". No more coding along, no more looking at solutions, no more watching videos.

It's do or die.

1. Choose a tech stack and stick to it: I went with the Javascript stack. VueJS, TailwindCSS, Expressjs, Firebase.
2. Choose a project. Back then, a Korean drama called "Start Up" was famous for building this app called NoonGil in a Korean Accelerator. It helped blind people see using Object Detection AI.
3. Figure it out. No matter what. No excuses.

I eventually grinded my ass off and got it done in a few weeks & deployed it. (An exact clone of it). No AI back then so it was really just brute forcing stackoverflow, google, and a whole lot of problem solving on my own.

I actually posted the project on Linkedin & it blew up. That's where I got quite a bit of reach and people started reaching out to me to work on software projects.

From then on, I realised there's no "secret" to learning to code. You really just gotta grind through it. Just like learning to swim, you learn to swim only by swimming. It's the same for coding. Your learn by doing.

You learn to code by coding. 1000 hours of watching tutorials will not help you learn to code.

Stacking small wins

Fast forward after that, my confidence improved, projects started coming in, friends started asking me to help them with coding-related stuff, including mentoring them to prepare for their technical interview assessments or literally helping them do it.

And I did. I could solve almost all the algorithm scripting, frontend and backend challenges with ease for this entry level role!

Fast forward a little more, I closed projects from people around me worth $2,500, $10,000, $25,000 then $50,000, all in a matter of 6 months.

This was way more than my goal of $1,000/month.

It's also when I found out

• Tech talent is scarce as hell
• I have no time to build it all on my own
• Clients do not give a damn what tech stack you used

I struggled to hire developers to help me out because most of the people (CS grads) I interviewed couldn't really code.

I interviewed 100's of computer science graduates.

The only guy I managed to hire, had fundamental coding concepts down, but still took around 6 months to learn specific frameworks and tools that we were using in production.

By the time he got productive on the job, a foreign firm offered him a job for double the salary and poached him. He took it without thinking twice (money wins at the end of the day when you're just a tiny little startup)

I knew how hard it was to hire competent tech talents, I knew I could help someone become competent enough to double their salary, and I knew the exact steps it took to replicate the success I had with myself and my first hire.

And that eventually led to what became Sigmaschool in 2022, where we help train students learn software engineering in a 3 month bootcamp.

The curriculum, learning model & process were all based on what I used on my software projects. I knew how hard it was to hire competent tech talents, I knew I could help someone become competent enough to double their salary, and I knew the exact steps it took to replicate the success I had with myself and my first hire.

Before Sigmaschool, there was The Hacker Collective

Somewhere between closing software projects and launching Sigmaschool, in my loneliest days learning to code, I actually actively attended and organised meetups via Facebook Groups & Eventbrite.

This was the time I adopted the whole "learn by building" mindset.

I gave myself a challenge: build one project every month.

There were tons of people who wanted to learn, but just didn't have the accountability to commit to it, so we just met up weekly on a weekly accountability group, using free resources like Codecademy to learn Javascript.

Few months in I realised the trend. Almost 80% of the learners eventually drop out by month 3-4 when it started becoming difficult.

Learning to code was hard, this wasn't new, it was aligned with my personal experience as well, and everyone progressed at different speeds which could be demotivating when someone see someone newer than them progress way faster than them.

Eventually, I found myself not just organizing the sessions but actually teaching them and presenting to a class.

It was stressful, but teaching forced me to fill the gaps in my own knowledge. I wanted a true peer-to-peer learning model, but it didn't work. Since I was doing the teaching anyway, I started charging money for it.

I partner-ed up with my then partner for this, Ming, we grew to groups as big as 50 paying members each month.

When I met Ming, I was deep into my self-learning journey, still figuring things out. He was 2 years ahead of me, building and launching projects on his own.

Seeing what he could do lit a fire in me. It made me realize: this is possible.

You don't need a CS degree. You don't need permission. You just need to start building.

That mindset led to The Hacker Collective, a community where people could learn to code, build projects, and break into tech together.

This was the scrappiest, bootstrappiest phase of my life. There were no grand business plans, no 10 year goals, no team culture or values. It was just doing whatever works and learning how to monetise online to live to see another day.

Every single penny we made, we invested back in to building our own tech startups (we had like 5 at one point, biggest mistake ever)

We were working on:

• CS/IT graduates started paying me for 1-on-1 sessions to mentor them and prep them for job interviews.
• Peer learning groups ran at RM300/month - structured cohorts where we learned together.
• Freelance software & CTO-as-a-service - I took on projects to fund our growth, sometimes taking equity in startups instead of cash. (Most of these startups failed, but I learned a lot.)
• Startup ideas in HR, Co-founder matching, Streetwear marketplace, Logistics startup, and so many more... All of them failed, we completely underestimated what it took to build a tech startup.
• More than 10 of our students landed jobs in tech—some in Malaysia, some in Singapore, some even remote for global companies.

These weren't people with CS degrees. Many came from completely different backgrounds - finance, marketing, even construction. But through our learn-by-doing approach, they built real skills that companies wanted.

Seeing people go from zero to employed was what made it all worth it. It proved that the system worked. You didn't need a CS degree. You didn't need years of experience. You just needed real-world skills and proof of work.

This was just the beginning.

But as The Hacker Collective grew, Ming and I started diverging in vision.

Ming was more into the venture-building side, he wanted to invest more into building even more startups.

I was obsessed with education, and was happy with the model that we managed to build, helping people break into tech through real-world, hands-on learning. Plus we were monetising well on it.

We couldn't agree on where to invest our funds (it wasn't as if we were loaded with it, but he wanted for us to both take a huge loan and grow the business)

So, we split.

• Ming took over the ventures arm: focusing on startup incubation and funding.
• I took over the education arm: doubling down on coding bootcamps, mentorship, and career placement.

It was a tough but necessary split. And it laid the foundation for everything I built afterward.

Sigmaschool

After immersing myself in the world of startups and self-learning, I realized that many aspiring tech enthusiasts faced similar challenges: loneliness in their learning journey, difficulty in maintaining motivation, and a lack of structured guidance.

Inspired by coding bootcamps like Lambda School in the U.S., which offers a model where students paid only when they secured a job, I envisioned creating a community that addressed these issues.

However, due to legal constraints in Malaysia, the excessive fees that we need to charge to make this happen, and other challenges, implementing an income share agreement model proved unfeasible.

Determined to align our success with that of our students, we reimagined the model.

3-month bootcamp, secure a tech job after graduation, or receive a full refund.

This approach ensured both parties had a vested interest in the outcome and provided the necessary cash flow to sustain operations.

In 2022, we pre-launched this concept with a modest RM3,000 investment in advertising.

The response was overwhelming. I basically made RM30,000 in the first month, even before the product was fully developed, with just a landing page.

This validation confirmed we were addressing a significant need.

Today, Sigmaschool has established partnerships with over 50 hiring companies across Singapore, Malaysia, and Australia.

We have celebrated over 100 success stories, with our graduates securing positions in startups, corporations, and various industries.

Our students come from diverse backgrounds: a doctor from the UK seeking a career pivot, gig workers transforming their professional paths, and individuals landing jobs just 1.5 months into their studies with us. And many more!

Featured on press multiple times as well:

My Goals & Where I'm Headed

For a long time, I've felt like I was moving without a clear direction. That's something I'm actively working to change. One thing I do know for certain - I want to make a massive impact. Whether that's driven by a need to leave a legacy or simply the natural urge to accumulate resources, I'm not entirely sure. But I believe many people feel the same way, even if they don't say it out loud. Acknowledging these ambitions seems like the first step to fulfilling them.

Why Technology?

There are countless ways to create impact, but technology is the most obvious path. You don't need to be a genius to see how transformative innovations like GPT, Sora, etc are to the world

I'm not drawn to academia or research, so I probably won't contribute on a theoretical level. But I enjoy entrepreneurship and I'm pretty good at it. So, I see myself either starting or joining a company that fundamentally changes how an important part of our world operates. What that will be? I don't know yet.

The Next Few Years

Money is a key factor in the short term. I've set a goal of reaching $1M in annual profit, about 4x my highest earnings so far. At that level, either continuing the company or selling a company would allow me financial freedom while supporting my family and close friends.

Where my head's at now

I'm focusing and going all in on Sigmaschool. No more half-assed ventures here and there. Just one thing and going all out for it's success. Currently learning how to be a better leader, to attract great talents, build something amazing with them, and more importantly keep them!

Beliefs & Guiding Principles

1. Execution > Ideas

Ideas are worthless without action. I focus on building, testing, and iterating quickly.

2. Leverage is Everything

Whether it's through technology, people, or systems, I always look for ways to maximize impact with minimal effort.

3. Learning Comes From Doing

The best way to learn is by building. I believe in the "learn by building" approach.

What's Next?

I have no plans to slow down. My goal is to keep building, learning, and pushing boundaries. Whether it's scaling my current businesses, launching new ventures, or mentoring the next generation of builders, I see this as just the beginning.

If you're working on something interesting, let's connect.

I'm always open to new ideas and collaborations.

Invest in me or work with me

I have tons of ideas and plans! And I know I can't do it all alone. Always down to chat if there's funding or collaboration opportunities!

Reach me on LinkedIn or write me an email at deric.yee@gmail.com