👋 Hello friends, I'm Deric!

I'm a tech entrepreneur & online educator.

My journey started in 2019 when I left my job in venture capital to self-learn coding to build my own tech startups.

Went broke in 2021 & it sucked!

Here's what I do now:

👩🏻‍💻 I run the top coding bootcamp in Malaysia to help people from all over the world *actually* learn practical full stack web development in 3 months & get their first job in tech. https://sigmaschool.co

🚀 I provide full stack web & app development services for businesses. https://sigmastudios.co

📱 I built a mobile app to help users self-learn coding. Duolingo for coders! https://codeo.ai

🤝 I'm building a HRTech startup that matches jobseekers to their dream jobs 10X faster. https://tryjobier.com

✍️ I run a newsletter, where I share all my learnings on indie hacking & building my tech ventures and SaaS from scratch, without external funding https://dericyee.com

I dream of being able to run a $1B+ venture building firm some day to enable more game-changing ventures!

Also, i'm hiring! Apply here: sig1.co/apply-job

If my content can genuinely help just one person - that would be pretty amazing!

Me in 2022, when I first started my second business after the first one failed.

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, graduating in 2019.
I'm 27 years old. Born in December, 1997 and I'm a Malaysian Chinese. Currently based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia 🇲🇾.
I work out at least 1 hour every day. My workout focus at the moment: Running, Hyrox & Mixed Martial Arts (Boxing, BJJ).
I dream of being able to run a $1B+ venture builder/venture capital firm some day to enable more game-changing ventures!
I travel for fun quite frequently. I love exploring and making new memories! Been to 20 countries & speak 4 languages 🌍

Timeline

2019: left my job in vc to self learn code
2020: build software projects & many failed tech ideas
2022 - now: grew my tech business to $80k/m
next: building hrtech & edtech ai saas

In 2019

My journey started back in 2019 when I was still a student in Lancaster University, UK. I was studying Finance and Venture Capital caught my interest.

Back then, I started running Student VC firm with a British VC enable more funding to Northern England startups as almost all startup funding were disproportionately concentrated in London.

This is when I first got the startup-bug.

Seeing founders passionately pitching their ideas, building their tech startup, brainstorming new ideas and iterating through pitfalls.

Over time, I caught the startup-founder bug too.

Fast forward a few months, I graduated and moved back to Malaysia to work in my first job in a Venture Capital firm.

The startup founder bug grew bigger and I really didn't see myself doing market research reports, due diligence & crunching numbers all day.

I wanted to be a part of the action.

I had no money, no business skills, no marketing skills, nothing.

But for me, 3 things led me to choose coding as a technical skills:

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.

Said F**K It & Took A Leap Of Faith. Scariest period of my life.

So that's what I did. It was probably the most demoralising point in my life. Learning through online tutorials, building projects on my own, locked myself in my room and just did coding-related stuff from 8AM to 8PM every day for at least 6 months.

Throughout the 6 months, I gave up a few times to dabble in different things relevant to the tech industry like UI/UX, Project Management, Data Analytics, or just rotating among different tutorials for different programming languages as soon as it gets tough.

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

Fast forward a few months, at the brink of giving up, I decided to tell myself - no more coding along, no more looking at solutions, no more watching videos.

It's do or die. And it boiled down to these 3 things.

Choose a tech stack and stick to it. I went with the Javascript stack. VueJS, TailwindCSS, Expressjs, Firebase.
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. I chose this.
Figure it out. No matter what. No excuses.

Interestingly enough, I got it done in a few weeks (without building my own ML models, of course.

I plugged into some open source models API and got it to work. Almost an exact clone of it).

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.

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

Stacking Small Wins For Confidence Points

Fast forward after that, I started leaving my home a little more, starting talking what I've been locking myself at home for so long for, and people around me started knowing that I was doing some coding stuff at home.

I had Computer Science and IT graduate friends who reached out to me to help them with their technical interview, so I thought to myself - Why not? It's about time for me to apply too so let's try it out.

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

They started paying me RM100/hour to teach them.

Fast forward a little more, I closed projects from people around me worth RM10,000, RM40,000, RM100,000 then RM200,000, all in a matter of 6 months.

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

For context - I interviewed around 100+ computer science graduates.

The only guy I managed to hire, had fundamental coding concepts down, but took around 6 months to learn specific frameworks and tools like VueJS, TailwindCSS, Hasura (Speeds up backend development by 200%) etc.

By the time he got productive on the job, a foreign firm offered him a remote job for around USD4,000/month.

This was a pivotal moment in my life because:

I proved that I could do it fully on my own. I gained confidence.
People were willing to pay me for my skills. I gained more confidence.
There's a big gap in the market. I knew I had to do something about this.

Which led me to work on a series of iterations in the coding education scene (story for another day!), that led to what became Sigma School in 2022, where we help train anyone to learn coding in 3 months, and get a job after they graduate, or we give them 100% of their money back.

3 Success Principles that brought me to USD80K/month and beyond

Most things in life can be self taught
1. 2019: Venture Capital caught my attention, so I worked with a VC firm to start a Student VC in university. Got my first job in a VC firm in Malaysia.
2. 2020: Soul-searching year. Didn't want to work as a number cruncher in corporate. Left my first job. Learned to code & develop full stack web apps. Tried several tech startup ideas, no one signed up for it. They all failed.
3. 2021: Learned to to teach coding & close clients for software development projects to pay the bills.
4. 2022: Launched my 3 month coding bootcamp - Sigma School.
5. 2023: Got our first office in Puchong, Malaysia & figured out how to automate sales through digital marketing channels.
6. 2024: Learned to implement Entrepreneur Operation System (EOS) for my company, and realised the importance of People & Culture in. Dabbling in content creation now!
In a world designed for consumers, be a builder/creator.
1. Creators take action; Consumers simply observe.
2. Most people are just consuming. Scrolling on Tiktok/social media all day, Netflix, Spotify, etc.
3. Especially in Southeast Asia, digital colonialism is real. American Big Tech companies are just as dominant outside of the US as they are inside of it. And with US markets relatively saturated, they are seeking to colonise emerging markets. They know us better than we know ourselves.
The future of work is for deep generalists
1. A generalist is someone who learns all relevant knowledge and skills out of interest of achieving a goal in their life.
2. I learned all the basic skills needed to go from zero to one. This came naturally for me, even though it was against conventional wisdom at the beginning.
3. I firmly believe in this now and I want to encourage more people to take on this paths.

My current ventures

Sigma School
#1 Coding Bootcamp in Malaysia. Learn to code in 3 months & get a job in tech / hire tech talents from us.
Sigma Studios
Outsourced full stack tech partner & software development house.
Codeo
The Duolingo for learning to code. AI & gamification-powered mobile app that helps you learn to code, 5 minutes a day!
Jobier (Launching Q4 2024)
Job portal that automates job matching for employers & employees through web scraping & AI.

In the media

I've been featured in a few places. Here are my favourites.

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.