Maria Daniel Deepak

Tag: Journal

  • Moving To Amazon Lightsail — Predictable Billing

    I found Utho when I was looking for reliable Indian Cloud service providers. I’m impressed with their customer support. They respond quickly and resolve any issues. I had no complaints.

    Earlier this year, I was testing Open Claw, Hermes and a few other applications. Lately I don’t use those applications as much as I used to. There are only a few WordPress instances left in the server.

    I clearly know I spend more than I should for these WordPress websites. So I decided to move. This time, I chose Amazon Lightsail.

    Amazon Lightsail provides virtual private instances that come with predictable billing, same as Droplets, Linode Instances, etc.

    Another reason I wanted to move to AWS is to learn their ecosystem well.

    I developed and hosted MacroIntel.app, a signal-generation application used in production by a macro trader to implement his strategy, turning U.S. macroeconomic releases into Gold (XAU) buy/sell signals, in Amazon EC2 recently. So, understanding their ecosystem makes sense in the long run.

  • The Uncomfortable Side Of Building Something

    Last week, I wrote about how a random conversation turned in to a real product.

    With the working prototype, my schoolmate and I approached a clinic and showcased the EMR prototype to a doctor. Through our discovery questions we realised the actual pain points, and a few ideas to make our EMR even better.

    When we asked the Doctor, “how soon would you like to be on-boarded?”, he replied, “As soon as possible”. He even volunteered to connect us with his known associates.

    We know we took the first step right.

    But later that day, I couldn’t sleep at all. Because I didn’t know if I must celebrate or be concerned. One one end, I must be celebrating for validating the idea and the prototype. One the other end, I’m concerned whether all these efforts will work out in the long run.

    Questions like — “Will we be able to onboard more doctors?”, “What if we’re unable to?” didn’t let me sleep. I don’t have an answer to these questions today. And I don’t know if I will ever have answers to such questions. Maybe, this is how every SaaS is built. Maybe, this is the uncomfortable side of building something, anything.

    But I know this is the game I must be playing. I only remembered the quote by Ellen, The Iron Lady Of Africa —

    If your dreams don’t scare you, they aren’t big enough.

  • Eight Years In Business. Profits Struggle. What Do You Do To Solve?

    A few days back, an acquaintance called me to talk about his business. Our last conversation was a while ago. I remembered him being in the web and mobile application development business then.

    This time, our conversation revolved around the digital marketing business. His recent work was about creating Instagram reels for local businesses.

    When asked whether he moved away from web and mobile application development, he mentioned that he expanded his list of services.

    The average ticket size was between INR 50,000 – INR 1,00,000 with a profit margin less than 20% and no sales pipeline.

    The Problem

    When asked, “What does your ideal customer look like?”, he mentioned that he didn’t want to restrict his services to specific markets.

    Catering everyone may appear profitable. After all, you want to put all your skillets to use to make money. Sometimes, choosing a market can make you feel like you’re losing money on the table.

    The problem is clear. Pursuing shinier things in the market is novelty. But the trade-off is that you will be seen as a generalist but not a specialist.

    So, How Do You Solve?

    During the early stage of business, it is important to identify who do we want to serve and what do we solve. This is called market specialization (niche selection).

    Find what skills you’re great at, identify a problem worth solving using those skills and serve people who can’t afford to leave it unsolved.

    Let me give you an example. Now, imagine you’re a SaaS founder with funding looking to build your next MVP to be launched in 60 days. Which business would you hire?

    Consider the following positioning:

    (A) Generalist

    We help Business build software.

    (B) Industry Niche

    We help B2B business build software.

    (C) Problem-specific Niche

    We help funded B2B SaaS founders launch their first usable product in six weeks, without hiring a full engineering team. After launch, we provide ongoing product engineering so founders can focus on customers and growth.

    The last positioning clearly tells who do you serve, what do you solve and emphasises a specific problem.

    The way to get high value tickets is to identify the skills you’re great at, finding a problem you can solve using those skills, and serving people who desperately want the problems solved and the willingness to pay.

  • Week 42:Jogging, The New Routine

    Week: Oct 12 to Oct 17, 2026

    Jogging

    I started training for Muay Thai recently. Muay Thai demands excellent cardio to begin with. So I started jogging this week.

    I ran for 5 days which I consider excellent for a newbie like me. In the beginning, I couldn’t jog even for 300m. By the third day, I made it to 300m. By the fifth day, I made it to 600m.

    If you’re a newbie like me, aim for consistency before increasing distance.

    Tech Lead: Positioning My Skills

    I positioned my skills aiming for the tech lead role at a company of my liking. I spent good amount of time across two days positioning my skills.

    However, the role expects Vue.js and Laravel. I haven’t worked on these technologies in Production. I have worked on technologies other than the technologies in my day job even before the AI assisted development tools.

    With these tools at my disposal, I don’t see these technologies as a limitation. However, companies may or may not see that way. I understand that. So, the company has a good reason not to proceed with my application.

  • Blogs I Love Reading

    The following are the blogs I love reading. I shall keep adding to the list when I find the one I love.

    1. https://blog.adarshd.dev/
    2. https://francescoronel.com/posts
    3. https://www.sarahmhoban.com/blog
    4. https://sudarmuthu.com/

  • Random Conversation Turned Into A Real Product

    My schoolmate and I were chatting about how a EMR (SaaS) he has been using for a while, felt cluttered.

    The cluttered UI kept popping up in conversations over time. One day, our causal chat turned in to a requirement gathering session in a restaurant.

    I happened to talk a developer friend about the cluttered UI. Sparked by the idea, the developer friend wanted to join hands.

    Four weeks later, the developer friend and I turned the idea in to a working demo. The schoolmate, after seeing the demo, was impressed.

    Now, we’re turning the demo in to reality, talking about compliance auditing and SaaS pricing. We’re all excited to see how things turn out for us. This is quite a learning for all three of us.

    Our story is quite similar to Tokenn which I read in LinkedIn recently.

  • Week 41: My Job Applications: The Failure & The Fix

    Week: Oct 05 to Oct 10, 2026

    I wrote about my next career progression towards becoming an AI Engineer. Since I wanted to be part of AI Engineering roles, I prepared my resume and started applying for suitable positions.

    I almost spent a decade in my previous stint. So I know I cannot get the resume right the first time. Because, a lot has changed since then.

    Thought I spent a lot of time in coding & development, I spent considerable amount of time in the other areas — architecture & technical decisions, collaborations & leadership and in strategy and planning.

    After a week applying for 12 positions, I realized that companies choose to move forward with candidates whose experience align more closely than mine for the Product Manager roles.

    So, applying for a Product Manager role needs more credibility in my case. This in no way means that I’m a bad product manager or I don’t have the skills. Or at least that’s how I choose to see.

    So, what did I learn? Either I need more credibility or I need to look for engineering roles where I can add value with my existing full-stack experience. I chose to look for engineering positions that also demand AI skills.

    In addition, I also learnt that instead of describing the value of projects in plain text, I must list the technologies used in the projects in addition. Companies relate to the technologies used. At least the ATS (Applications Tracking System) do.

  • My Next Career Progression And Why?

    Most of my career, over the last 15 years, has been spent on software coding & implementation.

    To move up the career ladder, there are four areas that I need to consider:

    1. Coding & implementation
    2. Architecture & technical decisions
    3. Collaboration & leadership
    4. Strategy, planning & analysis

    My next career progression should not only involve coding & implementation but also technical decisions, leadership and strategy planning. This puts me in the Senior Product Engineering roles and I can then naturally progress in leadership directions — Engineering lead, Engineering manager & then to Head of Engineering roles.

    To make the next move more relevant and to stay ahead I must evolve in to AI frontier roles that involve the above areas. The AI frontier demands the knowledge of RAG and enterprise knowledge systems, Agentic AI and orchestration, AI evaluation and production engineering and Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE).

    The knowledge of the above systems would then allow me to look for Senior AI Product Engineer, Applied AI Engineer, AI Applications Engineer, and Forward Deployed Engineer roles in addition to the Senior Product Engineer roles.

  • Stepping Into Muay Thai: The Art Of Eight Limbs

    Muay Thai, originated from Thailand, is a descendant art of Muay Boran (means ancient boxing). Muay Boran represents traditional fighting systems while Muay Thai is a modern combat sport with standardized rules.

    Muay Thai was used in times of warfare especially when soldiers lose their weapons. Muay Thai, often referred as the art of eight limbs, mimics the weapons of the war. Hands become the sword (dagger), Elbows become the war hammers, Shins and Knees become the axe and the staff (a long cylindrical pole used for striking, blocking & sweeping)

    Why Did I Choose Muay Thai Training?

    1. This is by far the best accessible form of art in the place where I live. Had I been in the southern parts of Tamil Nadu, I would have chosen Adimuari or Kalari. From the stances of these arts, I’m starting to believe Muay Thai must have evolved from Adimuari.
    2. Muay Thai demands excellent cardio, explosiveness, balance, coordination, mobility and excellent core strength. Every sparring session can be a serious workout.
    3. Muay Thai begins with a big heart (not metaphorically but literally). Running twice every day is must. Longer runs in the morning and shorter in the evening.
    4. You can train without competing. Plenty train for fitness, skill and as a self defence art. You don’t need to fight professionally.
    5. Muay Thai forces you to learn to use your eight limbs in coordination.
  • Micro1: What & Why Should You Care?

    Micro1: What & Why Should You Care?

    In recent times, the term Micro1 is gaining traction in Reddit. I am writing this post to understand what Micro1 is and why should one care?

    Micro1, founded by Ali Ansari, is an AI powered talent and recruiting platform. Micro1 also helps AI companies to train their models by providing training data.

    Zara is the core product at Micro1 that vets candidates and conducts early-stage interviews at scale.

    At Micro1, Talent marketplace exists and connects vetted engineers, domain experts and professionals with companies.

    Why Should You Care?

    Micro1 has raised $35 million in Series A funding and the company’s gross annual run rate is $500 million.

    There are three major reasons why professionals are paying attention to Micro1.

    1. Micro1 provides the human expertise to evaluate complex model outputs at scale.
    2. The business model scales because Micro1 recruits specialists as contractors rather than permanent employees.
    3. Micro1 is constantly expanding services beyond recruitment.

    All these are strong indicators for skilled professionals to be part of Micro1.