Sandbox in a 30-Square-Meter Apartment: How I Engineered a Sovereign Exit from the Trenches to Tech-Executive[Part 5]
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The Proxywoo Deployment: My 30sqm "Cloud"
I completed the build. The app was named Proxywoo. I had architected the features, integrated the GPS logic, and polished the UI. Matt was thrilled; the vision was becoming a reality. He had already settled 75% of the contract, and the 10x return I promised my wife was no longer a "Ponzi scheme"—it was a realized projection.
Then, Matt threw me a curveball that would define the next decade of my career: "Deploy the app to the Cloud."
In 2011, "The Cloud" was still a nebulous concept for a traditional C/Java developer. I turned to Google for a baseline definition. I found: "Anything running on the internet as a service rather than hosted in your own data center."
I looked at my $1,000 workstation—the i5 powerhouse humming beside the dining table. Since Matt is in the USA, this machine was "remote." It was "on the internet." Out of a mixture of raw ambition and pure ignorance, I decided: To call my 30 smq apartment with workstation as the Cloud.
I provisioned the backend and the MySQL database right there, next to the DVD player.
We published Proxywoo to the Play Store. By my definition, I was a Cloud Architect. By reality, I was a man running a production environment on a single point of failure.
The Barney Incident: High-Stakes Stability Testing
The "Horror" of my first cloud setup wasn't the latency or the uptime—it was the physical environment. My production "Data Center" shared a floor with a toddler.
Every evening, my conference calls with Matt coincided with my daughter’s prime-time viewing of the "Purple Dinosaur." As I would be presenting a demo to stakeholders in the US, the trademark Barney theme song would start. My daughter would dance with pure joy, and more often than not, she would accidentally trip over the cabling of the very machine hosting our beta users.
The "Cloud" would literally go dark because a purple dinosaur was too exciting.
Matt was the ultimate partner. He was patient through the crashes, the sudden disconnects, and the sounds of Barney in the background of our high-level strategy calls. I was running a global startup from a 30-square-meter apartment with a "server rack" that was vulnerable to a three-year-old’s footwork.
It was messy. It was unpolished. It was Sovereign...
The Integrity Pivot: Beyond the 10x Return
By this point, the "numbers" had already worked out. I had successfully executed the 10x return I promised my wife. My daughter was enrolled in the elite school we had dreamt of. I had even managed to upgrade our family’s mobility, moving from taxis to a SUV.
I wanted to quit because I can't make Proxiwoo run smoothly. I had been paid 75% of the contract; I could have walked away, blamed the technical "Cloud" limitations, and called it a win. I was exhausted. Between the 9-to-5 corporate grind and the 6-to-2 AM "Barney Data Center" shifts, I was at my breaking point. I am a few drinks away from quitting.
But then, I looked at the code. I looked at the trust Matt had placed in me—a developer he had never met, living half a world away in a 30-square-meter apartment.
In the Silicon Valley mindset, we talk about "Vesting." But since I am in Philippines I have no idea of the Valley. I hope someday I would see the Valley.
I just felt it as Moral Vesting. My integrity was worth more anything else. My personal principles dictated that I couldn't leave Matt with a crashing app and a "home server" held together by hope and electrical tape.
It was no longer a matter of money. It was personal...
Matt then introduced me to "The Real Cloud"... to sort things out...