ChamsDel
Story Building in public

20 years in tech.
Building at 43.

I spent two decades in cybersecurity and fintech, including time at PayPal. At 43 I started building software products from scratch. This site is the unfiltered record of what happens next.

See what I'm building Follow @chams_builds
43
Started building at 43
20yrs
In cybersecurity and fintech
5am
When the build sessions happen
Origin

How 20 years becomes a starting line.

The story isn't about escaping a career. It's about pointing everything I built toward my own ideas.

Chapter 01

Two decades of operating at scale.

I spent more than 20 years in technology, leading security programs, managing risk, and operating inside companies where the stakes were real. That work taught me how systems fail, how trust is built, and how to ship things that actually hold up.

Chapter 02

Fatherhood made every hour count.

When you're a dad, time has names on it. That pressure didn't slow me down. It made me more deliberate. Less theorizing. More shipping. I learned to build in whatever margin the day left behind.

Chapter 03

43 was the right time, not a late start.

I knew enough to stop romanticizing entrepreneurship and start practicing it with discipline. 20 years of context isn't a handicap. It's the advantage most builders never get.

Chapter 04

Build things that earn their place.

Every product on this site is tested against a simple question. Does a real person with a real problem actually need this? If the answer is no, I don't ship it.

The Setup

Two full-time commitments. One person.

Day

Security for a fintech company.

By day I lead security for a fintech company. I'm responsible for compliance programs, risk management, and the kind of infrastructure decisions that have real consequences if they go wrong.

Build

Software at 5am.

Before the work day starts I'm building software. Mornings at 5am, weekends in the margins. The goal isn't to escape the day job. It's to run both well, long enough that the options multiply.

"I don't want freedom from responsibility. I want a life large enough to hold both."
Chaminda Delpagodage
Products

What I'm building.

Each one started as a real problem. Each one is being built in public.

Growing X accounts

ReplyWisely

A Chrome extension that helps small accounts grow faster on X by scoring replies for visibility and tracking what's actually working.

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Content creators

TwitMix

Turn bookmarked posts into fresh, original content. Saved inspiration becomes something you actually publish.

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Founders

IkigaiNiche

Discover aligned business opportunities at the intersection of your strengths, interests, and real market demand.

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Fintech founders

FinSec Scorecard

A diagnostic for small fintech companies assessing PCI DSS and SOC 2 readiness of their AWS infrastructure.

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Founders & builders

DomainNameNow

Find a brand-ready, actually-available domain name in minutes. Built for founders and indie builders who refuse to let naming delay a launch.

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Advisory

Production AI for fintech and B2B SaaS.

Sound AI Advisors is the consulting side of the work. 20 years of security and fintech experience pointed at the question every business owner keeps asking: how do you put AI in production without breaking what already works?

Who it's for

Fintech and B2B SaaS, $20M to $200M.

CTOs, CISOs, and founders inside SOC 2, PCI, HIPAA, or GDPR scope. The companies where "move fast and break things" is a compliance violation, not a slogan.

How it works

Discovery. Build. Handoff.

A 30-minute discovery call to find the highest-leverage workflow. 4-8 weeks embedded to ship it to production with audit-ready documentation. Then a clean handoff. $25K-$50K, project or retainer.

Sound AI Advisors

AI that actually makes it to production.

Not strategy decks. Not a pilot in a sandbox. Working AI in your stack, with runbooks your team can own.

Visit Sound AI Advisors See the offer hello@soundaiadvisors.com
What didn't work

Killed products. Lessons kept.

Build in public means showing the cuts, not just the launches. Every card here is a real product I shipped or built and then shut down. The postmortems explain why and what's worth keeping for the next builder.

Killed · May 2026

CampfireX

Private circles for business owners. 8 days, 200 clicks, zero customers. Network-effects math doesn't work at a 1,200-follower audience.

Read postmortem
Killed · May 2026

CompliQuiz

A framework-discovery quiz for small businesses. Killed because awareness problems get solved for free. Execution is where founders actually pay.

Read postmortem
Killed · April 2026

HardChoice

A structured decision tool for couples. Real product, wrong audience for this brand. I wasn't willing to run a parallel B2C consumer brand for one product.

Read postmortem
Killed · April 2026

DearMeWiser

A reflection app: ask a question, get an answer from your wiser future self. Killed because a single ChatGPT prompt did the same job. If a prompt replaces your product, you don't have one.

Read postmortem
Idea only · never built

NeverMissAgain AI

An idea: AI text-back for missed calls at small businesses. Written down, never shipped. The lesson: ideas you don't build are usually ideas you don't believe in enough to grind through. Honesty about that beats a half-built product page.

See what shipped instead
Builder's Desk

Free tools for builders working inside real constraints.

Same problems keep coming up when you're building with a day job, a family, and a short window. These tools exist because I needed them.

See all tools →
Planning Time Budget Calculator

Estimate how many real builder hours you actually have each week and what kind of roadmap fits them.

Validation Idea Scorecard

Score a micro SaaS idea across pain, reach, monetization, shipping speed, and founder energy.

Revenue Pricing Calculator

Back into a realistic monthly price based on goals, costs, and expected customer volume.

Launch Readiness Checklist

See whether your MVP is actually ready to ship or still missing the basics users will notice.

Marketing Post Angle Generator

Turn one product idea into multiple build-in-public post angles without calling a model or backend.

Analytics X Growth Chart

Upload your X analytics CSV, see local KPIs, and inspect a simple trend chart without leaving the page.

Free Tool 01

Side Project Time Budget Calculator

For builders with jobs, kids, and a short evening window. Use this to plan around reality instead of fantasy.

View full tool page →
Free Tool 02

Micro SaaS Idea Scorecard

Quickly pressure-test whether an idea deserves your next six weeks. The numeric score stays local. The written verdict comes from OpenAI. If you are still narrowing the right niche before choosing the idea, this pairs well with IkigaiNiche.

Uses OpenAI through a serverless function. No database, no browser-exposed API key. For deeper niche discovery before scoring an idea, try IkigaiNiche.

View full tool page →
Free Tool 03

Indie Hacker Pricing Calculator

Reverse-engineer a sensible subscription price from your monthly target, costs, and customer assumptions.

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Free Tool 04

MVP Launch Readiness Checklist

Check the basics before you send people to something that still leaks confidence.

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Free Tool 05

Build in Public Post Angle Generator

Describe the product, the audience, and the tension. OpenAI turns that into reusable post angles for X, LinkedIn, or a launch thread. If you already collect strong source material in bookmarks, this pairs naturally with TwitMix, which remixes bookmarked posts into fresh drafts.

AI output is generated on demand so the page stays static until you ask for it. For bookmark-based remixing instead of blank-page ideation, try TwitMix.

View full tool page →
Free Tool 06

X Growth History Chart

Upload your account_overview_analytics.csv file from X and inspect performance locally. If you want help acting on those growth signals through smarter replies, this pairs naturally with ReplyWisely.

Everything stays in your browser. No upload, no backend, no tracking. For the execution side of X growth, try ReplyWisely.

How to get the CSV from X

  1. Open X and go to Analytics for your account.
  2. Open the account overview or analytics dashboard for the date range you want.
  3. Use the export or download option to download the CSV file, usually named account_overview_analytics.csv.
  4. Come back here and upload that file.
View full tool page →
Principles

How I build.

01

Show up in ordinary weeks.

Progress doesn't come from rare moments of perfect focus. It comes from repeated effort inside weeks that don't look like much from the outside.

02

Share the work as it is.

Unfinished, wrong-footed, revised. The honest version of building in public is more useful than the polished one.

03

Build things with a point of view.

Not lifeless tools. Every product should have an opinion about the problem it solves and a reason it was built by this person at this time.

04

Play a long game.

This isn't a sprint toward an exit. It's a sustainable practice of making useful things over many years.

Follow the build

Follow the build.

I document what happens when 20 years of experience meets the constraint of building with two kids, a full-time job, and a 5am alarm. If that means something to you, you're in the right place.

Explore all products Read the blog Follow on X Get in touch