I started at Guidewire back in 2017, mostly on WordPress, Wix, and Shopify. Real client sites, real deadlines. That taught me the basics the hard way: ship something people can use, not something that only looks clever in a mockup.
A few years later at MAD Elevator, things clicked. I wasn't just building pages anymore — websites, configurators, ecommerce, mobile apps for contractors and field teams. That's where I learned how a real business runs, and how software only matters if it fits into someone's actual workday. Pretty demos are a dime a dozen. Products people rely on are rarer.
Around 2022 I joined Demand IQ while it was still finding its feet as a startup. We were building SaaS for renewable-energy companies, and I got to watch the product grow and the business grow with it. Leads, journeys, integrations, payments — the full stack of SaaS. That stretch taught me more about product sense than any course ever could.
Then crypto took off, and in 2023 I went to BankSocial. Mobile, wallets, on-chain complexity. Building a self-custody wallet was a steep learning curve. You learn quickly that if the UX is confusing, users don't care how clever the cryptography is. Make the hard stuff feel easy, or nobody sticks around.
I left because trading pulled me in. I built the bots and tools, used them myself, made some money, and kept digging deeper into that world. For a while it felt like the only game in town. Crypto is still important as infrastructure — no question — but by 2024 the attention had moved on.
What people wanted next was AI, and they wanted it fast. Automate the busywork. Generate text, avatars, video, and get it out on TikTok, Reddit, wherever the audience is. The way we code changed too — vibe coding, agents, shorter loops from idea to ship. These days I help founders automate their business and take it to the next level without drowning in manual work.
Call it Industry 4.0 if you want — AI, big data, cloud, crypto, IoT. That's the stack shaping the next decade. I'm not here to chase every shiny object. I want to stay ahead of the curve, build things that are useful, and keep learning as the next wave shows up.
$ cat personal-story.md
Personal story
I'm Filipino, but most of my life was shaped in Taiwan. People find that interesting. For me, it's also a little sad — and it's a big part of who I am.
When I was a child, a powerful typhoon hit. Not a normal storm — the kind that destroys homes and changes everything overnight. Our family lost the house, the furniture, everything. Worst of all, we lost my father.
My mom couldn't raise me alone after that. So she moved us to Taiwan, her home country, where her parents could help. I grew up there. Mom worked very hard to support us, so most of the time my maternal grandparents took care of me. She always wanted me to become someone she could be proud of — a great person, in her words. That wasn't pressure for no reason. It was love, and it was her hope for my future.
I went to university in Taiwan and graduated. The day I brought my first salary home, my mom cried — really cried — from happiness. I cried with her. I still remember that moment clearly. It felt like all those years of hard work finally meant something for both of us.
My grandparents are gone now. Mom has moved back to the Philippines. She still misses my father. I don't remember him well — he died when I was too young — but I feel his absence in the way she talks about him, and in the empty place where a father should have been.
That history is why I take work seriously. Building products, freelancing, learning new skills — it isn't only ambition. It's my way of respecting what my mom and grandparents did for me when I was too young to help. I want a life that makes their sacrifice feel worth it.
Some days I still feel the distance — between countries, between the child I was and the person I am becoming. But I also feel lucky. I got another chance at a home, an education, and a future I can build myself. The story isn't finished. I'm still living it — carefully, gratefully, and with them in mind.
$ open contact
Want to talk about a product, workflow, or build?
krysbaniel.work@gmail.com