I Was Always Going to Be a Builder

it's 2015. i'm 12, and i've just started my junior secondary education.

i loved the idea of building something, anything at all, and i always wanted to be part of it. i also loved playing games, like every other kid at the time.

i didn't really have a phone of my own. i shared a small Java phone with my sister, who was a boarding student. so whenever she wasn't home, the phone was basically mine.

back then, my friends and i had this idea that whenever we downloaded games from a website, the website owner made money from every single download. we even believed that, as we browsed the website, our megabytes somehow turned into money for them.

website owners make a lot of money. they make money from all our downloads, and our megabytes turn into money for them.

me and every other kid back then

the curiosity that became a website

i later did my own research and found out it did not work that way. downloads were not magically turning our megabytes into money for the website owner. but by then, the question had already opened another door for me. i wanted to know how websites actually worked.

more than that, i wanted one of my own. i wanted a website my friends could visit, something i could point to and boast about a little. i just wanted to say, “yeah, that's my website.”

so i started learning. the first platform i found was XTGem. after that came Wapka and other mobile website builders like it. at the same time, my Facebook feed was slowly filling up with people who built websites. we called them wap masters back then. i added some of them as friends, watched what they were doing, asked questions, and learned whatever i could from them.

eventually, i created my first “website.” somehow, it is still live on XTGem. it was called Bsurfportal. you can open it and see the chaos for yourself. the spelling, the links, the layout, everything is still there. please do not judge me too much. i was 12.

how i published with pen and paper

from XTGem, i noticed that a lot of people were using Wapka, so i joined them there too. Wapka was harder. at some point, i finally had a button phone of my own, and i was trying to run a music website with it.

the way i added posts was honestly crazy.

there was no easy copying and pasting. if i wanted to post a song, i would go to a website that already had it, something like NaijaLoaded. i would take out a pen and paper, write down the name of the song, the short description, and then the full URL behind the download button.

i do not mean that i copied the URL. i would click the download button, look at the address, and write it down by hand. every letter, slash, number, dot, and symbol. then i would return to my own site and type the whole thing again on the button phone, one character at a time, until the post was complete.

that was my content management system. a button phone, a notebook, and stubbornness.

when coding convinced me it was not for me

at some point, i started learning HTML and CSS through the SoloLearn app. i think i was using a Tecno M3 around that time, if i remember correctly.

i was actually making progress. i understood enough HTML to put pages together, and i was getting somewhere with CSS too. then it became hard. funny enough, even HTML started feeling difficult to me. i could not keep up, so i dropped it.

later, i went back and learned it again. this time, i made it as far as JavaScript, and JavaScript spoiled everything for me. i just could not get it. eventually, i dropped coding altogether and accepted what felt obvious at the time: coding was not for me. maybe i did not have what it took. maybe i was just lazy. honestly, maybe i was.

but the part of me that wanted to build things did not disappear. i still wanted to make stuff. i just did not know what tool would let me do it.

WordPress felt like a superpower

in early 2017, i found WordPress.

my first proper WordPress blog used a domain based on my name. someone i knew, who ran a hosting company called AbollyHosts.com.ng, gave me the domain for free. that support meant a lot because it gave me room to experiment without worrying about the cost.

i learned a lot through WordPress. i learned how to build blogs, but i also learned that it could do much more than blogging. i experimented with e-commerce websites and different kinds of pages. for me, WordPress was the closest i had come to building real things by myself without needing to fight JavaScript again.

and i built a lot. i created and ran several blogs. one of them was a music blog called 430loaded, and it became successful to a point. but the most successful one was Reviewmr.com.

Reviewmr became one of the top review blogs in its space while i ran it. the SEO was crazy. i wrote reviews about Ponzi schemes, the so-called "income websites" that were everywhere at the time, cryptocurrencies, and similar platforms. this was around 2020 and 2021, when new schemes were appearing constantly and crypto was booming. people wanted to know what was real, what was risky, and what they were about to put their money into.

the blog did really well. eventually, i sold it for around ₦800,000.

funny story, i was scammed out of part of the money by the middleman involved in the sale. i had planned to use that money to start another blog and properly invest in growing it, but losing a large part of it changed those plans. it was not the only reason i left blogging, but it was definitely part of it.

design gave the instinct somewhere else to go

what got me into design was a classmate. she posted something about UI/UX, and i asked her what it was. she explained it to me, and i thought it sounded interesting. i said i would love to learn it, then i slept on the idea.

later, i saw David Timothy post about design. David is a mentor to me, so i asked him about it again. this time, i got a fuller explanation of what UI/UX actually involved.

my reaction was basically, “okay, so this is still building stuff.”

you are designing the thing rather than writing the code that makes it work, but you are still deciding what gets built, how it works, and what using it should feel like. that was enough for me. it felt like another way to satisfy the same urge i had always had.

i did not take a formal course. most of what i learned came from YouTube, practice, and paying attention to other designers. i designed every day. there was always something to work on, something to remake, or something to improve. i also studied how other people worked, especially the thinking behind their decisions. that daily practice is how i got good.

honestly, learning design is one of the best things i have ever done. i love designing.

then ChatGPT gave me the missing half

fast forward to 2024. i was in my final year studying Computer Science, and i needed to build a project.

i chose to create a chatbot-based cybercrime reporting system. the idea was to let people report cybercrime through an interactive conversation instead of filling out the usual long form. the chatbot would use prepared questions, but the experience would feel like talking to an actual agent. i wanted reporters to feel guided and reassured that their report would be handled.

there was just one problem. i did not know how i was going to build it.

i already knew i could use ChatGPT to help with the written part of my final-year project, so i thought it should be able to help with the code too. that project became my real introduction to what AI could do.

i used ChatGPT to build the entire thing. i'm not going to lie. it helped with the theoretical work, the HTML, the Python, and all the iterations in between. my role was to keep telling it what i wanted, test what it gave me, notice what was wrong, and push it in the right direction.

the chat became ridiculous. everything was inside one conversation: the project write-up, the code, the errors, the fixes, and multiple versions of the same files. anytime i opened the chat, my device would start lagging because there was just too much stuff in it.

the workflow was also painful. i would ask for code, copy it into my project, run it, get an error, then return to ChatGPT. sometimes i had to paste several complete files just to explain what was happening. it might give me one small fix, and i would say, “no, give me the full code back.” then i would copy everything again.

bruh, it took a crazy amount of time and energy. but it worked.

by July 2024, i had completed a working final-year project. that was the first time i built a full product with AI, and it changed the way i saw myself. coding had made me believe that i could not build the things in my head. AI showed me that maybe the problem was never the ideas. maybe i just needed a different way to bring them to life.

i have not really stopped since then

since that project, i have kept exploring. i'm still learning, and i'm still figuring out what is possible, but i have already built more than i thought i would.

Whisperr

i built Whisperr, an anonymous messaging website. it is similar to NGL in the sense that people can send anonymous messages, but it also has a public wall where anyone can post something for everyone to see while staying anonymous. people can reply to messages publicly or privately, and private replies can be sent to the original person's email. there are a lot of small, cool ideas inside it.

a job application tool

i built a tool to help me apply for jobs. i can paste a job description into it and get a complete application kit. it helps tailor my resume to the role, prepares the application, and even helps me get ready for the interview. it takes a process that can be tiring and repetitive and gives me a much better starting point.

GetBio

i built GetBio, a link-in-bio product with good-looking templates and a lot of useful customization. i wanted something that felt more expressive than the usual list of links.

Noor

i built Noor, a Qur'an app that now has more than 1,000 organic downloads on the Google Play Store. seeing people discover something i made without paid promotion still feels special.

tourneyOS

tourneyOS is probably my favorite product so far. it helps Call of Duty Mobile tournament organizers calculate and publish results without doing everything manually.

an organizer sets up the tournament, defines the points system, and adds the teams. after each lobby or event, they upload screenshots of the lobby results. tourneyOS reads those screenshots, calculates the standings, creates the table, and lets them export the result as a graphic.

it also gives organizers a live link they can share with a streamer, so viewers can see updated results in real time. a gaming event can finish, and the result can be ready in less than five minutes.

right now, three CODM organizations use tourneyOS to run their results. two of them are paying customers. it is still early, but having real organizations rely on something i built is a different feeling entirely.

there are other projects too, but those are the highlights.

i was always going to be a builder

right now, i'm building a fun mobile app with a partner, Abdurrahman. i cannot share much about it yet, but it is a fun product to work on, and i will talk about it properly when the time is right.

i still think about new things to build every day. i will see a problem and immediately start wondering what a product for it could look like. sometimes the idea becomes something. sometimes it stays in my notes. but the instinct is always there.

when i look back now, XTGem, Wapka, the music sites, learning HTML, giving up on JavaScript, WordPress, blogging, UI/UX, and building with AI do not feel like separate phases anymore. they were all the same thing in different forms.

i was never chasing code just for the sake of saying i could code. i wanted to make things exist. even when one tool became too hard, i kept looking for another door into the same room.

i think i was born to build things. i want to solve problems, and i want to make a shit ton of money solving them. both things matter to me.

so yeah, stay tuned. i'm still building.