About

Hey 👋. I’m Saïd. I’m a software engineer turned project manager that tried to make the switch to product management. Now, I'm back to general software development though I sometimes focus on the backend or infrastructure side of things.

The failed switch to product management was extremely rewarding as it led me on a detour where I spent a significant amount of time researching the business and marketing side of the technology industry.

In 2016, I wanted to create a side-project that would blossom into a software tool that other people would pay for. The tool would use AI/ML to make stock recommendations, but with a small twist—the tool would not track companies publicly traded on stock exchanges i.e. mature companies, it would only track nascent companies—fast growing companies that announce their capital raises publicly i.e. startups.

My simple thesis then was that if you could figure out a way to reliably identify a handful of startups that are started by strong founders that attract incredibly well-run teams, you could invest in them early, long before they become whales, long before their stocks become expensive. To me, this was the ultimate kind of long-term outlook for stocks as an asset class. Pick and hold them when they are nascent, then profit handsomely when these startups move to the public markets.

Building the tool would also fulfill a secondary goal: train a model from scratch using readily available data to learn how AI works in practice.

In order to build a tool like this all by myself, there were a couple of questions I needed to be able to answer honestly. I hope to share what I've learnt so far on this blog though I'm still figuring it all out.

In the meantime, most of the articles you'll find here are software development focused, but I hope to get back to the original theme behind why I named this blog Misleading Metaphors.