SF Tech Week 2026: Are San Francisco Founders Superhuman?
I spent three weeks in San Francisco for SF Tech Week and TechCrunch Disrupt to find out if founders there are different. The answer was encouraging.
Startup Journey
Building EchonLabs from nothing to sixty people and an exit — funding, hiring, product decisions, and the chaos of growth.
2026
Moats, Money and a US Presence: What SF Founders Taught Me
What SF Tech Week 2026 taught me about building a moat when frontier labs can copy you, raising pre-seed money, and why every founder said to go to the US.
TechCrunch Disrupt 2026: Lessons from Startup Battlefield
Intero Biosystems won Startup Battlefield at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, with Apate as runner-up. What their pitches taught me, plus my first Hollywood moment.
Silicon Valley Diary: Meta, Stanford, the HP Garage and Waymo
A visit to Meta, a Stanford tour with an old co-founder, the HP garage, a Waymo ride that broke my trust and my first poker game, at MongoDB's Poker Night.
From Boarding Room to Boardroom: EchonLabs' First Board Meeting
I flew from the UK to Sri Lanka for the first board meeting of EchonLabs, the startup I founded as an undergraduate, and my first ever as a director.
How to Get and Evaluate Startup Ideas: YC's 10-Question Test
Nobody can predict which startup succeeds. Jared Friedman's YC framework: ten questions, four mistakes, and a free scorecard to grade your own idea.
Building a Production-Ready MCP Server: How I Gave an AI Agent the Run of Our Platform, and Why I Removed Every Delete Button First
A Model Context Protocol server that exposes an entire production SaaS platform to an AI agent — content, sessions, devices, analytics, billing, jobs. Seven layers, 289 tools, and no delete button anywhere on the surface.
2025
Building a Production-Ready Prompt Engine: How I Designed a System That Handles Everything from Dynamic Templates to Multi-Layer Guardrails
A behind-the-scenes look at how I designed and built a production-ready prompt engine - from dynamic templates and reusable components to multi-layer guardrails, structured output, and parallel execution.
Bringing Computer Vision to the Edge: How I Cut Real-Time Similarity Search Battery Usage by 50%
Building real-time computer vision on low-end mobile devices comes with unique challenges - especially when every second of inference drains battery. Here's how I optimised similarity search using HNSW and hybrid re-ranking to cut battery usage by over 50%.
How to Raise Startup Funds at a Poker Table (No, Seriously)
A story about calculated risk-taking, unconventional survival, and what FedEx's near-death experience at a blackjack table teaches founders about runway and resourcefulness.
Why I Chose Preact (And Why I Might Never Look Back)
When performance is non-negotiable and the app must shine on low-end devices, you start questioning your default stack. Here’s why I chose Preact - the tiny, powerful alternative to React - and how it reshaped my dev experience on the edge.
How I Built My Startup - Chapter 3
Assembling the early EchonLabs team, first revenue, and the hardest lessons about what makes or breaks a founding team.
This Shopify Memo is Going Viral - 8 AI Truths That Will Reshape Every Company
Shopify’s leaked AI memo isn’t just a company directive - it’s a call to arms for every business leader. If you’re not thinking AI-first in how you hire, build, and scale, you’re already falling behind. Here’s a breakdown of the memo’s most urgent insights and how to act on them today.
How I Built My Startup - Chapter 2
In the last chapter, I shared how a humble conversation in a university boarding room sparked the idea that would become EchonLabs. But what happened next? Some secrets are finally being revealed in this chapter - including things I’ve never shared before.
How I Built My Startup - Chapter 1
It didn’t start in a boardroom. There were no pitch decks, no business plans. Just two students, a shared passion, and a tiny boarding room near university. This is where the EchonLabs story begins - from curiosity to creation.
Effective Marketing Strategies for SaaS-Based Platforms in 2025
The SaaS industry is more competitive than ever, making it essential for businesses to implement strategic marketing approaches to attract, convert, and retain customers. This article explores the best SaaS marketing strategies for 2025, including content marketing, product-led growth, paid advertising, conversion rate optimization, and customer retention techniques.
Janashakthi x EchonLabs: A Blueprint for Reviving Sri Lanka’s IT Industry Through Collaboration
Sri Lanka’s IT industry is at a turning point, and the only way forward is through innovation, collaboration, and an export-first mindset. This is the story of how a bold partnership between Janashakthi Insurance PLC and EchonLabs - a corporate giant and a young startup - proved that when big businesses invest in local talent, real transformation happens. From a high-stakes trial project to reshaping an entire industry, this journey was made possible by visionaries like KV Kuganathan, the Schaffter family, and a relentless team that believed in what was possible. This is the blueprint for reviving Sri Lanka’s IT sector - one partnership at a time.