Hi again!

Episode 03. As promised, we're now in English — to the friends who've been Google-Translating: I'm sorry. To the German friends: you'll cope.

Quick recap: I haven't been in Germany for eight months. Happened quicker than I thought. Last month was a lot — I wrapped up Shenzhen after seven months, scouted Chiang Mai for five days, hit our 25-year RWTH × Tsinghua alumni reunion in Beijing, did a weekend in Mongolia, and finally landed in Hamburg. A few stories I have to tell you.

01 The talk I prepared during the other talks

Beijing. The 25-year anniversary of the RWTH × Tsinghua double degree program — a week of alumni gatherings, old friends from 2022 still doing PhDs, new ones I felt connected to within two conversations.

I'd asked the organizers ahead of time if I could give a 15-minute talk on why every engineering student should build a business. They said yes. Funny detail: I prepared the whole thing during the talks before mine — last-minute slides on my laptop while other people were presenting (classic me). Two hours of sleep the night before. Audience: the president of RWTH, CEOs of German industrial companies in China, the DAAD China president, professors, students. I was the last speaker.

I went up there feeling like a complete imposter. I'm building a business but haven't made a single euro yet — who am I to lecture anyone about this? I genuinely thought people would tear it apart.

Instead, multiple people came up afterwards and literally called it the most inspiring talk of the entire day. Of course, people tend to be overly nice sometimes, but still - I had to sit with that for a minute, I didn't expect that.

To be fair, some of it was easy mode. Certain basics I just nailed by accident — like, hold the microphone in front of your mouth, not your belly. Some other speakers spoke too quietly or went too deep into specific research details no one understood except of 2 people in the room. My bar was: speak clearly, big simple ideas, decent stage presence. Not a high bar to undercut.

But the deeper realization was different. Yes, my product is simple. Yes, I haven't made money yet. But the bar is just taking action. 99% of the audience — engineers, students, alumni, people with decades of industry experience — had never tried to build their own thing. They might have thought about it maybe, but never did. They always had a boss, always took a normal job, always produced documents for someone else's project. And I realized: it's already rare to have actually talked to real customers, vibe-coded real software, kept going. The gap between thinking about it and doing the messy version of it is enormous. Way bigger than I'd assumed.

02 Mongolia in an elevator

Weekend in Ulaanbaatar — alone, with no real plan. Mongolia is shockingly chill, very safe, young people speak excellent English.

Saturday night I went clubbing alone. I met locals my age who took me to a fancy underground club at the Shangri-La (there were also two-meter Canadian basketball players in there, that type of place). Locals went home, I walked out to a different part of the city. I entered a building and stepped into an elevator to check out a different club. Three Mongolian guys entered with me, looking moderately grumpy, and sized me up.

One: "Where are you from?"
Me: "Take a guess."
Him: "Turkey."
Me: "Damn, you're good. My family is Turkish but I grew up in Germany."

The other guy responds: "Ah laber, ich komm aus Tübingen." - in flawless German.

All three studied in Germany. One of them in Tübingen. One still lives in Germany. One ended up on my flight back to Frankfurt two days later. They paid my entry, paid my beers. We hit the next club, did karaoke from 4 to 6:30 AM. I walked home in broad daylight.

Mongolia: underrated.

03 Founder, or just unemployed?

A more honest one.

Depending on the angle, I'm either building my own business or I'm an unemployed guy with vibes and a mild mix of delusion and anxiety. Same coin, two sides. I tell people I'm a founder and I genuinely mean it — but I haven't made a single euro yet, my software has no paying customer, and over the past four weeks I haven't put a single hour into the actual product because I've been wrapping up Shenzhen, traveling, moving across the planet.

This phase is, I'm told, the emotionally hardest one. You're working towards something that doesn't yet exist while confidently telling people it does. Some days I wake up and think: dude, you've been on this for seven months, where's the customer? Other days I look back and think: I've been learning the fundamentals — exploring, pivoting, vibe-coding software, talking to dozens of potential customers, figuring out how this whole thing actually works. Both are true at the same time.

I pivoted recently too, because external regulation shifted who my customer is, so I've only had five conversations with the new target group. I'm restarting in slow motion.

I have real signal though: I'm soon meeting with one strong lead to negotiate a pilot. If that goes well, we'll have a verbal agreement and a real user testing my software. The next weeks might actually be the time I make deal #1.

I almost got my first customer. Almost. The joke writes itself.

04 Random

• Chiang Mai (five days, scouting it as a possible move later this year): world capital of digital nomads, cheap as hell — €2 for a fat portion of pad thai plus a fresh mango juice. Mental. Three of my five days hit Songkran, which is Thai New Year. It's basically Cologne Carnival with water guns and strangers rubbing white powder in your face. I arrived in the middle of the night with my luggage and laptop, and was soaking wet within minutes cause 500 drunk backpackers were doing water fights with the not-so-clean water from the local river. I was collateral damage on the way to my hostel. Things were closed for days. I gave up and went with it. I went solo to a 10,000-person street concert, with almost all people being locals. Thai people know how to party. The most impressive person I met: a Dutch guy ten years older, super chill. I smiled at him, asked to chat for five minutes, talked for over an hour. His company did €80M in revenue last year. You'd never guess. Likely back in October.
• Shenzhen goodbye: thirty-something people at a fancy outdoor bar, karaoke after. It was a bit less emotional than I expected. I move so much you just get used to it. Then I flew back from Thailand for a few surprise hours on campus. Probably my favorite night of the whole month. To all of you Shenzhen people reading this: You folks are amazing, it's been a killer time with you all <3
• A beer that might lead somewhere: after the alumni talks in Beijing I ended up having beers with a random alumnus. Chill guy, easy energy, I had no idea who he was. I asked him my usual question: "What's the most annoying part of your job?" We talked for a while. I asked if I could help. He seemed genuinely interested. I looked him up the next morning, and it turns out he's significantly more senior than I'd assumed. Might lead somewhere, might not. Point is: just ask. Costs nothing, and the downside is exactly zero.
• The translation gig nobody asked for: in Beijing I did a product testing session for a Chinese diabetes sensor. The user manuals were badly written. Grammar mistakes, weird phrasing, unprofessional. So I offered the director: I can fix that. My family's run a translation agency for 40+ years, my sister's a professional designer, I'm an engineer. He says he has waaay too many clients who'd need it. Same move, different context.
• Germany feels like a miniature museum: "damn, it's old here" was my first thought landing in Frankfurt. After Shenzhen, those Frankfurt skyscrapers I once found impressive now look... cute. Germany is also super old as a population. I saw a tourist rickshaw the other day, with an old guy pedaling, and two old people in the back. Compare that to Uzbekistan last year, where Simon, Jakob and I noticed in the subway that literally everyone was our age. Also, my screen time halved in the first week back here. Nobody's on their phone, people are walking, biking, taking care of plants on balconies. I keep wandering around Hamburg like I'm in a miniature museum, observing tiny humans doing tiny mundane things. I'm dying, it's so cute. In China the language barrier had turned most strangers into NPCs for me, so my brain literally filtered them out. Here everyone's relatable again. I feel calmer than I've felt in months.

05 What's next + how to find me

• Hamburg, May–July. Hit me up if you're around. Coffee, beer, walk, anything.
• Maybe back to Asia in October, probably Chiang Mai for 2-3 months. Depends on money.
• I'm still broke. A broke motherfucker, to be precise. My scholarship kicks in this fall, cause German bureaucracy is infamously slow. Until then I take freelance / part-time / under-the-table / whatever. Business, consulting, vibe-coding, tiling floors, serving matcha lattes — I'm a beast at everything, people tell me. Refer me, hire me, donate to me (but only cash pls).
• Reply to this email. A sentence is enough. Even just a humble "Alper, I love you, you are the most awesome mofo in human history!" works, then I know you read it.
• Newsletter name? Still nameless. Send ideas (in English now).
• Friends I should add? Drop me their email. Rule of thumb: if I've ever done something one-on-one with them, send them over.

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Love you guys.

Alper

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