Twelve Years and a Fancy Pen

In my last week at SoftwareSeni, I wrote this in my journal:

Take a note of what Davo does. Buy fancy pen to sign. It shows power.

A few lines further down the same page, timestamped, it says: 8:50: Buy pen.

That’s the whole entry. No reflection or follow-up, nothing about whether the pen worked. After twelve years of watching one man run a company, the lesson I’d chosen to act on, with one day to spare, was stationery.

I’d like to say there was more to it, and there was. But I did buy the pen.

Employee number thirteen

In 2013 Mas Surya offered me a job at a small software company in Yogyakarta. I still count my lucky stars over that day. I was one of about twenty people, and I was the thirteenth to be hired, which I’ve since decided is a lucky number, because the alternative is that it isn’t.

The office was in the old Dagadu building. There were no policies yet. Some people came in at eight and some at eleven, and nobody wrote down which was correct. My title was Product Manager for Villalet, a holiday-rental product, and my qualifications were a degree in economics and a lot of confidence about websites.

SoftwareSeni existed because of two Australians, Davo and Ryan. They’d been building hospitality software back home, couldn’t find a team, and did what anyone would do. They looked at the map for the nearest country with good engineers and found us. The company was built at first to make their own products, Agentpoint and Villalet. Then it began making other people’s products, and then it grew in ways none of us planned.

In my first year I was asked to interview candidates. I had never interviewed anyone in my life. I put my Google-fu to work, searched for “candidate interview assessment”, found a framework, changed a few words, and presented it. My boss was very impressed. I’ve told that story at a lot of new-hire meetings since, and the lesson I give is about learning fast. The real lesson is that the internet was already full of good ideas and I was the only one at the table who’d bothered to look.

Decipher email from Davo

My journals from those years are full of one recurring task, timestamped like a meeting:

10:16 Decipher email from Davo.

11:18 Decipher email from Davo.

Davo wrote short emails. Very short. Sometimes one line, sometimes a question with no question mark. For years I read them the way people read poetry they suspect is about them. What does he mean by “ok”? Is “ok” good? Is “ok?” worse?

It took me an embarrassingly long time to learn that Davo didn’t care much for the story. He cared about the plan. If I walked into a meeting with a story, I got questions. If I walked in with a plan, I got almost nothing, which I eventually understood was the highest praise available. When I was well prepared, he barely commented at all. I spent about a decade trying to earn his silence.

He also had a word I stole. When he talked to clients he never said “we hope”, “we’ll try” or “we think”. He said confident. “We are confident this will be at the level you need.” I started using it in 2016 and haven’t stopped. It’s a dangerous word if you don’t mean it, which I think was his point.

One desk, six people

By 2016 I was general manager and we were in Pakuningratan No.15, a small colonial house with nowhere near enough room. At one point there were about ninety of us. One long desk was shared by six people, and if you pushed your chair back you hit the person behind you, who would then push back, and so on, like a very slow Newton’s cradle.

There was a ping-pong table in a room so narrow you couldn’t step backwards, only sideways. This is how I became notoriously brutal at ping-pong. When you can’t retreat, you learn to attack. There was also Mario Kart, a PlayStation, and later, God help us, Mobile Legends. Someone stuck a quote from Dwight Schrute on the office wall. It was me. I’ve written about it.

That year Davo and Ryan asked me to forecast how many people we’d need. I drew a graph. Two years later I showed them the same graph. We’d hit it every year since. I don’t think anyone was more surprised than I was.

By 2019 I was a director, the office was a former car dealership on Jl Magelang, and we were building a lot of software you’ll never hear about that quietly keeps a payroll running somewhere.

We also made mistakes. In 2020 we let go of ten good people, and that’s still the hardest thing I’ve done at work. In 2024 I wrote about how our whole industry, us included, grew too fast during COVID. I said that in public. I stand by it. I learned it at SoftwareSeni, and that’s to its credit. It was the kind of company where you were allowed to say so.

Unusually ethical

I wrote this in my journal once, years ago, about the two men I worked for:

I have Davo, who is unusually ethical. And Ryan, who is unusually crafty.

I meant both as the highest compliment. Between them I learned most of what I know. Ryan could see a way through a problem before the rest of us had finished describing it, and he taught me that resourcefulness is a kind of respect for other people’s money. Davo taught me that how you get through matters as much as getting through.

I’ve tried to describe Davo’s integrity to people who never met him and it always comes out sounding like a eulogy, which he’d hate. So here’s how I wrote it to myself: Thank you, Davo, for having an irrationally high integrity. That is one thing that somehow I have as well. “Irrationally” is the right word. As far as I could ever tell, he did the honest thing even when it was going to cost him and nobody would have noticed. I’ve been around business long enough to know how rare that is. It’s rarer than talent, and much rarer than people who say they have it.

He trusted me to run a company. He trusted me more than I trusted myself, and for longer. Twelve years is a long time to keep betting on someone.

The last day

In 2025 it was time for me to build something of my own. SoftwareSeni and I parted the way you’d hope a long thing ends: slowly, carefully, and with a board meeting.

My last day was 28 November. I logged it hour by hour, partly out of habit and partly because I suspected I’d want this one later.

At 05:05 I wrote: This is my last day in SoftwareSeni. Hehehehehe. So let’s make it amazing. I then gave myself sixteen deliverables to finish in eight hours, a target I described in the same entry as impossible. I’ve been setting impossible targets on deadline days since 2013. It’s the only tradition I’ve kept without trying.

At 06:07 I dropped Zia at school, and at the gate she said, “Thank you, Bapak.” She meant for the ride. I took it to mean everything.

At 07:30 I walked to get coffee and bought one for Mas Aries. Halfway through the morning I had an appointment that needed a better shirt than the one I was wearing, so on my last day as a director I drove home to change my clothes. Then there was a lunch with the management team, and then Novemberfest, our annual party, at the Sahid. People shouted “SOFTWARESENI!” and other people shouted back. I’d led that chant for years. That night I just stood there and let it happen to me.

At 22:00, on the way home, I stopped for a jasuke: corn, cheese and a heroic amount of margarine. The man selling it was from Bima. He told me he was in his seventh semester of law school. I wrote this about him, and I’ll leave it as I wrote it:

I hope he finds confidence in life. And will be able to get a lucky break.

I knew where that sentence came from. In 2013 I was a man with an economics degree, very few prospects and a great deal of confidence about websites, and somebody gave me a lucky break. Then an Australian who wrote one-line emails kept giving it to me every year for twelve years.

At 22:16 I got home. Surprised that everyone is still at home, I wrote. Gita and the two little civets had stayed up to congratulate me.

Roll call

A few days later I sat down and wrote Davo and Ryan a thank-you email. This essay is a longer version of it.

There are too many people to thank, and I’m bad with names, which everyone who worked with me already knows. I’m going to try anyway, because remembering a name is the cheapest form of love and I owe a lot of it. To Mas Surya, who opened the door. To Ryan, for always seeing the way through. To Dion, who is still putting up with me, now at Synetica. To Gita, who was my colleague at SoftwareSeni too, and who waited up for me on the last night. To Heryno, Adryn, Kartika, Riana, Mel and Ariefah. To Lutvi, who was there before I knew what I was doing. To Ade, Adi, Alfian, Alun, Amalya, Ananto, Anas, Andi, Andry, Angela, Angelia, Anjas, Anthonius, Anton, Ari, Arif, Aris, Arzy, Asep, Bahari, Bayu, Beta, Beta Sekar, Billy, Buntoro, Cita, Claudia, Daniel, David, Della, Deus, Devi, Dima, Dita, Dito, Dodi, Dyas, Edim, Eko, Erli, Esha, Faisal, Fajar, Fajr, Fandi, Fandy, Farah, Fendy, Fidel, Freydika, Ganda, Gigih, Gio, Guntur, Henry, Hestin, Ian, Ines, Intan, Irfan, Irwan, Joko, Jony, Juwari, Larno, Leo, Lyle, Mami, Marcellius, Melati, Mila, Nasser, Natalia, Nico, Nobsi, Nurul, Obet, Olin, Pamela, Paska, Pram, Prisantya, Raras, Rega, Rekyan, Ricko, Ricky, Ridwan Fox, Rini, Risca, Romi, Rudi, Rykky, Salim, Sam, Sanjaya, Santo, Sari, Septian, Setya, Simon, Stella, Stevani, Teo, Ucup, Ulin, Verdian, Vina, Vinsen, Virgi, Yanuar, Yogi, Yohana. To Galih, and Galih, and Galih, and the other Galih, and every Galih still to come; there was a stretch when it was safest to assume any new hire was called Galih. To everyone who shared a desk with five other people and never once complained to me directly, which I now realise was its own act of kindness.

And to the few who taught us, mostly by example, what we didn’t want to become. I’m grateful for that lesson too. It was expensive, and we only needed it once.

And to Davo.

I once wrote that I hope I can become someone like you someday, someone who can bring a healthy economy to the people around him. That’s still the plan. You always wanted to know the plan.

All the good things that have happened to me in the last twelve years happened because, by some dumb luck, I met you. I’ll be in your debt forever, and I’m confident about that.

I bought the pen. I still don’t hold it the way you do. I’m working on it.