Sora Kalden · galaxy

Solo founder · builder · maker of too many things

Sora Kalden

I build apps and businesses, write worlds, run games, and learn hard things in 30-day sprints — and I'm looking for talented, curious people to make the next ones with.

Here are a few of mine. Scroll to scatter the light into clusters, then step into one and let's build the next one together.

Pick a skill, go all-in for 30 days · the domains change, the method doesn't

Pull a thread

Eight overlapping sides of the same person — and the things that ship.

The light scattered into clusters. Each one is a world I live in; the bright core is what I'm building. Tap a star to fly in and read it.

And some things I do purely for myself — painting like no one will ever see it, building and painting Gundam kits, singing in the mornings, the occasional cosplay. No goal. Just the doing.

The best things in my life started as a five-hour conversation with a stranger.

© 2026 Sora Kalden · legally Swarnim Kalbande · [email protected]

scatter
Sora Kalden · galaxy

Solo founder · builder · maker of too many things

Sora Kalden

I build apps and businesses, write worlds, run games, and learn hard things in 30-day sprints — and I'm looking for talented, curious people to make the next ones with.

Here are a few of mine. Scroll through, and let's build the next one together.

The nucleus

Building

~160 ideas and counting — and the ones that ship.

Flua — the lead

The fastest honest path to a new language: one expertly-ordered deck, real native audio, and spaced repetition that does the thinking for you. He taught himself Japanese to A1 in ~20 focused hours, then spent a year building the app that strips out every ounce of the friction that makes people quit. tryflua.com →

Weave

A minimalist weight-and-habit tracker built so the graph does the nagging. His mom lost 17 lbs with it.

Super Zen

A focus / calm tool — the small, well-made kind of app he likes to ship.

Small tools

A metronome that actually feels good; a tool to find the episode where a show finally gets good.

The idea engine

~160 catalogued app, game, business, book and product ideas — each ranked, named and MVP-scoped; roughly 28 are games — and a habit of turning the best ones into real, shipped things. more apps at kalden.me →

Pull a thread

The eight sides

Eight overlapping sides of the same person — current and future, shown not stated.

01 · The Maker

Find it, then build the honest version

Apps, ~160 ideas, and the one move underneath all of them: find the right thing to build, then build the honest version. The domains change; the method doesn't.

The domains change. The method doesn't.— from the notes

02 · Worlds & Stories

Worlds since he was 11

A fantasy novel he faked his way into finishing and published at 14, a 150k-word dark epic in progress (The Swords of Darkness), a homebrew D&D world with its own playbook, and a manga he still wants to make.

Because I had to fake progress, I accidentally built a real habit. It makes me wonder how many things we could actually finish if we just tricked ourselves into starting.— on the teen novel

03 · Learning & Teaching

The 30-day method

How he learns anything fast — pick a skill, go all-in for 30 days, refuse to start until the common advice is proven wrong, then build the shortest honest path and let sleep do the heavy lifting. And the courses he wishes someone had taught him: math and computational thinking for real understanding.

Being called smart my whole childhood made it part of my identity — and I was more afraid to lose that title than I was to fail a class.— About Me

04 · Games & the Table

Take a system apart, build it back better

A Balatro-inspired dice roguelike in design, a board game in progress, and D&D run as systems — 100+ hours behind the screen.

Any time the best strategy isn't the most fun strategy is, I believe, a failure of the game's design.— from my consumables essay

05 · The Modern Bard

A voice rebuilt on purpose

Singing, standup, improv, voice acting, speaking — the half of himself he rebuilt on purpose, charisma treated as a built skill.

I could not sing. I could not dress well. I was not particularly fit or especially charismatic. I was a very well-compensated specialist with a B-minus in everything else.— how I became superhuman in 2 years

06 · Photography & the eye

One camera, one prime, golden hour

He shoots portraits, fits, and the cities he lives in — the visual half of the same brain that obsesses over color grading and type.

You can't study the color wheel for two hours and understand it. You have to train your eye over a long time.— on color

07 · The Athlete

The body as a build

The same engine he points at apps, pointed at his own body — and the sports (soccer, badminton, volleyball) that are how he makes friends in a new city.

Prioritize control and intention over speed.— his own soccer training notes

08 · The Mind

Read to build, not to collect

A reading life run like a syllabus — philosophy, history, business — all read through one lens.

Everything is interconnected. Singing makes you a better speaker; games train you to perform under pressure. Each skill feeds the next. If you want to be truly unstoppable, learn everything.— from the notes

Writing · ideas, not portfolio

The essays

Distinct from the work — ideas, not portfolio.

How I Learn Anything in 30 Days

Not willpower — a method: find where the common advice is wrong, build a feedback loop, and let sleep do the heavy lifting.

The year I walked away from $250k

At my financial peak I was lonelier than I'd ever been — so I quit, lost almost everything, and spent a year figuring out what a life is for.

What Actually Makes D&D Peak

After 100+ hours behind the screen, the magic isn't the dice or the lore — it's a handful of frameworks for a world that's already moving when players walk in.

Why the best schools taught me to forget

I optimized for the grade at every school I attended, and it worked — which is exactly the problem.

I Used My CS Degree to Debug My Weight Loss

I'd done everything right for six months and the scale wouldn't move — until I stopped treating it like willpower and started treating it like a bug.

Beyond the ring

Things I haven't built yet

01

Write a TV show — he's watched thousands of hours of film and anime, only the best, mostly to take apart why they work.

02

Finish the manga — the "next Death Note or Game of Thrones": a complex plot that's somehow easy to follow.

03

Make Westworld real, as a game you can actually live inside.

04

Open a café that's a third place for serious makers — writers, artists, builders, one room.

05

Find the talented, curious people he'd do all of the above with.

For myself

The quiet line

And some things I do purely for myself — painting like no one will ever see it, building and painting Gundam kits, singing in the mornings, the occasional cosplay. No goal. Just the doing.

Let's build something

I'm looking for people who are excellent at something and curious about everything.

Collaborators, co-conspirators, friends. If any of these worlds is also yours — or you just want to scheme — say hi. The best things in my life started as a five-hour first conversation with a stranger.

← sorakalden.com