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
The nucleus · what ships
Building
~160 ideas and counting — and the ones that ship. The bright core of the galaxy: a lead product, a few shipped things, and the engine that keeps making more.
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 with the method, 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. The invitation is open: grab one off the shelf and build it with me.
more apps at kalden.me →
Side 01 · the through-line
The Maker
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.
Every project starts the same way — not with grinding harder, but with refusing to start until he's found where the common advice is wrong, then building the shortest honest path to the thing. Flua, Weave, Super Zen, a metronome that feels good: different surfaces, one engine underneath.
What he wants to do next is more of it, with better people — pulling the best of ~160 catalogued ideas off the shelf and shipping the honest version.
The domains change. The method doesn't.
— from the notes
Side 02 · invented worlds
Worlds & Stories
He's built 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.
The teen novel was the accident that taught him everything: forced to fake progress chapter by chapter, he built a habit that outlasted the book. Now there's a sprawling dark epic underway and a homebrew table-world with its own rules — the manga is still on the list.
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
Side 03 · learning & teaching
Learning & Teaching
How he learns anything fast, and why he's building the courses he wishes someone had taught him — math, statistical and computational thinking, built for real understanding instead of the exam.
The method · the 30-day sprint
Pick a skill, go all-in for 30 days. Japanese to A1 in ~20 focused hours. Tone-deaf to singing from memory in a month. Badminton, YouTube, shipping. The trick isn't grinding harder — it's refusing to start until he's found where the common advice is wrong, then building the shortest honest path and letting sleep do the heavy lifting.
Teaching is the same instinct pointed outward: build the explanation he wishes he'd been given, for real understanding rather than the test.
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
Side 04 · games & the table
Games & the Table
Take a system apart, find the fun, build it back better — a Balatro-inspired dice roguelike in design, a board game in progress, and D&D run as systems.
The table, hand-built
100+ hours behind the screen, a homebrew world drawn by hand and run like a living system — not a script, but a place that's already moving when players walk in.
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
Side 05 · the modern bard
The Modern Bard
Singing, standup, improv, voice acting, speaking — the half of himself he rebuilt on purpose, charisma treated as a built skill.
None of it was natural. It was a deliberate project: take the parts of a person that get called "talent," treat them as trainable, and put in the reps. What he wants next is to keep widening that range — the stage half of the same builder.
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
Side 06 · photography & the eye
Photography & the eye
One camera, a single 23mm prime, golden hour. He shoots portraits, fits, and the cities he lives in — and it's the visual half of the same brain that obsesses over color grading and type.
Portraits, fits, and the cities I've lived in — Osaka, Tokyo, Kōyasan, Budapest, Lisbon, Nagpur. One camera, a single prime, natural light, graded by hand.
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
Side 07 · the athlete
The Athlete
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.
Training is just another system to debug: measure, find the real bottleneck, build the shortest honest path. The sports are also the social door — the fastest way into a new city is a pickup game.
Prioritize control and intention over speed.
— his own soccer training notes
Side 08 · the mind & the writing
The Mind
A reading life run like a syllabus — philosophy, history, business — all read through one lens: read to build, not to collect.
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
Distinct from the work — ideas, not portfolio. Five essays orbiting this region:
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
Dreams
A faint halo past the clusters — five things still out there in the dark.
01Write a TV show — he's watched thousands of hours of film and anime, only the best, mostly to take apart why they work.
02Finish the manga — the "next Death Note or Game of Thrones": a complex plot that's somehow easy to follow.
03Make Westworld real, as a game you can actually live inside.
04Open a café that's a third place for serious makers — writers, artists, builders, one room.
05Find the talented, curious people he'd do all of the above with.
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.
© 2026 Sora Kalden · Sora Kalden is the name I go by. Legally, Swarnim Kalbande. · [email protected]