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 Maker · what ships
Building
~160 ideas and counting — and the ones that ship.
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 idea engine: ~160 catalogued app, game, business, book and product ideas — each ranked, named and MVP-scoped, roughly 28 of them games — and a habit of turning the best ones into real, shipped things. Grab one off the shelf and build it with me. More apps live at kalden.me ↗.
The breadth · 1 of 8
Worlds & Stories
Fiction and lore he's been building since he was eleven.
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.
"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
The breadth · 2 of 8
Learning & Teaching
How he learns anything fast — and the courses he wishes he'd been taught.
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.
"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
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.
The breadth · 3 of 8
Games & the Table
Take a system apart, find the fun, build it back better.
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.
"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
The breadth · 4 of 8
The Modern Bard
Charisma treated as a built skill, not a gift.
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
The breadth · 5 of 8
Photography & the eye
One camera, a single 23mm prime, golden hour.
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.
"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
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.
The breadth · 6 of 8
The Athlete
The same engine he points at apps, pointed at his own body.
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
The breadth · 7 of 8
The Mind
A reading life run like a syllabus — read to build, not to collect.
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
The journal · ideas, not portfolio
Writing
Distinct from the work — ideas, not portfolio.
Things I haven't built yet
Dreams
The next constellation — not yet flown.
- i.Write a TV show — he's watched thousands of hours of film and anime, only the best, mostly to take apart why they work.
- ii.Finish the manga — the "next Death Note or Game of Thrones": a complex plot that's somehow easy to follow.
- iii.Make Westworld real, as a game you can actually live inside.
- iv.Open a café that's a third place for serious makers — writers, artists, builders, one room.
- v.Find the people he'd do all of the above with.
Let's build something
Connect
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.
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.