This is the first post in a series I call **Building Akordium Lab** - monthly dispatches on building a software company out of Surabaya, written as I go, not after the victory lap. Why write in public? Two reasons. First, I learn best by writing: if it is not documented, the experience simply evaporates. Second, I envy the folks building small businesses out in the open: open startups, indie hackers, developers selling their own products. They own their narrative and community. I want that too, in my own version. Oh, and one disclaimer: this series is not a success story. It is a process log. The numbers and conclusions here might be wrong, and part of the fun later on will be rereading these posts a year from now while shaking my head. ## Why Start I am a backend developer. My day-to-day work involves PHP/Laravel, increasingly more Go, PostgreSQL, and systems that must stay alive around the clock, including a GPS tracking system handling vehicle locations for thousands of units every day. Work I genuinely enjoy. Yet the career pattern of "project comes in -> build it -> ship it -> gone" began feeling wasteful. Every project produces hard-won knowledge - architecture decisions, trade-offs, mistakes, how to fix an incident at 2 AM - and all of it evaporates the moment the contract closes. One unit of work, one output. No compounding assets. So I designed Akordium Lab around a single principle: **one piece of work must produce multiple assets.** A client project should yield articles, libraries, templates, case studies, and, when feasible, products. Out of everything I have planned for the next 12 months, this is the one non-negotiable rule. ## What Is on the Table (September 2026) To keep things honest, here is the baseline inventory - the state of affairs at the end of September 2026, right as this content strategy kicked off: **Already live:** - **[akordium.id](https://akordium.id)** - the company landing page, listing services and portfolio. - **najib.id** - this personal blog. Two content tracks are currently in flight: the [Hijrah Backend narrative series](/en/writing/2026/hijrah-backend-01/) (a 9-episode story migrating 370+ endpoints) that just came out, and the [GPS Backend tutorial series](/en/writing/2026/memahami-gps-protocol/) kicking off this week; the rest is a mix of older posts (2019-2023) and a few other 2026 pieces. - **Several internal products** at varying stages, ranging from tools in active use to concepts that exist only as business design documents. - **DukunGPS** - an open-core GPS tracking platform plan that I take most seriously: the business design was finished and approved in July 2026, waiting on execution. Its foundation is the production GPS fleet tracking experience I share in the [GPS Backend series](/en/writing/2026/memahami-gps-protocol/). **Freshly organized this month:** - **Internal documentation system** (HQ) - a single home for SOPs, product specs, and content strategy. Previously scattered across chats, memory, and random docs. - **12-week content roadmap** - GPS Backend Series as the flagship, AI workflow articles, and this Building Akordium Lab series. - **GPS series master doc** - all technical material for the GPS series compiled into one single source of truth before being split into articles. Like I said: one unit of work, multiple assets. **Not yet there:** a steady readership (newsletter/RSS subscribers are still in the single digits), product revenue (still zero - development consulting services keep the lights on), and name recognition beyond my immediate circle. ## Guiding Principles Three decisions that might differ from typical software agencies: 1. **Backend first, keep it simple first.** Go + PostgreSQL + modular monolith. No microservices on day one, no Kubernetes out of FOMO. Complexity is bought when needed, not when trendy - a lesson carried over from the production system migrations I write about on this blog. 2. **Open core for products.** DukunGPS is modeled after Traccar: open source core (Apache 2.0), paid enterprise features. Open source becomes the engine for trust and distribution, not a CSR gesture. 3. **Write everything down.** Every architectural decision, every solved problem, every mistake. The personal blog serves as the authority engine, akordium.id as the conversion engine. They feed each other rather than compete. ## 12-Month Targets To keep myself accountable, I broke down the targets into measurable milestones: | Target | Metric | | --- | --- | | GPS Backend Series completed + compiled into an ebook | 6+ articles, 1 lead magnet ebook | | Content published consistently | adheres to roadmap, no gap > 2 weeks | | Newsletter gains its first core readership | 50 subscribers | | DukunGPS crosses Phase 0-1 milestone | open-source core repo released + early community | | Contributors/leads generated from content | prospective client mentions "read the blog first" | What I am **not** targeting in these 12 months: product revenue replacing consulting services. Realistically, that takes 2-3 years. This year is about building assets and distribution. ## Mistakes This Month Yesterday's content planning session almost produced a funny little accident: my AI assistant and I almost **rewrote an article that had already been written** - an old draft sat quietly in a folder without either of us remembering it. Not just once, almost twice. The takeaway: unwritten memory does not exist. Now all content plans live in a single roadmap with per-article status tracking, plus cross-session memory for the AI assistant. Very meta, but the principle "document it or lose it" proved true even for the documentation process itself. ## Metrics to Report Monthly Every Building Akordium Lab post will report the same set of metrics so progress can be compared over time: 1. Published content vs planned 2. Product progress (DukunGPS and companions) 3. Subscribers/traffic 4. One mistake + one lesson learned 5. Key decisions made that month I will hold off on financial figures for now - there is nothing exciting to share yet, and I have not decided how open I want to be on that front. We will see. --- That is the starting baseline. The desk is cleared, the roadmap is written, and the GPS series starts publishing next week. If you are building something too - a product, an agency, anything - I would love to hear your story. [Reach out here](/en/contact/), or follow along via [RSS](/en/writing/index.xml). Next month: the first report. Cheers.