The Engineer Before the Founder
Story 1 was about consistency.
Story 2 is about capability formation—before titles, before companies, before visibility.
Before Napblog.
Before NapOS.
Before “Founder & CEO.”
There was engineering work that never went viral, never raised funding, and never had an audience—yet quietly built the operating discipline that everything else stands on today.
The Phase Most People Never See
Between 2017 and 2019, my life was not about startups.
It was about:
- Mechanical drawings that didn’t work the first time
- Fabrication errors
- Cost sheets written in notebooks
- Motors that overheated
- Calculations redone at 2 a.m.
- Projects submitted without certainty of validation
While blogging trained my thinking, engineering trained my patience.
This was the period where execution mattered more than expression.
Tracer Arm Machine (TAM): Not a College Project
TAM—Tracer Arm Machine—was not built to impress evaluators.
It was built to solve a personal performance problem.
I was a cricket player.
I needed repetition.
I needed precision.
I couldn’t afford imported bowling machines.
So I did what engineers do when systems don’t exist:
I designed one.
From concept to fabrication, TAM was executed as a full-stack mechanical system:
- Design
- Calculations
- Material selection
- Fabrication
- Testing
- Feedback loops
- Cost estimation
No outsourcing.
No shortcuts.
The result was India’s first fully indigenous, low-cost tracer arm bowling machine, capable of delivering variable pace, swing, spin, and bounce—designed to be adjustable for users aged 8 to 50 Pugazh Story 2 .
This wasn’t innovation theatre.
It was applied engineering under constraint.
Why Manufacturing, Not Software (At the Time)
I chose manufacturing deliberately.
Not because it was easy.
Because it was unforgiving.
Manufacturing exposes reality:
- If tolerances are wrong, nothing fits
- If calculations are off, systems fail
- If cost control is weak, the product dies
There is no abstraction layer to hide behind.
That period trained something critical:
respect for systems that must work in the real world.
This mindset later became foundational to how NapOS is designed:
- Systems must compound
- Interfaces must be usable
- Outputs must be measurable
- Cost must be justified
Those principles did not come from startup books.
They came from machines that either worked—or didn’t.
Early Entrepreneurial Thinking (Before the Word Meant Anything)
The IIT Madras bootcamp application captured something important—not ambition, but intent clarity.
Even then, the goal was explicit:
- Reduce India’s dependency on imported systems
- Build affordable tools for underrepresented users
- Design systems that evolve monthly based on user feedback
The TAM roadmap already included:
- Modular components
- User-driven modification
- Continuous iteration
In hindsight, this was product thinking—long before software entered the picture.
Research, Not Just Fabrication
Alongside fabrication, I was writing.
Not blogs—but academic research:
- Industry 5.0
- Personal product-based manufacturing
- Human-centric industrial systems
The theme was consistent:
Systems should adapt to individuals, not force individuals to adapt to systems.
This idea later became core to NapOS:
- Students build proof, not resumes
- Learning compounds into output
- Systems evolve with the user
The philosophy was already forming—years before the platform existed.
What This Phase Really Built
This chapter didn’t build a company.
It built operating credibility.
It trained:
- Long-horizon thinking
- Tolerance for slow progress
- Respect for fundamentals
- Obsession with execution
- Comfort with being invisible
Most importantly, it built the ability to stay consistent without external validation.
That is the real compounding advantage.
Why Story 2 Matters
Many people meet founders at the visibility stage.
They rarely see the capability stage.
Story 2 exists to document that:
- Napblog did not emerge from inspiration
- NapOS did not come from trends
- Leadership was trained, not declared
Before I built platforms, I built machines.
Before I built audiences, I built discipline.
Before I built systems for others, I learned to operate one myself.
Story 3 will cover the transition
—from engineering systems to writing systems
—from individual execution to public accountability
—from projects to platforms.
This is not nostalgia.
This is architectural history.
Because systems make sense only when you know what they were built on.