How I Learned to Build Businesses the Pragmatic Way
At Engycs, our philosophy is simple: ideas mean nothing until they’re tested in the real world. That mindset wasn’t born overnight. It came from years of trial and error, and a lot of scrappy experimentation.
Let me take you back to one of my earliest ventures: a marketplace for halal restaurants and stores in the Netherlands and Belgium.
Starting with the Problem
Friends and family often complained about not knowing where to find halal food when traveling to cities like Antwerp, Eindhoven and Rotterdam. So I asked the simplest question: Would you actually use a platform to solve this?
The answer was yes.
Then I went a step further and spoke to restaurant owners. What I learned was just as important: most of them had no digital presence. No website, missing menus, outdated Facebook pages. That meant I wasn’t just solving a consumer problem, but also a business problem.
Building Fast
I didn’t wait months to build a custom platform. I opened WordPress, installed a premium listing plugin, and created an MVP in days.
Then I hit the streets. Laptop under my arm, I went restaurant to restaurant. I demoed the platform live, took pictures, uploaded menus, and showed them their listing on the spot.
And here’s the key: I started charging immediately. €100/year for a subscription. Owners paid. That was my first real sign of market fit.
The Mistakes
Of course, I made plenty of mistakes:
- Doing everything myself — sales, photography, data entry. Totally unsustainable.
- Pricing too low — €100/year validated the idea but left no room to scale.
- No long-term product plan — the MVP worked, but I didn’t plan the next phase.
Those mistakes were painful, but they were also the best teachers.
The Lessons I Still Use at Engycs
- Validation starts with people. Ask real users and customers before building.
- An MVP must be real. It doesn’t need to be pretty, but it must work.
- Cash is the signal. Nothing validates an idea more than someone paying for it.
- Pragmatism beats perfection. Progress > polish.
From Halal Finder to Engycs
That experience shaped the way I now build at Engycs. Today, we help companies adopt AI in the same pragmatic way:
- Start small with internal prototypes.
- Test fast with real users.
- Scale only when there’s proof.
Because at the end of the day, building a business isn’t about how big you can dream. It’s about how quickly you can turn an idea into something real and learn if people will pay for it.
That’s how I learned to stop wasting time, energy, and money. And that’s exactly the DNA of Engycs.
Curious how we can help your company adopt AI the pragmatic way?
