My Wake-Up Call (and Why It Matters to You)

The Moment Everything Changed

Picture this: a dusty corporate boardroom somewhere in Asia, circa 2021. I’m sitting through yet another PowerPoint presentation about “digital transformation” – complete with the obligatory stock photos of people pointing at screens and looking inexplicably delighted about pie charts.

Everyone in the room is nodding sagely, as if we’re not all thinking the same thing: this isn’t going to happen, is it? I’d landed a contract as Chief Digital Officer for an Asian conglomerate. Nice title, decent money, but the reality was watching billion-dollar companies move at the speed of continental drift while the world outside sprinted ahead like it was late for the last train home.

That’s when it hit me. I had a choice: stay comfortable watching the world leave us behind, or step out into the uncertainty and actually help build the future instead of just talking about it in meetings that could’ve been emails. I chose door number two. Though as you’ll see, it wasn’t exactly a straight line from A to B. More like A to Q via the scenic route through several spectacular failures.

— Keith de Alwis

The Blue-Chip Years: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Process

Let’s rewind to the beginning. I started my career doing what any sensible British graduate does: found a nice, safe corporate job with a blue-chip company in the UK. Good salary, pension scheme, and the kind of job security that makes your parents beam with pride at dinner parties.

For over a decade, I climbed those corporate ladders, learned the ancient art of stakeholder management, and became fluent in corporate speak. I could navigate office politics, survive budget meetings, and even occasionally get things done despite the best efforts of multiple steering committees.

Don’t get me wrong – I learned valuable skills. How to manage large teams, structure complex projects, and most importantly, how to spot when a meeting could’ve been resolved with a five-minute phone call (spoiler: it’s about 80% of them).

But somewhere between my fifteenth quarterly review and what felt like my thousandth “strategic alignment session,” I realized something: I wasn’t built for a life of incremental change measured in decimal points.

The entrepreneurial itch was getting harder to ignore. It was like having a mosquito bite you can’t quite reach – annoying at first, then absolutely maddening.

The Great Escape: From Meetings to Mayhem

So I did what any rational person does when faced with a comfortable, predictable future: I threw it all away and jumped into entrepreneurship.

Leaving corporate life was like stepping off a cliff while hoping you’d packed a parachute. Terrifying, yes, but also the most liberating thing I’d ever done. No more asking permission to innovate. No more death-by-PowerPoint. No more pretending that “leveraging synergies” means anything beyond sounding important in presentations.

I co-founded ventures, dove headfirst into the early mobile app boom (remember when “there’s an app for that” was still novel?), and eventually found myself in Bangladesh – a country of 160+ million people with challenges that make British complaints about train delays seem rather quaint.

Working in health tech and digital platforms there was intense in the best possible way. We were building fast, breaking things (sometimes spectacularly), fixing them faster, and scaling products to millions of users. When your digital platform is literally helping save lives, suddenly every bug fix feels like it actually matters.

I raised millions in capital for the startups I was involved with. Some returned handsome profits. Others died deaths so spectacular they could’ve won awards for creative failure. Such is the entrepreneurial life – you celebrate the wins and learn expensive lessons from everything else.

Freedom: The Real Goal All Along

But here’s what really pulled me away from corporate life – it wasn’t just the startup buzz or the chance to “disrupt” things (God, I hate that word). It was about freedom. Three specific types, actually:

Location freedom: Not being chained to a postcode or spending my life pretending to look busy in an office where half the meetings happen in the kitchen anyway.

Financial freedom: Earning well enough to look after my family and fund the projects I actually cared about, rather than just making other people richer.

Time freedom: Having enough headspace to pursue my own experiments and passions, instead of filling someone else’s calendar from 9 to 5.

These three drivers became my North Star. They still guide every decision I make about work today. In fact, it was those three freedoms that eventually landed me in Dubai – but I’m getting ahead of myself.

The Bangladesh Masterclass

Bangladesh taught me more about innovation than any MBA ever could. When you’re working in a country where infrastructure challenges make British broadband complaints look adorable, you learn to be creative with constraints.

We couldn’t rely on perfect conditions or unlimited budgets. We had to build things that actually solved problems – not just looked impressive on a roadmap or made for good case studies. Innovation wasn’t about having the perfect plan; it was about rolling up your sleeves and getting uncomfortably close to the people you’re trying to serve.

Those lessons stuck. Real innovation comes from understanding real problems, not from sitting in air-conditioned offices theorizing about what users might want.

The Hype Machine vs. Reality

Fast forward a few years, and suddenly everyone’s an AI expert. LinkedIn became a conveyor belt of “game-changing” tools, webinars promising to “10x your productivity,” and consultants selling transformation packages that cost more than small countries’ GDP.

The problem? There’s a Grand Canyon-sized gap between the hype and the results.

Businesses are drowning in a sea of unproven tools, one-off tutorials, and gurus selling digital snake oil. Entrepreneurs spend more time trying to figure out which shiny new platform might work than actually solving the problems they set out to tackle.

That’s when the penny dropped. My value isn’t in hyping the latest AI tool or promising that ChatGPT will solve world hunger. It’s in cutting through the noise with the kind of brutal honesty that comes from actually implementing this stuff in the real world.

I’ve worked across corporates, scrappy startups, tier 1 consultantacies and everything in between. I’ve seen what works, what fails spectacularly, and what sounds impressive in demos but falls apart when you actually need it to do something useful.

Why I’m Married to Open Source

During my startup days, we didn’t have the luxury of enterprise budgets. Every pound had to stretch like we were trying to make a Sunday roast feed a football team. Open source wasn’t a philosophical choice – it was survival.

Open source gave us the building blocks we needed without burning through our runway faster than a lottery winner with commitment issues. More importantly, it let us move at speed, adapt quickly, and stand on the shoulders of global communities solving similar problems.

This rewired how I think about technology entirely. Software went from being something you “bought off the shelf” (and then spent months customizing) to a living ecosystem you could plug into, contribute to, and extend.

Over the years, I watched this mindset shift ripple outward. Enterprises that once dismissed open source as “too risky” started embracing it to accelerate innovation. Governments locked into expensive vendor relationships for decades began exploring open source as a way to slash licensing costs and escape vendor lock-in.

I got on this wave early, which is why I became such a strong advocate for digital public goods – open solutions that anyone can use, adapt, and scale. Today, much of my time is spent in that space alongside AI work: building technology that doesn’t just serve one company but becomes infrastructure others can build on.

For me, open source has never been just about saving money. It’s about freedom, leverage, and leveling the playing field. It’s about ensuring innovation isn’t locked away behind paywalls or proprietary contracts.

Why AI + Open Source = Magic

So why focus on AI and open source together? Because these two forces are reshaping business faster than a British weather forecast changes.

AI is rewriting the rules of how work gets done. From automating the mundane to reimagining entire industries, it’s no longer a question of if you’ll need to integrate AI, but how well you’ll do it. Meanwhile, open source has become the backbone of innovation – the shared infrastructure that accelerates progress globally.

This isn’t just about technology for me. It’s about impact. Open source aligns with my belief in digital public goods – tools that democratize access to powerful capabilities. And AI, when applied thoughtfully (emphasis on thoughtfully), can take businesses from drowning in spreadsheets to scaling with actual intelligence.

Put them together, and you’ve got a transformation engine that doesn’t require selling your firstborn to fund.

The AI Orchestrator Approach

I call myself an AI orchestrator because that’s exactly what I do. I don’t just parachute into businesses, drop some tools, and hope they magically start working. That’s like giving someone a violin and expecting them to play Vivaldi.

Instead, I look at the whole picture – people, processes, and outcomes – then orchestrate the moving parts so the technology actually delivers value. Think of it like conducting an orchestra: the violin section alone doesn’t make music, and the drums on their own are just noise. But when everything comes together – aligned, timed, and working toward the same outcome – that’s when the magic happens.

Here’s the best part: I’ve designed this role around my three freedom drivers. I can consult globally without being tied to any single location. I can earn well without chaining myself to billable hours like some sort of productivity prisoner. And I can protect my time so there’s always space for my own experiments and passion projects.

That balance isn’t a nice-to-have – it’s the entire point. It keeps me energized, curious, and motivated to do this work well.

Who This Blog Is Really For

If you’re a business leader trying to navigate AI without drowning in vendor pitches and LinkedIn thought leadership, this blog is for you.

If you’re a founder who wants real-world lessons instead of recycled startup advice, this blog is for you.

If you’re someone sitting in a corporate job right now but feeling that familiar entrepreneurial itch – maybe even considering the leap into solo entrepreneurship – this blog is definitely for you.

And if you’re curious about building online businesses that actually work (not the “passive income while you sleep” nonsense), you’ll find value here too. I’ve experimented with more business models over the years than I care to admit, and my accountant still bears the emotional scars. But through all that testing, I’ve learned what actually works, what’s pure fantasy, and how to build businesses that are profitable and scalable.

That’s the perspective I’ll share: not just the highlight reel, but the lessons learned in the trenches – including the expensive mistakes you can avoid.

Building in Public: The Messy Reality

This isn’t just theory for me. I’m building in public – launching, testing, failing, and adjusting in real time. Whether it’s exploring new SaaS ideas, consulting projects, or even side experiments like a YouTube channel, I’ll be documenting the journey here.

Why the transparency? Because it builds trust, and frankly, because too many people only share the polished success stories. I think it’s more valuable to see the messy middle – where real decisions get made, mistakes happen, and actual learning takes place.

You’ll get to see the failures alongside the wins, the pivots alongside the breakthroughs, and the “oh bugger, that didn’t work” moments alongside the celebrations.

The Adaptability Mindset

One lesson stands above all others: staying flexible is everything. The tools will change, the platforms will evolve, and the algorithms will shift faster than British weather. But the mindset of adaptability – that’s what keeps you in the game.

That adaptability has to align with your personal drivers, whatever they are. For me, it means regularly checking: does this setup still give me location freedom? Am I earning enough to live well and reinvest in new projects? Am I keeping time free for the things I care about beyond client work?

If the answer’s yes, I know I’m on track. If not, I adjust. That’s the beauty of designing your own path – you can course-correct whenever you need to, without asking permission from a steering committee.

What’s Coming Next

This is just the opening act. Over the coming weeks, I’ll be diving deeper into:

• Separating AI hype from reality – with the kind of honest assessment that comes from actually implementing these tools
• My testing frameworks – how I evaluate tools before recommending them (spoiler: most fail)
• Real case studies – stripped of jargon, just the practical lessons that matter
• Live experiments – what I’m building, testing, and learning, including the inevitable failures
• Digital Public Goods – Why is the biggest development in the last 5 years that you haven’t heard of.

It’s going to be raw, real, and hopefully useful enough that you’ll stick around for the journey.

Let’s Build This Together

If you’ve made it this far (impressive dedication, honestly), here’s my ask: don’t just be a passive reader. This blog works best as a conversation.

Share your challenges in the comments. Tell me what you’re struggling with. Drop me a message just to say hi. Better yet, if you’re dealing with AI implementation challenges or trying to figure out how to cut through the noise in your business, let’s talk. Whether it’s a quick conversation, a workshop, or a deeper engagement, I’d love to see how I can help.

Because here’s the truth: the world isn’t slowing down. Technology isn’t waiting for us to catch up. We can either keep pace, fall behind, or help lead the way forward.

I know which option I’ve chosen. The question is: which will you choose?

Ready to cut through the AI hype and build something that actually works? Get in touch – let’s have a proper conversation about what your business actually needs.