Nwaeze Michael

21. Co-Founder & CEO @plaum_co | Building the future of food discovery

[Nwaeze Michael @michaelnwaeze_]

okay… sooo I finally decided to start posting lol.

A lot has happened over the past few months, so I thought I’d finally share it to the people of X lol.

for like the past 4+ months, my co-founder and I have been building soemthing behind the scenes.

it’s called Plaum.

now this is usually the part where I hit you guys with the "we are the next big thing, or we are revolutionizing the future of food discovery" type of founder speech 😂

but honestly, nah.

we’re just two people trying to build something people actually enjoy using.

it’s a food discovery app starting in Ottawa, which is where we are based.

sorry to everyone outside Ottawa 😭 we’re starting here for now so we can analyze the market, improve, and bring it to more places later.

So a little back story hehehe

after graduating college (with honours YESSIRRR), everything started to become surreal

I was like what next?

move on to the next thing?

you know the usual get a job and all that, or stay, take the risk, and try to build something of our own?

So, we chose the second one.

Honestly, the current job market definitely played a part ngl.

The other day, I was looking through LinkedIn for jobs right, so I stumbled on a job posting which was posted about "5 minutes ago" as it said on LinkedIn.

So I was like "Okay let's go imma be first to apply" then I looked a little bit to the right with the corner of my eye and then I saw that, over 100 PEOPLE HAVE APPLIED.

IN 5 MINS??

That is really scary to be honest. It really made me think a lot.

It showed me how competitive things have become, but it also reminded us that we didn’t want to just sit around waiting for something to happen.

And so we chose to build something of our own.

Now I can't lie, It hasn't been all sunshine and rainbows

there have been a lot of late nights where we will stay up fixing bugs that made us question our life decisions lol,

I start to get random ideas at 2am for some reason😭

but then, we started having small wins that made it all starting to feel like its worth the stress to grind this out

sometimes, we have no idea what we are doing but we kept going anyway

let's go where the wind takes us i guess😂.

Scary times ahead ngl.

That being said, this account is going to be the real journey.

showing the building, the failures, the wins, the lessons, the behind-the-scenes, and everything that happens in between.

no fake “overnight success” story

I want to try to be transparent to everyone and also accept feedback and criticism and also learn from all of you guys as well because I am still new to all this

but at the same time, I am so excited for this.

I'm so hyped!!

no pretending that everything is perfect. No seriously nothing is fr.

we are just two people trying to turn an idea into something real and make something out in this world of tech.

Maybe it works out, maybe it doesn't at least we will learn a lot i guess

hopefully it works out.

if you want to watch us build from day one, please follow along.

you can also go follow our official startup account @plaum_co as well

Thanks

#Startup #BuildInPublic #Ottawa #Food #EntrepreneurMindset #Tech #Canada

[Nwaeze Michael @michaelnwaeze_]

I can build and deploy a full-stack app, manage cloud infrastructure, and ship software with real users.

Somehow, getting an interview for a junior developer role is still the harder problem.

If your team is hiring, I'd be happy to connect.

#Ottawa #AI #SoftwareEngineering #Jobs #Toronto #Canada #Coding

[Nwaeze Michael @michaelnwaeze_]

UK AI chip startup @fractile_ai just raised $720 million.

Everyone talks about AI models, but the hardware running them is becoming just as interesting. Faster, cheaper inference could change a lot.

#AI #Ottawa #Startups

[Nwaeze Michael @michaelnwaeze_]

Anthropic is testing Claude as an actual participant in work meetings.

Taking notes is useful, but I’m more interested in whether it can turn discussions into work that actually gets done.

That’s where AI assistants could become genuinely valuable.

#Ottawa #AI #Claude #Anthropic

[Nwaeze Michael @michaelnwaeze_]

AI helping verify software security is a lot more interesting to me than another coding benchmark honestly.

Google DeepMind used AI-assisted formal verification to examine parts of Signal’s encryption protocol. That’s a use case worth watching.

#AI #CyberSecurity #Ottawa

[Nwaeze Michael @michaelnwaeze_]

Working with real applications has changed how I think about database changes.

Writing the SQL is usually the easy part. Understanding what the change could affect, checking the results, and making sure nothing else breaks takes much more care.

#AI #SoftwareDevelopment #Database #Coding #SQL

[Nwaeze Michael @michaelnwaeze_]

@itsvlady Yeahhh. I think that’s where the balance comes in. AI can help speed things up, but understanding the problem, making the right decisions, and knowing when something isn’t working still comes down to the developer. That’s the part I don’t think we should overlook for sure

[Nwaeze Michael @michaelnwaeze_]

AI makes it easier to build a feature quickly. It doesn’t tell you whether that feature deserves to exist.

I’ve learned that the harder part of building a product is often deciding what not to build.

#Ottawa #BuildInPublic #Marketing #Distribution #AI

[Plaum @plaum_co]

Running a restaurant involves more than taking orders.

Plaum brings staff communication into the restaurant dashboard, so teams have another way to stay connected while managing daily operations.

#Ottawa #BuildInPublic #Startups #FoodTech

[Nwaeze Michael @michaelnwaeze_]

OpenAI is acquiring Pierre Computer to bring more development tools into Codex.

AI coding is moving beyond writing functions. The bigger opportunity might be helping developers manage the entire process of shipping software.

#Ottawa #Tech #BuildInPublic #Startups #AI

[Nwaeze Michael @michaelnwaeze_]

@Nehakathare Well yes and no

[Nwaeze Michael @michaelnwaeze_]

@not_sacke Stack overflow im so sorry😭😭

[Nwaeze Michael @michaelnwaeze_]

A restaurant manager in Ottawa told us one delivery platform takes around 30% commission.

On a $20 order, that’s $6 gone before food, packaging, and labour costs.

Now add a promotion.

You could be getting MORE orders while making LESS money per order.

Revenue ≠ profit.

These restaurants are struggling behind the scenes

#Ottawa #Restaurants #BuildInPublic

[Nwaeze Michael @michaelnwaeze_]

@startupgeorge Yeah it was a rough process but we got through it!!!

[Nwaeze Michael @michaelnwaeze_]

300+ users on Plaum. First restaurant live.

I’m excited, but there’s a catch 😂

300 downloads don’t mean 300 paying customers.

And 10 restaurants on an app wouldn’t mean much if nobody orders.

We’re building a two-sided marketplace.

Getting both sides to show up is one challenge.

Making it worthwhile for both is another.

#Startups #Ottawa #BuildInPublic

[Nwaeze Michael @michaelnwaeze_]

@raph_thoug Great advice. Thanks a lot

[Nwaeze Michael @michaelnwaeze_]

@acesaasdemos Yeah thats the goal for us. We dont wanna lose our first restaurant

[Nwaeze Michael @michaelnwaeze_]

@progerallworld Yeahh, I’m learning a lot in this journey!!

[Nwaeze Michael @michaelnwaeze_]

One thing we’ve noticed while checking out restaurant websites in Ottawa is that some of them are pretty outdated

And it’s not even just the design. Some have SEO issues and low security as well.

So with Plaum, we’re building a no code website builder that doesn’t just let restaurants create their own websites, but also tells them what’s wrong with their SEO and website and fixes it.

Because what’s the point of having a website if people struggle to find it?

#Ottawa #BuildInPublic #Startups

[Nwaeze Michael @michaelnwaeze_]

Onboarding our first restaurant onto Plaum exposed SO MANY BUGS 😭

Outdated tablet software. Orders not appearing without refreshing. And more.

My co-founder and I spent 1–2 weeks fixing everything.

Finally stabilized, and they’re using it smoothly now.

Testing software ≠ running it in a real restaurant 😂

#BuildInPublic #Startups #Ottawa

[Nwaeze Michael @michaelnwaeze_]

@helloshiva0801 @not_sacke YESSS

[Nwaeze Michael @michaelnwaeze_]

@not_sacke Slack bro, thats what we use at my work, we do also use teams as well but it’s mainly slack