Author: Mazlan Abbas

IOT Evangelist

The Courage to Create: Answering Life’s Questions

One sentence.

“Is this all?”

That question did not come from failure.
It came from success that felt… incomplete.

On paper, things looked fine.
Titles. Meetings. Progress updates.
Calendars full. Slides polished.

But something kept pulling at me.

A desire to build.
Not just oversee.

A desire to leave something behind.
Not just pass things along.

A desire to create.
Not manage people who manage people who manage processes.

That question followed me home.
Into quiet moments.
Into long drives.
Into conversations with myself.

“Is this all?”

Not because the work was bad.
But because my hands were no longer shaping anything real.

That question was not dissatisfaction.
It was a signal.

Some questions do not ask for answers.
They ask for courage.

And once you hear it clearly…
you cannot unhear it.

Founders Are Shaped Long Before Day One

I didn’t plan to become a tech founder.

I planned to be useful.

That choice changed everything.

I started in academia.
Teaching.
Researching.
Explaining complex ideas until they made sense.

It taught me one thing early.
If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it deeply.

Then I moved into corporate.
Telco.
Big systems.
Big budgets.
Bigger politics.

That world taught me scale.
Decisions ripple.
Mistakes multiply.
Time moves slower than ambition.

I learned how real infrastructure works.
How systems break.
How people behave when risk enters the room.

And then came the hardest move.
Founder.

No syllabus.
No safety net.
No brand to hide behind.

Just judgement.

Here’s the roadmap I wish someone had shown me earlier.

Academia trains your thinking.
Corporate trains your discipline.
Entrepreneurship tests your character.

Each phase matters.
Skip one, and you feel it later.

Young leaders ask me,
“When is the right time to jump?”

Here’s the truth.

You don’t jump when you’re ready.
You jump when your questions get louder than your comfort.

What helped me transition?

I stopped chasing titles.
I chased problems worth solving.

I stopped trying to be the smartest person in the room.
I tried to be the calmest.

I learned that leadership is not about control.
It’s about clarity.

And founders are not built overnight.
They are assembled slowly…
From lessons that only different worlds can teach.

If you’re early in your career…
Don’t rush the journey.

Learn deeply.
Build credibility.
Understand systems.
Then, when the pull comes…

You’ll know.

Because founders aren’t born in startups.
They’re shaped long before that.

One decision at a time.

Why Renting the Digital Future Is Costing Malaysia More Than We Think

We don’t need more apps.

We need ownership.

Every day, Malaysia uses digital platforms built somewhere else.
We rent the tools.
We follow the rules.
We pay the toll.

And we call that progress.

But here’s the uncomfortable truth.

A nation that doesn’t build its own digital ecosystems will always stand on borrowed ground.

When the platform is not ours,
the data is not ours.
the roadmap is not ours.
the future is not ours.

Digital ecosystems are not just about technology.
They are about control.
Capability.
Confidence.

They decide who sets standards.
Who shapes talent.
Who captures value when the economy moves online.

This is bigger than startups.
Bigger than funding rounds.
Bigger than slogans.

It is about national muscle.

When crises hit, platforms matter.
When policies shift, platforms decide speed.
When talent grows, platforms anchor skills at home.

If we keep importing everything,
we train users.
not builders.

If we keep outsourcing thinking,
we grow dependency.
not strength.

Malaysia has engineers.
Builders.
Problem solvers.
We always did.

What we lack is belief at scale.
The courage to back our own platforms.
The patience to grow them.
The discipline to protect them.

Digital ecosystems take time.
They stumble.
They mature.
They compound.

But once built,
they become unfair advantages.

This is the moment to choose.

Do we want to remain excellent adopters?
Or do we want to become confident creators?

A strong nation does not just consume the digital world.
It shapes it.

Build local.
Back capability.
Protect the long game.

Our future should not live on someone else’s servers.

Why Some Startup “Failures” Are Actually Training

Failing Forward… Startup Mistakes I’d Make Again

Here’s a truth most founders won’t say out loud.

Some mistakes are not regrets.
They are training.

I’ve made decisions that looked wrong on paper.
Moves that confused people.
Choices that invited questions, doubts, raised eyebrows.

And yet…
I’d make many of them again.

Because those moments shaped how I think today.

I learned what spreadsheets never show.
I learned how people behave when pressure enters the room.
I learned how fast confidence disappears when certainty is gone.

There were launches that came too early.
Partnerships that felt right but weren’t.
Features built with hope instead of evidence.

Painful? Yes.
Pointless? No.

Those moments sharpened my judgement.
They taught me what signals matter.
They taught me what noise to ignore.

Growth rarely comes from getting everything right.
It comes from staying awake while things go wrong.

From asking better questions next time.
From spotting patterns sooner.
From knowing when to push… and when to pause.

Founders don’t grow by avoiding mistakes.
We grow by surviving them with our eyes open.

So if you’re replaying a decision in your head tonight…
Wondering if it set you back…

Take a breath.

Some steps only make sense later.
Some lessons only arrive through friction.
Some mistakes are simply tuition fees for better judgement.

Failing forward is not weakness.
It’s how builders are made.

And some mistakes?
They’re worth every step they gave you.

We’re Teaching IoT Wrong … And Industry Is Paying the Price

We don’t have an IoT talent shortage.

We have a relevance problem.

I’ve seen too many IoT syllabuses that look good on paper…
but fall apart the moment students touch the real world.

Slides are polished.
Exams are passed.
Graduates are confident.

Then industry asks a simple question.

“Can they deploy this?”

Silence.

Building an IoT curriculum is not about chasing buzzwords.
It’s about closing the gap between classrooms and construction sites.
Between theory and messy reality.

Students don’t need more definitions.
They need exposure.

To sensors that fail.
To networks that drop.
To dashboards that confuse users.
To data that refuses to behave.

Industry doesn’t need perfect graduates.
It needs graduates who can think, troubleshoot, adapt.

Who understand why edge matters.
Who know when cloud makes sense.
Who can justify costs, not just architectures.
Who see security as responsibility, not a chapter at the end.

TVET schools and universities hold a powerful lever.
They shape how the next generation thinks about building systems that people rely on.

If we teach IoT as a subject, we produce students.
If we teach IoT as a practice, we produce builders.

The future skills gap is not about technology.
It’s about judgement.

And that starts with how we design what we teach.

Certainty Is a Luxury Most Founders Don’t Have

For a long time, I believed waiting was a sign of wisdom.

Wait until the data is solid.

Wait until the market matures.

Wait until the signals become clearer.

It sounded reasonable. Safe, even.

But the longer I stayed in entrepreneurship, the clearer one truth became. Waiting for certainty is not a strategy. It is a luxury. And not everyone can afford it.

Certainty usually belongs to those who are already comfortable. Those with more resources. More time. More room to be wrong. For most founders, reality looks very different. We move under constraints, under constant pressure, with a cost of waiting that rarely gets discussed.

I have been in rooms where everyone agreed it was “not the right time yet.”

Not enough evidence.

Not enough traction.

Not enough support.

On paper, they were right.

But time did not pause. Each month of waiting raised the price. The team started asking where we were headed. Partners went quiet. Small but critical opportunities disappeared without any announcement.

No alarms.

No red lights.

Just a slow, growing weight.

That was when I realised something uncomfortable. Certainty rarely appears before movement. It often shows up after a decision is made and you live with the consequences. Not before.

Many founders fall into the same trap. They believe waiting reduces risk. In reality, it only delays decisions and adds a different kind of risk. Burnout. Lost momentum. A team that slowly loses trust, not because of a wrong call, but because no call was made.

There is a real difference between patience and paralysis.

Patience still moves forward, even if slowly.

Paralysis feels calm, but it is quietly moving backward.

I learned to tell them apart the hard way.

There were moments when I had to move before I felt ready. Not because I was fully confident, but because the cost of waiting had become higher than the cost of acting.

This is not about blind courage. It is about reading context.

When data is incomplete, I ask different questions. Will waiting truly bring meaningful information? Or is it only offering temporary comfort?

If it is the second, I know I am hiding behind logic.

Here is something rarely said out loud. Certainty often favors those who arrive later. Those who enter after the market takes shape. After early mistakes are made. After paths are cleared.

Early founders do not get that privilege.

They move through fog. They learn while walking. They make imperfect decisions so others can make safer ones later.

Once I accepted this, my view of waiting changed.

Waiting stopped being the default. It became a strategic choice that needed justification. If I wait, I must know exactly what I am waiting for and what price I am willing to pay.

If there is no clear answer, it is not strategy. It is avoidance.

I also learned this. Leadership is not about always being right. It is about being accountable. Teams do not demand perfect certainty. They ask for direction, even if that direction gets adjusted later.

Today, I still wait when it makes sense. But I do not wait to feel confident. I wait only when waiting adds real value.

Otherwise, I move.

Because in entrepreneurship, certainty is not the starting line. It is a byproduct of steady action and the courage to choose, even with limited information.

And that is the luxury many people do not realise they do not have.

How I Made Decisions Without Enough Data

Early in my entrepreneurial life, I believed good decisions came from clarity.

Clear numbers. Clear projections. Clear signals from the market.

I waited for them.

They rarely arrived.

Over time, I learned something uncomfortable. Most meaningful decisions are made when the picture is incomplete, the data is noisy, and the consequences are real. Not because founders are reckless, but because waiting for certainty often means missing the moment entirely.

I did not realise this at first. Like many engineers, I trusted data. Like many professionals, I believed preparation would eventually remove doubt. It took years to accept that uncertainty is not a phase to pass through. It is the operating environment.

The question was no longer how to eliminate uncertainty, but how to decide inside it.

I remember sitting in front of options that all felt wrong in different ways. One path carried financial risk. Another risked credibility. A third preserved comfort but quietly stalled progress. None came with assurance. None came with full information.

So I asked myself a different question.

Not “Which choice is safest?”

But “Which risk am I willing to live with?”

That shift changed how I decided.

Most founders frame decisions as binary. Right or wrong. Success or failure. But reality is more layered. Every decision trades one set of risks for another. The mistake is believing that waiting reduces risk. Often, it only changes the type of risk you inherit.

There were moments when I had only partial signals. Early interest that had not converted. Partnerships that sounded promising but lacked commitment. Technologies that worked in controlled settings but had not yet proven scale.

I could have waited.

Many do.

But waiting carries its own cost. Teams lose momentum. Windows close quietly. Confidence erodes without a visible reason. Nothing looks broken, yet nothing moves forward.

I learned to accept decisions made at 60 percent confidence.

Not because I was comfortable with uncertainty, but because I understood the cost of hesitation.

This did not mean ignoring data. It meant recognising when data had done all it could. Beyond a point, more analysis stopped being insight and started becoming delay.

There is a difference.

When I look back, the decisions that mattered most were not the ones backed by the strongest numbers. They were the ones guided by judgement shaped over time. Judgement built from pattern recognition, not prediction. From experience, not certainty.

I learned to listen for quieter signals.

How people behaved when no one was watching.

How partners responded when timelines slipped.

How customers reacted when something went wrong, not when it worked.

These signals rarely appear in dashboards.

They live in conversations. In tone. In follow-through.

One of the hardest lessons was accepting that some decisions would never feel resolved. Even after choosing, doubt lingers. Results take time. Feedback arrives unevenly. You move forward without emotional closure.

That is normal.

Founders who wait to feel confident before acting often confuse confidence with comfort. Confidence grows after movement, not before it. Clarity is frequently the reward for action, not the prerequisite.

Over the years, I stopped asking if a decision was perfect.

I started asking:

Does this move us forward?

Does this preserve our integrity?

Does this keep future options open?

If the answers leaned yes, I moved.

Not quickly. Not carelessly. But deliberately.

There is a quiet discipline in making decisions without full data. It requires humility to accept what you do not know, and courage to act anyway. It also requires restraint. Knowing when a decision is reversible and when it is not.

Reversible decisions can be tested. Irreversible ones deserve more thought, not more data. More judgement.

This is something no spreadsheet teaches.

Today, I no longer chase clarity as a prerequisite. I respect it when it appears, but I do not depend on it. Entrepreneurship, at its core, is not about perfect information. It is about responsibility under uncertainty.

If there is one thing I wish younger founders understood earlier, it is this.

Uncertainty is not your enemy.

Indecision is.

The goal is not to eliminate doubt.

The goal is to build the ability to decide while carrying it.

That is where real leadership begins.

Books Written by Dr. Mazlan Abbas

Small Beginnings. Big Futures.

Some dreams look small at the start.
Almost invisible. Almost forgettable.
Just like seeds sitting quietly in the soil.

But silence never means failure.
It means preparation.
It means something is gathering strength out of sight.

Your dream isn’t late.
Your moment just hasn’t arrived yet.

Keep planting.
Keep watering.
Keep showing up.

When the season is right, the world will finally see what you’ve been building in the dark.

Your time will come.

When Life Feels Full of Rocks, Be the River That Keeps Moving

The river never wastes its breath arguing with the rocks.
It doesn’t complain.
It doesn’t pause to question why the obstacles are there.
It just keeps moving… finding its path one curve at a time.

Life works the same way.
Challenges appear without warning.
People disappoint us.
Doors close right when we’re ready to step through them.
Some days, it feels like every direction is blocked.

But if a river can keep flowing… so can you.

You don’t need a perfect path.
You just need the courage to keep moving, even when the pace feels slow.
Forward is forward, no matter how small the step.

And with enough persistence, even the hardest rocks begin to shift.