Sojo

Why we built it

Metry started as a customer pain.

As foreigners trying to book services across Asia, my cofounder and I repeatedly ran into the same problems:

• Inconsistent booking experiences: Finding and booking services was friction-heavy.
• Fragmented communication: Conversations happened across too many apps with no central record.
• Weak trust signals: Hard for customers to verify quality and for businesses to build reputation.

Then we found a third cofounder who owned a local service business. Her pain was the mirror image:

• Operational Mess: Managing appointments across channels was manual and error-prone.
• Financial Uncertainty: Payments were inconsistent and hard to track.
• Institutional Memory Gap: Customer history lived in scattered notes, not a system.
• Growth Blindness: It was hard to understand repeat behavior, retention, and what actually drove revenue.

The Root Issue

We assumed the market already had tools. It did. But after customer conversations, prototypes, and live demos, we found the root issue: Most tools were designed around North American and European workflows. They did not match the cultural expectations, messaging patterns, and ecosystem connections common in Asian markets.

So we built for Asia first.

The Instrumented Workflow

We mapped every touchpoint into a continuous feedback loop:

• 1
  Telemetry: Customer actions and operational events become structured data.
• 2
  Metrics: Telemetry transforms into business KPIs like revenue, retention, and funnel performance.
• 3
  Insights: Metrics reveal what to fix and where to double down.
• 4
  Action: Insights drive automated campaigns, nudges, and operational recommendations.

Full operational pipeline diagram

Outcomes

• 30+ SMBs: Deployed BI dashboards across Asia.
• 2,000+ Users: Scaled the platform with a 25% increase in retention.
• Real-time Insights: Automated telemetry pipelines provide immediate operational clarity.

Ownership of the Full Stack

I learned that founding a company means owning everything: naming the product, defining the customer, validating product market fit, running customer conversations, pricing, payments, marketing, and shipping continuously. None of these problems are theoretical. They show up immediately and demand real decisions.

Systems for People, Not Just Code

Beyond the product itself, I learned how companies actually operate. Between me and my cofounders, we handled hiring, onboarding interns and engineers, defining workflows, setting expectations, and building the systems required to keep a team aligned and productive.

Making sure people knew what to work on, why it mattered, and how success was measured became just as important as the code.

This experience gave me a deep appreciation for execution at every level, from small UX decisions to organizational structure, and fundamentally changed how I approach building systems, products, and teams.