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SUTACHAD “LAYER” WICHAI

I build things.

I build software, products, companies, experiments and occasional problems.

Engineer turned founder. Still opens DevTools for fun.

Somewhere between technology, business, product, AI, hardware and whatever rabbit hole I fell into this week.

See what I’m buildingRead my notes
Current mode
BUILD
Home base
Chiang Mai, Thailand

LAYER STATUS

Background
Engineer
Current Role
Founder
Current Mode
BUILD
Curiosity
██████████ 110%
Side Quests
ACTIVE
Snow Mode
SEASONAL
Free Time
NOT FOUND
Coffee
OPERATIONAL
{ }raw
{
  "name": "Sutachad Wichai",
  "alias": "Layer",
  "species": "Human",
  "background": "Software Engineer",
  "current_role": "Founder / CEO",
  "location": "Chiang Mai, Thailand",
  "default_mode": "BUILD",
  "favorite_sport": "Snowboarding",
  "curiosity": "dangerously high",
  "open_tabs": "classified"
}

Current

Things I'm Building

TECH COMPANYFOUNDER / CEO

Cyber Rich Digital

Software products, technology solutions, and new technology businesses. The place where most of the building happens.

  • Software products
  • AI
  • Automation
  • Emerging technology
  • Physical + digital systems

Since 2023

BUSINESS / PHYSICAL PRODUCT

WPCWallThai

Physical products, sourcing and operations — with software quietly holding the back office together.

Turns out selling physical products involves fewer Kubernetes clusters and considerably more warehouses.

  • Physical products
  • Commerce
  • Import / sourcing
  • Operations
  • Warehouse
  • Internal tools

Since 2023

Hi. I'm Layer.

I started my career building Android applications.

Then backend systems. Then enterprise platforms. Then architecture. Then engineering teams.

At some point I accidentally became a CEO.

I still prefer building things to sitting in meetings.

Today I spend my time somewhere between software, products, business, AI, automation, hardware and emerging technology.

I tend to investigate things far deeper than necessary.

My default reaction to an interesting problem is:

“Can we build something for this?”

Sometimes the answer should probably be no.

Crossover

Two Operating Modes

Choose an operating mode
  • Product
  • Customers
  • Operations
  • Strategy
  • Suppliers
  • Distribution
  • Unit Economics
  • Teams
  • Growth
  • Architecture
  • Code
  • AI
  • Hardware
  • Automation
  • Infrastructure
  • Protocols
  • APIs
  • What happens if I connect this?

MODE SWITCHING IS AUTOMATIC AND OCCASIONALLY UNSTABLE.

Open tabs

Current Rabbit Holes

Topics I accidentally spent three days researching.

  • AI

    Useful, overhyped and genuinely interesting, usually all at once.

  • AI Agents

    Trying to delegate work to computers without creating more work.

  • Computer Vision

    Because apparently humans shouldn't have to watch everything.

  • RFID

    Giving physical objects identities.

  • IoT

    Every device wants to talk. Few of them have anything to say.

  • Edge AI

    Inference that does not need to phone home first.

  • Digital Twin

    The real world, but somebody added an API.

  • Automation

    Doing something twice is research. Three times is a script.

  • Warehouse Technology

    Software eventually discovers forklifts.

  • Product Strategy

    Deciding what not to build, repeatedly.

  • Technology Arbitrage

    Finding useful technology somewhere and figuring out where it actually creates value somewhere else.

  • Physical + Digital

    The interesting problems live where the two meet.

  • Hardware

    Where you cannot hotfix production.

  • Emerging Technology

    Mostly a queue of open tabs.

Writing

Latest Notes

BUSINESS3 MIN

Two Operating Modes

What actually changes in an engineer's head when the problem stops being technical and starts being a business.

All notes

Engineer roots

I Used to Commit More

Before the meetings, there was a lot of Android. Some of it is still out there, quietly being forked by strangers.

ADBWIFI

DEPRECATED

Android Studio plugin for debugging over Wi-Fi, back when that was not built in.

Stars
303
Forks
49
Language
Java

StepIndicator

STILL WORKS, PROBABLY

A step indicator widget for Android, compatible with ViewPager.

Stars
134
Forks
56
Language
Java

ThaiDateTimePicker

LEGACY

Date and time pickers for Android that understand the Thai Buddhist year.

Stars
12
Forks
22
Language
Java

GitHub since September 2013 · 85 public repositories ·github.com/layerlre

Why I travel

Field Notes From Elsewhere

China

  • BUSINESS
  • TECHNOLOGY
  • FACTORIES
  • SUPPLIERS
  • TRADE SHOWS
  • IDEAS

Exploring how things are built, what technology is emerging, and whether any of it should become a business.

Japan

  • TRAVEL
  • SNOWBOARD
  • FOOD
  • WINTER

Snow, food, and occasionally pretending I don't have Slack installed.

HOME BASE: CNX

Previous versions

Layer Changelog

  1. v2023 → CURRENT

    CEO

    Cyber Rich Digital · Chiang Mai, Thailand

    Present

    Went from building software to building the organization that builds software.

    Also discovered that companies have considerably more edge cases than codebases.

    • BUSINESS
    • PRODUCT
    • SOFTWARE
    • AI
    • LEADERSHIP

  2. v2022 → 2023

    Lead Software Engineer

    Luca Block

    Moved further into architecture and engineering leadership.

    Still somehow ended up debugging things.

    • ARCHITECTURE
    • LEADERSHIP

  3. v2018 → 2022

    Senior Software Engineer

    Ascend Corporation

    Designed and built enterprise web applications across frontend, backend, architecture, cloud infrastructure, testing and production systems.

    Worked alongside architects, developers, QA and support teams.

    Investigated difficult production problems: deadlocks, race conditions, memory leaks, crashes and performance issues.

    Apparently those were considered "interesting problems".

    • Java
    • Kotlin
    • JavaScript
    • Spring Boot
    • React
    • RabbitMQ
    • Redis
    • CI/CD
    • AWS
    • Google Cloud
    • Docker
    • Kubernetes

  4. 2018

    Android Software Engineer

    POMO House International

    Android and smartwatch applications, with an unusual amount of attention on performance, battery consumption and APIs.

    • ANDROID
    • WEARABLES
    • PERFORMANCE

  5. v2016 → 2018

    Android Developer

    Feedback180

    Native Android development, mobile architecture, CI/CD automation, cloud, Docker and Kubernetes.

    • ANDROID
    • CI/CD
    • DOCKER
    • KUBERNETES

    career.bootstrap()

AFK

Human Mode

The part that does not involve a repository.

Snow Mode

My preferred method of debugging gravity.

Japan

I keep going back. Snow probably has something to do with it.

Travel

Usually for a reason. Occasionally the reason arrives later.

Occasionally touches grass.

Contact

Say Hi.

  • Business?
  • Technology?
  • Interesting idea?
  • Supplier?
  • Product?
  • Something unnecessarily complicated?

I’m listening.