Nasmaan Ibrahim

The short version

I studied business technology and analytics at UBC Sauder, and I started building companies before I finished.

Optima came first: an angel-backed app for the minutes before a high-stakes moment, like an exam or a game. I shipped it end to end. We repositioned it twice, and moving from a general meditation app to mindset training for students more than doubled weekly signups. Every version still ran into the same wall. The interest was real, but the moment was not available, because the minutes before an exam already belong to notes and friends. Seventeen months in, I recommended we wind it down. How that decision got made.

SKADI came out of UBC's New Venture Design course: a two-pod sensor kit that lets freestyle skiers capture and review their tricks. It started with 76 conversations with skiers, snowboarders, coaches and judges, and those conversations moved it from backcountry tracking to trick capture before anything was designed. I built the financial model, wrote the specifications the engineers built from, and sourced the components by phoning suppliers myself, usually as the least technical person on the call. In August 2026 I handed the day-to-day to my co-founder.

Across all of it the work has been the same. Sit with people. Find out what they need, which is rarely the first thing they say. Write it down precisely enough to build against. Stay on it until it ships and someone uses it.

Now I work on strategy and special projects at Elective, a Vancouver fintech that pays educators up front for their programs and lets learners pay over time. After two years building things from nothing, I wanted to work on something customers already depend on, alongside people who have done this longer than I have.

1. Elective

   Strategy and Special Projects Associate

   Now 2026.10 to now

   Elective pays educators up front for their programs and lets learners pay over time. I work on special projects and operations across all business functions.

2. SKADI

   Co-Founder, Product and Operations

   Handed over 2025.09 to 2026.08

   A two-pod IMU sensor kit that lets freestyle skiers capture and review their tricks. I owned product and the commercial side from the first of 76 customer interviews to a working, demonstrable prototype. In August 2026 I handed the day-to-day to my co-founder, and stayed on as an advisor until October.

   What that involved

   • Ran 76 customer discovery interviews across Canada and the US with freestyle skiers, snowboarders, coaches and judges; they moved the product from backcountry tracking to freestyle trick capture. How that was run
   • Wrote the specifications the engineering team built from, from sensor capture to the desktop review application, through to a working prototype
   • Built the financial model: unit economics at $249.99, customer acquisition cost and payback, fundraise scenarios, runway
   • Ran a Meta Ads demand test to a cold US and Canada audience with A/B-tested creative and audiences: 10,917 impressions, 7.44 percent click-through, 13 waitlist signups at $5.77 each, on about $75 of spend
   • Mapped seven competitors across six dimensions; none offered automatic trick detection built for freestyle, which became our positioning
   • Sourced the electronic components as the non-engineer on the team by calling suppliers and manufacturers directly; designed the app wireframes in Figma; tracked prospects and follow-ups in Notion and Airtable
   • Built SKADI's internal operating system: every meeting and decision captured in one searchable record, with Claude, Cursor and Zapier automating the routine steps
   • Produced the ad creative in Higgsfield, compositing real footage, because there was no budget for a shoot
3. Optima

   Co-Founder, Product Management

   Wound down 2024.07 to 2025.11

   An angel-backed mobile app that generated personalized sessions, from breathwork to pep talks, for one specific high-stakes moment, with heart-rate data from wearables setting the pacing in beta. I owned product end to end and shipped it to the app stores.

   What that involved

   • Owned design, the product framework and release scope for each version we shipped
   • Ran 45 customer discovery interviews; repositioning from a general meditation app to mindset training for students more than doubled weekly signups
   • Designed a strict classification check ahead of the AI session generator, so prompts that bordered on clinical mental health support got a safe, static response instead
   • Analyzed signups and session data in SQL across each positioning change; A/B tested interfaces and flows
   • Selected into Innovation UBC's venture founder program, February to July 2025
   • Recommended the wind-down in November 2025 when the evidence showed no path to product-market fit
4. Totem Park Residence Association, UBC

   President, and VP Finance before that

   Handed over 2022.07 to 2023.08

   Took on the presidency in August 2022, a month after being elected VP Finance, when the council leadership left mid-term, and ran the association for a 2,088-bed first-year residence.

   What that involved

   • Rebuilt the council out of the vacancy with UBC Student Housing staff, without escalating it
   • Led programming, communications and volunteer teams for more than 2,000 residents in their first year at UBC
   • Served as residents' primary point of contact to UBC Student Housing leadership
   • As VP Finance, prepared the operating budget and reporting package for the year, then handed the finance function to the incoming treasurer with a documented budget position
   • Chris Proctor Award for the most significant contribution to the residence community, alongside Excellence in Leadership and Excellence in Strategic Management
5. UBC Sauder School of Business

   LIFT Team Member

   Delivered 2022.06 to 2024.10

   Selected for Sauder's LIFT program, a 32-student UBC team that runs business training for entrepreneurs in Kenya and Ghana. I taught and mentored them in marketing, finance and strategy, and helped build the curriculum used in the classroom in both countries. Standing in front of a room of people who run real businesses, with a lesson plan you wrote, is the best education in plain language I have had.

Honours

• 2026Dean's List, UBC Sauder School of Business
• 2023Chris Proctor Award, UBC Student Housing, with Excellence in Leadership and Excellence in Strategic Management
• 2022Finalist, Sauder LIFT Case Competition
• 2021$180,000 in entrance scholarships to UBC
• 2021Pearson Edexcel High Achievers' Award, for three A* grades and an A at International A Level in one sitting
• 2019Pearson Edexcel High Achievers' Award and The Daily Star Award, for eight A* grades at IGCSE in one sitting

Work, up close

The writing comes first: decisions I was part of, written up properly. Then the SKADI reel. The exercises at the bottom follow one made-up request from a corridor conversation to sign-off, so you can see a whole arc, and each one says it is made up.

Writing

• The moment was not available Essay · real

  How I came to recommend shutting down Optima, a company I co-founded: what we believed going in, the three levers we pulled, what the evidence said, and why I made the call.

• Seventy-six conversations, one page Research synthesis · real

  How SKADI's customer discovery was run, the two assumptions it killed early, what it changed about the product and the price, and how a paid funnel checked what people said against what they did.

• The first fifteen minutes Practice note

  How I open a conversation with someone whose work I need to understand, what I deliberately do not do, and what I have learned about the conversations nobody wants to have. The part of the job that never appears in a document.

From SKADI

• The SKADI reel, nineteen seconds Video · real

  The ad that ran in the Meta test. Self-hosted, about 13 MB, and the video itself loads only when you press play.

Written exercises

• One requirement, written out in full Writing sample · part one of three

  The vague request at the top of this page, followed all the way down: the questions I would ask, what changes once they are answered, and the finished requirement with acceptance criteria, open items, and a sign-off block. Written for this site rather than lifted from anyone's records, so I can show the whole thing.

• The process, drawn Process map · part two of three

  The walkthrough behind that requirement, as two swimlane maps on the same six-day grid: the close as it runs today, with the waiting marked, and the close once the requirement is live, each step tagged to the acceptance criterion it satisfies. Plus the note I would send the controller the same afternoon.

• The UAT pack, in miniature Test pack · part three of three

  The same requirement at the point where the business decides whether to accept it: traceability from criteria to test cases, six test cases written out, a defect log with the triage reasoning, the query I ran to check the numbers myself, and what has to be true before anyone signs.

• Build or buy, worked through Method · illustrative case

  How I would run a build or buy evaluation for a company replacing seven systems with one: the four criteria to weight before any demo, how the cost model works, the order the dependencies set, and the one module I would buy rather than build.

How I work

1. The first version of a request is never the real one

   "We need better reporting" is a symptom, not a request anyone can act on. The real request is three questions further down, and the only reliable way to get there is to ask someone to walk you through what they do on the worst day of the month.

2. I write for the person who has to build it

   A specification that a developer has to interpret is not finished. If two engineers can read the same line and build different things, that is my defect, not theirs.

3. Sign-off is an event, not a formality

   Decisions nobody agreed to are just notes. I make sure every decision has a clear owner and a written record before work starts. It is the least glamorous part of the job, and it is most of the reason things ship.

4. Killing something on time is a delivery skill

   I spent seventeen months on Optima and I recommended we end it. The evidence said there was no path to product-market fit and more runway was not going to change that. I would make the same call again. The longer version.

5. What I am still working on

   I over-document early. On a two-person startup it cost me speed more than once, and I am still learning which artifacts are load-bearing and which ones just make me feel prepared.

Off the clock

• At home

  Bengali and English, usually in the same sentence, usually mid-argument about food.

• Outside

  Vancouver makes staying inside a waste of geography. When I need a break from screen time I am usually running the Seawall or putting miles on my bike. It is the fastest way to clear my head.

• Pokémon

  Fell in love with the franchise as a kid and never grew out of it. I have watched every episode aired and played every game. There is a Pokédex entry hidden on this page, and it is not for a Pokémon, which I hope you will forgive.

• Music

  I collect records and hold strong opinions about them that nobody asked for. These six are my all-timers.

  • KDOT·22 Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers Kendrick Lamar
  • DRAKE·11 Take Care Drake
  • 1D·14 FOUR One Direction
  • BNY·78 Nightflight to Venus Boney M.
  • FRNK·16 Blonde Frank Ocean
  • SNF·77 Saturday Night Fever Bee Gees

Get in touch

nasmaanibrahim@gmail.com

Email is the fastest way to reach me, and I reply to all of it.

Not looking for a new role. Always glad to compare notes with people building early-stage companies in Vancouver, and the coffee is on me.