IDEAS FOR BUILDERS

Essays and playbooks on product strategy, growth, storytelling, brand and community.

Maly Ly

January 6, 2026

min read

Tech With a Soul: How AI Can Make Us More Human

I’ve spent most of my life translating between worlds. As a child, I translated for my grandmother in American grocery stores while she searched for the foods she missed from Cambodia. As a teenager, I translated myself, from a refugee kid who spoke broken English to a student who lived in words. Later, as a marketer in Silicon Valley, I translated the language of technology into the language of people.

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Maly Ly

December 30, 2025

min read

How to Build a Movement, Not Just a Product

Every great company begins as a feeling. Before there’s a product, there’s a purpose. Before there’s a team, there’s a shared belief that something deserves to exist.That belief is what turns an idea into momentum and momentum into a movement.

Maly Ly

December 23, 2025

min read

The Future of Belonging: Building Communities That Scale Meaning

When I was a kid, belonging meant survival. In refugee camps, belonging meant the difference between being fed or forgotten. Later, in Silicon Valley boardrooms, belonging meant the courage to speak when I was the only woman, the only immigrant, or the only one who didn’t speak in acronyms.And now, in an age of algorithms and infinite connection, belonging has become something else entirely: the one thing technology can’t manufacture but keeps trying to.