https://nikhilballal.com/blog/ Notes from the battlefield. Short essays from inside Edible Factor, Plate, and Scouter. Opinionated. Specific. Won. en © Nikhil Ballal hello@nikhilballal.com (Nikhil Ballal) hello@nikhilballal.com (Nikhil Ballal) Hand-rolled static Sun, 31 May 2026 14:00:00 +0530 Sun, 31 May 2026 14:00:00 +0530 1440 https://nikhilballal.com/favicon.svg https://nikhilballal.com/blog/ https://nikhilballal.com/blog/innovation-from-necessity/ https://nikhilballal.com/blog/innovation-from-necessity/ I built Co-Director for myself. A few weeks later it had become a business conversation. Mon, 25 May 2026 10:00:00 +0530 Nikhil Ballal Essay https://nikhilballal.com/blog/not-a-pioneer-but/ https://nikhilballal.com/blog/not-a-pioneer-but/ Two months ago I changed the font on every product I ship. A month later YouTube Music updated to the same typeface. A month after that, Anthropic's Claude courses on Skilljar did too. Coincidence? Probably. I notice the rhythm. Sun, 31 May 2026 10:00:00 +0530 Nikhil Ballal Notes https://nikhilballal.com/blog/two-bars-on-a-rooftop/ https://nikhilballal.com/blog/two-bars-on-a-rooftop/ The WiFi would not connect. Two hours on choppy mobile data. Not one screen failed. Mon, 18 May 2026 10:00:00 +0530 Nikhil Ballal War story https://nikhilballal.com/blog/netlify-vercel-cloudflare/ https://nikhilballal.com/blog/netlify-vercel-cloudflare/ An honest, unbiased reading of three deploy platforms across three products. Cloudflare did not feel like a deploy platform. It felt like the internet, exposed as primitives. Fri, 22 May 2026 10:00:00 +0530 Nikhil Ballal Wisdom https://nikhilballal.com/blog/moved-off-supabase/ https://nikhilballal.com/blog/moved-off-supabase/ Supabase got Plate to a working v1 in an afternoon. Two months later we moved the database to a more robust non-relational store because the shape of our data wanted to live differently. The reason was fit, not platform. Tue, 12 May 2026 10:00:00 +0530 Nikhil Ballal Engineering