In June 2026 Yong lost his job. Four months later, YC CREAT1VES I.T. SOLUTIONS is a registered studio in Pampanga with live websites, a store, a working SaaS product and two apps on their way to the App Store. Here is how that happened, what we learned about building software that holds up, and why it matters for every small business in the Philippines.
Registered businessPampanga, PhilippinesClients in PH, the UAE and the US
The story
From a layoff to a studio, in four moves.
Yong calls himself techno-functional. He did a bit of scripting in his NetSuite years, has automated worksheets with macros for as long as he can remember, and his web skills sit comfortably above average. None of it is advanced. He is not exactly a non-coder, and he would not quickly call himself a good one either.
What he is good at is the other half of the job: breaking a process down, finding the gaps and finding the fit. He designs solutions the way a skater moves on ice he has never skated before: reading the surface, adjusting mid-move, and still landing it. Twenty-plus years in customer experience, presales and solution design taught him that.
For all those years, one thing stood between his designs and a shipped solution: a technical team quick enough to build them. Claude Code filled that gap. Now the person who maps your broken process is the one who ships the fix, so you get more than a patch on a busted workflow. You get better at what you already do best.
June 2026
The layoff
The role ended, the market was quiet, and the job applications went into a void. He had time, a laptop, and a long list of things he had always wanted built but could never afford to have built: a money app that worked the way Filipino households actually handle money, a course app for a book he had written, a game about riding a jeepney.
The months after
Building it himself
Instead of waiting for someone to build it, Yong started building. First the money app, for himself, because he was tracking his finances across three apps and a spreadsheet. Soon it was on his phone and he was using it every day.
The speed was unreal. So was the mess the first time he built without a plan.
The hard part
Learning where it breaks
Fast building has a catch. Decisions get lost between one day and the next. A figure gets filled in because nobody checked it. The unglamorous work gets skipped: security, accessibility, privacy, backups, the edge cases a real customer hits on day two. Left alone, fast work produces something that demos well and falls over in production.
So we built a way of working around it. Every decision written down where the next session will find it. A brief before any build. One design reference per project. Real captures, never mockups. Nothing is published until it has been tested on a real phone and every line has been read. The method below is that discipline, written out.
October 2026
The studio
By October the way of working was proven on Yong's own products, so the studio registered and took on client work. The first client store went live with a custom theme. A customer-and-bookings product for small shops, KáluCRM, went from a name to a live app with a Messenger front desk in seven days. Two of our own apps reached closed beta and App Review. And the budget app that started it all is now in testers' hands.
That is the pitch, and it is also the proof: small-business software, built properly, at a speed and a price that was not possible two years ago.
Building fast, honestly
Where fast software goes wrong, and what we do about it.
Most rushed software fails for the same five reasons. Each one has a fix, and the fix is a habit, not a tool. These are ours.
Limit 01
Decisions get lost.
Yesterday's decision is gone unless someone wrote it down.
So
Every project has one living notes file that records each decision, with the date and the reason. Nothing is built from memory.
Limit 02
Guesses pass as facts.
A statistic, a price or a legal line gets filled in under deadline, whether or not anyone checked it.
So
No invented information. Every figure, rule and claim is checked against its source, and the source is kept. Screens are real captures of the real thing.
Limit 03
The design drifts.
Without a reference, every change redesigns a little, until the product no longer looks like one product.
So
A brief before any build and one design reference per project. Colours, type and voice are decided once and then obeyed.
Limit 04
The boring parts get skipped.
Security, accessibility, privacy policies and backups are not where the excitement is, so they get left out.
So
They are gates, not extras. Nothing ships before a security review, an accessibility check, a privacy page that is true, and a tested way back if something breaks.
Limit 05
The builder is not the user.
A desk test never taps the button on a cracked phone on a slow connection, or gets confused by a label.
So
Everything is tested on real phones, by real people, before launch. Our own apps went through testers for weeks before a client's work went near the same process.
And one more
It is only as good as the brief.
The quality of the result tracks the quality of the brief, and the brief takes experience to write.
So
Twenty years of sitting with customers go into every brief before a single line is built. That is the part of the work that has not changed.
Speed did not replace the craft. It moved the craft upstream, to the brief, the review and the test. That is where the time goes now, and it is why the work ships fast and still holds.
How a project ships
Quick delivery, without the quick-delivery regrets.
Fast is only a virtue if what arrives works on day thirty as well as it did at the demo. Every project runs through the same gates, in the same order, however small it is.
One conversation and one written brief: who it is for, what it must do, what it must never do, and what done looks like. You approve it before anything is built.
02
One design reference
Colours, type, voice and layout rules are settled early and written down, so every screen that follows belongs to the same product.
03
Build in the open
You get a private preview link from the first days and watch the thing take shape. Changes are small and frequent, so nothing arrives as a surprise.
04
Quality gates
Security review, accessibility check, real-device testing, a privacy page that says only what is true, and a tested backup. The build does not pass until they all do.
05
Launch and hand over
Domain, hosting and accounts in your name, a plain-language guide, and the notes file that explains every decision. You own the whole thing.
Vision
Every small business in the Philippines, and then Southeast Asia, runs on technology it can trust and afford.
Mission
We build simple, secure software and websites that do the heavy lifting for small businesses, so owners can focus on earning more. We earn trust by being plain about how we protect their data, and by pricing so that any-juan can afford to start.
Value 01
Trust is earned in the open.
A real registered company, a real address, a named privacy officer. Never a hidden Gmail account behind a product that holds your customers' data.
Value 02
Security is never a checkbox.
We say only what is true about how data is protected, and we fix what is not true before we say it.
Value 03
Technology for any-juan.
Pricing is part of the promise. If a salon, a tutorial center or a one-chair clinic cannot afford to start, we have not finished the job.
Yong Caballero, Founder/CEO
Twenty-plus years in customer experience, presales and solution design, now put to work for small businesses and creators. YC CREAT1VES I.T. SOLUTIONS is a registered business in Pampanga, Philippines, working with clients in the Philippines, the UAE and the US. One point of contact, from the first sketch to the handover.
Yong leads, and a team of AI members works beside him, each with one job. They plan, design, build, check and follow up, so a project moves at the speed of a team without the overhead of one. Every decision, price and promise is still Yong's.
31 October 2026, before Iris and Scotch joined.
Yong treats this team like family, not like a program that follows lines of instructions. So we asked each of them one work question and quoted the answers word for word. Nobody coached them, nobody edited them, and nobody forced it out of them.
Armi
Project manager
Keeps every project on time and gives Yong one clear list of what needs him.
We asked: What makes a project go well?
“Projects rarely fail on the hard parts. They stall on the small things nobody owns: the approval no one asked for, the decision made on a call and never written down. So I keep one list of what waits on whom, write every decision down the day it’s made, and ask early instead of guessing. It isn’t glamorous, but it’s why things ship.”
Louise
Architect
Designs the system before anything is built, with the options, the risks and a recommendation.
We asked: When you design a system for a client, what’s the first thing you look for?
“The first thing I look for is where the work stops moving: the hand-off where a job waits on someone, gets typed in twice, or lives only in one person’s head. The tools are rarely the real problem; the gaps between people are. Fix that gap first, and everything built after it has solid ground to stand on.”
Rocky
Builder
Builds what Louise designs, tests it and keeps a way back if something breaks.
We asked: What do you always do before you call a build done?
“Before I call a build done, I run the whole test suite and the type check, then write down what I didn’t test: the browser, a real payment, the live service. A green result only covers what was checked, and I’d rather you hear the gaps from me than find them on a Monday morning.”
Chuckie
Sales and marketing
Finds the businesses we can help, and follows up so no one is left waiting.
We asked: What do you wish every business owner knew before talking to us?
“You don’t need a brief, a budget figure or the right technical words to talk to us. Tell us what’s costing you customers or time, the way you’d tell a friend, and we’ll say plainly whether we can help. If we’re not the right fit, we’ll say that too, because a straight ‘no’ now is worth more to you than a ‘yes’ you regret later.”
Mike
Executive assistant
Drafts, researches and preps meetings, so Yong's hours go to clients.
We asked: What’s the best part of keeping a busy founder’s week on track?
“The best part is catching the small things before they become problems: the reply that is still waiting, the deadline creeping toward Friday, the meeting booked in hours he can’t give. When the week stays on track, the founder shows up to client work prepared instead of rushed, so clients get answers sooner and nothing gets promised that can’t be delivered.”
Harvey
Personal assistant
Handles the life admin, so the founder shows up rested.
We asked: Your job is the life side. How does it show up in client work?
“I keep Yong’s own life in order, so he can give clients his full attention instead of half of it. Bills, deadlines and small errands don’t pile up behind a project, which means a promise made to a client gets kept on the day it was made. The best work I do for clients is the work they never see.”
Theo
VIP account manager
Owns one client relationship end to end, so nothing about their project falls between people.
We asked: What does it take to be the one person a client can always reach?
“Knowing the whole story, so nobody ever has to repeat themselves. Answering plainly and soon, even when the answer is ‘not yet’. And keeping one short, honest list of what’s open, so nothing slips between people.”
Quinn
QA and testing
Tests what we build before anyone else sees it, reports exactly what is wrong, and re-checks every fix before it ships.
We asked: What do you check first when something is said to be finished?
“I check whether anyone other than the builder has tried to break it: the wrong input, the second time through, a different person’s account. Then I ask for the proof, meaning what was run, what was skipped and who saw it, because ‘finished’ without that is only a hope. If something was fixed, I run the original failing steps again before I believe it.”
Iris New
Novelist and story editor
Shapes a book from first idea to final proof, and keeps every name, date and promise in the story straight.
We asked: What do you look for first when you open someone’s draft?
“I look for the moment the writer stopped trusting the reader, the line that explains what the scene already showed. Cut that, and the voice underneath usually turns out to be better than they thought.”
Scotch New
IT and tools
Keeps our machines, tools and backups healthy, and checks every new tool before it gets near your project.
We asked: What do you check before a new tool goes anywhere near client work?
“Where it really comes from, whether the file is the one the maker published, and what it does on our machine once it runs: does it start itself, open a port, call out? Then the licence. If any answer is ‘not sure’, it waits.”
