# Cedric Chin

> Cedric Chin is a Malaysian-born operator, writer, and founder of Commoncog - a paid newsletter serving 9,000+ investors and operators weekly. He bootstrapped a restaurant point-of-sale system (EPOS) from zero to $4.5M ARR in two years before its acquisition by Ant Financial, doubled a SaaS company's ARR in 8 months through repositioning, founded NUS Hackers (Singapore's most influential university hacker club), and now writes long-form research on accelerating business expertise, tacit knowledge, and the mental models shared by experienced operators.

- **Role:** Founder at Commoncog
- **Organizations:** Commoncog, Holistics, Floating Cube Studios, NUS Hackers, Pandamian
- **From:** Sarawak, Malaysia
- **Nationality:** Malaysian
- **Education:** Computer Science, National University of Singapore (NUS)
- **Known for:** Bootstrapped EPOS restaurant POS system from $0 to $4.5M ARR in ~2 years; later acquired by Ant Financial, Founded NUS Hackers, Singapore's most influential university hacker club; started Hack&Roll, Singapore's largest student hackathon, Doubled a SaaS company (Holistics) ARR in 8 months with no additional marketing spend through repositioning

## Career timeline

- **2006** — Founded Novelr.com, an influential web publishing and web fiction blog, as a teenager
- **2008** — Co-created Web Fiction Guide, an online directory for web fiction
- **2010** — Co-founded Pandamian, a digital publishing startup
- **2010-2014** — Served as President/co-founder of NUS Hackers; started Friday Hacks and Hack&Roll hackathon (Singapore's largest student hackathon)
- **2014-2017** — Led Vietnam office of Floating Cube Studios; pivoted to building EPOS, a restaurant POS system bootstrapped from $0 to $4.5M ARR in ~2 years
- **2017** — EPOS acquired by Ant Financial
- **2018** — Founded Commoncog as a content marketing learning experiment/blog
- **2020-2022** — Ran content marketing for Holistics (BI/SaaS); repositioning exercise doubled ARR in 8 months with no additional marketing spend
- **2022-2023** — Undertook a public judo expertise acceleration experiment: trained 5 hours/day for ~116 days and competed in Malaysian Senior Nationals at age 33
- **2023** — Married in December; took the entire month off
- **2024** — Released Xmrit, a free open-source XmR charting tool; Commoncog reaches 9,000+ weekly readers
- **2025** — Ongoing research arc on Southeast Asian business empires (Robert Kuok, Kwek Leng Beng, etc.)

## Achievements

- Bootstrapped EPOS restaurant POS system from $0 to $4.5M ARR in ~2 years; later acquired by Ant Financial
- Founded NUS Hackers, Singapore's most influential university hacker club; started Hack&Roll, Singapore's largest student hackathon
- Doubled a SaaS company (Holistics) ARR in 8 months with no additional marketing spend through repositioning
- Built Commoncog into a profitable solo-founder publication serving 9,000+ investors and operators per week
- Popularized the concept of tacit knowledge in mainstream business thinking through widely-cited writing series
- Released Xmrit, a free open-source XmR chart tool used by operators and analysts
- Competed in Malaysian Senior Nationals in judo at age 33 as a deliberate expertise acceleration case study
- Competed in judo for Sarawak (SUKMA shadow team, 2008 National Championships)

## Latest updates

- **2025-01** — Major research arc focused on Southeast Asian business empires - studying tycoons like Robert Kuok and Kwek Leng Beng
- **2024-04** — Released Xmrit, a free open-source XmR charting tool for operators
- **2024-01** — Published 2024 Commoncog annual recap; publication serving 9,000+ weekly readers
- **2023-12** — Married; took December 2023 off entirely
- **2023-01** — Completed and published judo expertise acceleration experiment (116 days, 5 hrs/day, competed in Malaysian Senior Nationals)

## Links

- Website: https://commoncog.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cedchin/
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/ejames_c

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/cedric-chin
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-04-28