Hey, I'm Thabani

My full name is Thabani M. Takwena.

I'm a software engineer. I do client work for a living. Outside of that I dance, I play the trumpet at church, and I build things on my laptop when an idea won't leave me alone. SymbioLearn is the one that keeps pulling most of my thinking time — not because I'm trying to sound like a founder, but because I genuinely care about how studying feels for students.

This page is about me. The story of SymbioLearn itself — why features exist, how it changed — is on the About page.

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How I learn (and how that shaped everything)

I studied Information Technology at Richfield. Uni didn't just give me a qualification. It was where I properly learnt how to teach myself.

Lectures helped, but I couldn't depend on hearing something once. I had to sit with the material, dig around when I didn't get it, try different explanations, practise, come back to the hard bits, and slowly make them make sense.

Over time I got good at that process. Understanding wasn't about reading the same page again and again. It was questioning the material, connecting ideas, simplifying them, testing myself, and explaining things in a way that clicked for me.

That changed my results. I finished my degree cum laude, with distinctions across my subjects. What I carried from that wasn't only the marks. It was discovering that learning changes depending on the relationship you have with it.

A lot of students experience studying as a threat — pressure, deadlines, fear, little sleep. They study because something bad happens if they don't. I wanted to build something that could help that relationship feel less like chase-and-panic, and more like something that gives clarity and confidence back. That's the feeling behind SymbioLearn. The name is about a symbiotic relationship with learning.

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SymbioLearn, without making this a startup speech

In my final year in 2023 I built the first version of SymbioLearn as my university project. Upload a PDF. Ask questions grounded in it. It got 75%. It worked. More importantly, it was the first time the idea left my head and became something someone could use.

I graduated in May 2024 and put SymbioLearn online publicly in June 2024 — chat with your material, summaries, notes, quizzes, flashcards. I've rebuilt it many times since then as my understanding of the problem got clearer.

I still design and write the code myself. Most days it's me, a laptop, and the next hard problem. I don't have a big team behind it. I've also started other ideas on the side (some stick, some don't — Chartysis came from trading and wanting a second opinion on charts without pretending AI knows the future). That's part of how I learn.

SymbioLearn is where I spend a lot of quiet thinking time: how information becomes understanding, how understanding sticks, how you know what to study today. If that stuff interests you, read About SymbioLearn.

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Outside the screen

I dance. Properly — it's not a throwaway line. It's how I move, how I switch off, how I stay in my body when work wants to live only in my head.

I play the trumpet at church. Faith is central to how I understand life — purpose, discipline, honesty in work. SymbioLearn isn't a religious app. I'm just not going to pretend the person building it has no centre.

I do client work as a software engineer. That's how I earn money and how I keep getting sharper at shipping real systems for real people. Building for others has taught me that something can look fine in code and still fail if it doesn't match how someone actually lives through their day.

There are seasons that feel exciting and seasons that feel heavy. Comparison. Uncertainty. Paying bills while still wanting to finish the thing that matters to me. I don't need those moments packaged as "a founder's journey." They're just part of being a young adult trying to build something worthwhile.

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How I like to work

I rarely start knowing everything I'll need. I understand the problem as clearly as I can, start building, hit the gaps, and learn what I need along the way. That pattern shows up in client work and in SymbioLearn.

I care about end-to-end work — idea, interface, backend, whether the whole thing actually helps someone. I'm ambitious. I'm also still figuring out focus, finishing well, and not tying my whole identity to whether something launches perfectly.

I don't see myself as someone who has arrived. I'm documenting parts of the process while I'm still inside it.

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Find me

• thabani.dev
• LinkedIn
• GitHub @thabanidev
• Instagram @thabanidev
• X @thabanidev
• SymbioLearn: symbiolearn.com · About

That's me.