Can a late-developing economy skip a stage instead of repeating it?
The Structured Leapfrogging Investment Model: a framework for the order in which a country invests, so it can jump ahead in technology and keep the growth.
Open since December 2025
A record of someone still becoming.
Md Ashikur Rahman, from Rajshahi, Bangladesh. I build products, argue for the fun of it, read in two languages, and keep asking whether the thing I’m making actually helps anyone.
Ashik
Rajshahi, 2026
IThe stars
For years they looked like scattered stars.
Telescopes. Debate. Posters. A file-sharing product. A flooded village. A shelf of Bangla science fiction. I followed whatever caught my curiosity, built something with it, learned, and moved on.
Lately the dots have started to connect. They were always the same habit: understand a thing, make a thing, question it, and try to make it better.
IIWhat I hold to
Life is short. It is also long enough to build something meaningful.
Humanity
Technology is worth building only when it makes someone’s life better. Progress means little if nobody’s life improves.
Precision
Getting the details right is part of the creative work, not a chore after it. How a thing is made shows what you thought of the people using it.
Accountability
I try to own what I choose, how I spend my hours, and what I add to the room. Ideas and ambition are the easy half.
Argument
I like questions more than conclusions. An idea isn’t ready until someone has properly tried to break it.
IIIThe work
Co-founder and Head of Product, since January 2026
RareDev
RareDev is where my ideas stopped being only ideas. I’m learning, the long way, how design, users, business and plain hard execution have to meet before a thought becomes something people rely on.
- Idea
Sharing a file shouldn’t mean giving it away.
- Product
SafeShare: private file sharing, shaped from the first version onwards.
- People
More than 20,000 of them, across the world, using it.
- Next
A version built for companies, and Eflow, a living island for Windows.
SafeShare
Privacy-first file sharing. I’ve looked after the whole product: what it should be, who it’s for, what gets built next.
safeshare.coEflow
Assistants, notifications and everyday tools in one small island on the Windows screen. I work on the product, the brand and how we tell its story.
eflow.safeshare.coIVThe network
Co-founder and Director of Strategy, since August 2025
SLSN
slsn.community14medals won
4countries so far
Sustainability & Life Sciences Network
Science and sustainability, run by young people. We bring olympiads to Bangladesh, send students abroad to compete, and look for problems close to home worth working on.
- BOCE
The Bangladesh Olympiad on Climate Change & Environmental Issues, which we organise with Zero Competitions. It picks the national team for the international olympiad in Sirius, Russia, and in 2026 that team made history.
- BIDE
Another olympiad we bring to Bangladesh. I lead the graphics team here.
- Quitora
Software meant to help prevent dengue, the illness every monsoon brings back, built around a reward model. Still being built.
VOther rooms
Other rooms, the same habit.
Find the thing worth doing, take responsibility for it, and work with people until it exists. RareDev and SLSN played on Side A. These are the rest, in the order they began.
Side B
Other rooms, the same habit
Recorded in Rajshahi, 2024 to now
- B1
উদ্ধার UddharAug 2024 to now
Admin
Flood rescue, relief and the volunteers behind them. Work only counts if it reaches people.
- B2
Bangladesh Olympiad on Astronomy & AstrophysicsDec 2024 to now
Senior Associate
I joined as a graphics intern. Now I oversee the platforms and paperwork a national science olympiad runs on. My way of staying close to the sky.
- B3
Harimohan Govt. High School Debate ClubFeb 2025 to Feb 2026
President
Two hundred members, and for the first time the alumni back in the room.
- B4
Chapainawabganj Debating ClubMar 2025 to Jun 2026
Assistant General Secretary
Sessions, events and the quiet admin that keeps a club going.
- B5
Bangladesh United Astronomical ForumApr 2025 to Sep 2026
Head of the Creative Department
Led the graphics team, and kept everything looking like one careful hand made it.
- B6
Bangladesh Space Research SocietyApr to Dec 2025
Executive, Creative Department
Space-science awareness programmes, workshops and seminars across the country.
All tracks played with other people. Liner notes on request.
Honours along the way
A few kind words from rooms I didn’t expect to be in.
Outstanding Presentation Award
International Olympiad on Climate Change, Russia
Sep 2025
Champion
9th Rajshahi College Science Fest
Feb 2026
First runner-up
BDOAA Astro Poster Competition
Apr 2025
Selected
The Knowledge Society, 15% acceptance
2026
First runner-up
IUT Techathon
2026
Essay accepted
Open Dialogue Russia
2026
VIOpen questions
Questions I haven’t finished with.
Research, for me, is a question I can’t put down. These three are still open, which is the point.
Why do so few people in Bangladesh get to learn about the sky?
What is missing in astronomy education here, and how digital learning and local communities could put space science within reach.
Open since February 2025
Can we see a wildfire coming before it spreads?
Satellite images, weather and years of environmental data, put to work on early detection. The point is the forest, not the AI.
Open since December 2025
VIIFurther away
The world, getting larger.
The first time I represented Bangladesh abroad, it took me 298 kilometres from home. The next time, nearly five thousand. Every border since has made the map bigger and my certainty a little smaller.
Russia
Sirius, September 2025
43.4° N, 39.9° E
I represented Bangladesh at the International Scientific Conference on Ecology and Climate Change, presented on environmental solutions, and came home with an Outstanding Presentation Award.
Vietnam
Doing Good, a UWC short course, July 2026
16.5° N, 107.6° E
Young people from many countries, living together and arguing, kindly, about what it really takes to change a community.
India
Darjeeling, February 2024
27.0° N, 88.3° E
The Indo-Bangladesh Scouts Friendship Camp. Not my first time abroad, but the first time I went to represent Bangladesh: two countries, one campsite, and the start of all this.
VIIIThe shelf
What shaped the thinking.
Bangla science fiction came first, back in primary school. Then Kishor Alo and Biggan Chinta, every month since third grade, and after that everything else: Dostoevsky, Orwell, Thiel, Isaacson.
More than ninety books, in two languages, and still growing.
See the whole shelfIXWritten down
The notebook.
Observations, arguments and thoughts worth keeping: about people, power, technology, and whatever I happen to be reading. Sometimes blunt.
View notebook13 November 2026
On Animal Farm
Napoleon didn’t plan to betray in the beginning, I argue if he can think of that word afterall. I don’t think he imagined himself sitting with humans, playing cards and shit, when he started messing with Snowball. But he did it anyway.
Read the pieceXWrite back
Discuss a project
About a product, a disagreement, a book I should read, or nothing in particular. For work, you can also reach me through RareDev.
Email me