Naol Bassaye Built a Global Technology Career by Learning to Start Again

From teaching himself to code in Ethiopia to founding companies in London, Naol has shaped his career through education, reinvention, and a belief that access can change what people are able to build

Naol Mekuriya Bassaye began teaching himself to code in eighth grade while growing up in Ethiopia. The subject gave him more than a technical skill. It gave him a way to imagine possibilities that were not immediately visible in his surroundings.

“Coding showed me that I could begin with curiosity and turn it into something concrete,” Naol said. “I could study how a system worked, experiment with it, and create a result without waiting for someone else to open the door.”

His early interest developed into success in competitive science, technology, engineering, and mathematics programs during high school. It eventually helped him secure the opportunity to attend Duke University, where he studied data science across the university’s campuses in the United States and China.

For Naol, reaching Duke was not an isolated personal achievement. It was connected to the choices his parents made long before he entered a university classroom.

“My parents gave me the freedom to focus on learning,” he said. “They invested what they could in my education and created stability around me. I understand that my progress did not happen through individual effort alone.”

That awareness has stayed with him as his career has moved across countries and industries. Naol has lived in Ethiopia, the United States, China, and the United Kingdom. Each transition required more than adapting to a new location. He had to learn unfamiliar expectations, build relationships from the beginning, and establish his credibility in places where his previous work was not always known.

“Starting over changes the way you think about identity,” he said. “You cannot depend on being recognized. You have to become useful, listen carefully, and allow the quality of your contribution to introduce you.”

Naol entered the technology sector without family connections in the industry or an established professional network. That absence made his progress more difficult, but it also shaped his preference for work that can be demonstrated rather than merely described.

After Duke, he joined Celonis and worked in enterprise data science. The role exposed him to large organizations, complicated operations, and the realities of introducing technical systems into businesses where decisions affect many teams.

The experience taught him that technical ability and organizational understanding must develop together.

“You can build something sophisticated and still misunderstand the environment where it has to live,” Naol said. “The work improved when I became better at listening to the people affected by the system, understanding what they were responsible for, and seeing why a technically correct answer might still be impractical.”

That lesson followed him into entrepreneurship. Naol founded Three Sigma before becoming co-founder and chief technology officer of Seeft, the company he is now building.

His transition from employee to founder changed the nature of the questions he had to answer. Technical execution remained important, but he also had to decide which problems deserved attention, when an idea needed to change, and how long to continue in a direction before acknowledging that the evidence pointed elsewhere.

Naol has learned that changing course is not necessarily a failure of conviction.

“The problem can remain important even when your first answer is wrong,” he said. “A founder has to separate ego from evidence. Holding on to a solution because it was yours can become more expensive than admitting that the market has taught you something.”

That willingness to revise has become one of the central principles of his work. Naol prefers to test ideas in real conditions and treat feedback as information rather than judgment.

He also rejects the idea that a polished plan can remove the uncertainty from building a company.

“Planning can help you begin, but it cannot tell you everything people will do,” he said. “You learn through contact with reality. The sooner you reach that point, the sooner you can stop protecting assumptions that were never true.”

His companies have received support through selective startup programs, including Antler and Entrepreneur First. Naol values the opportunities created by those institutions, but he sees them as part of a longer process rather than a final measure of success.

The larger pattern in his career is his ability to enter unfamiliar spaces and continue building. That pattern also appears in work he began well before Seeft.

Naol founded Unwritten, a charitable organization now in its 11th year. The group has supported more than 320 students and grown to include over 40 volunteers.

The organization reflects his belief that talent is often constrained by access rather than ability.

“People can be capable and ambitious while still being separated from the resources that would let them move forward,” he said. “A missing teacher, tool, or opportunity can change the direction of a life. I have always been aware of how significant those openings can be.”

His own education gave him access to environments that once felt distant. His parents’ support made sustained learning possible. International study expanded his reference points, while repeated relocation taught him how to rebuild without assuming familiarity or belonging.

Those experiences now influence how he leads. Naol does not view resilience as simply enduring difficulty. He sees it as the ability to remain observant enough to change while continuing to move toward a larger goal.

“Persistence is useful only when it is connected to learning,” he said. “Repeating the same decision for longer does not make it better. You have to stay committed while remaining honest about what the evidence is showing you.”

Seeft represents the current stage of that development. Naol is applying what he learned from enterprise technology, earlier ventures, and his own shifts in direction to a company he hopes can grow far beyond its first product.

His ambition is to build a generational technology business, but the scale of that goal has not changed the method he trusts. He still begins by learning, building, and observing what happens next.

“The countries and companies have changed, but the basic process has stayed with me,” Naol said. “You enter a new situation, understand what is limiting progress, and try to create something that makes a wider future possible.”

His journey began with a student in Ethiopia discovering that code could turn thought into action. Years later, Naol is still working from the same belief: where a person begins can influence the route, but it does not have to determine how far the work can reach.