17 · Developer & Founder · Almaty
I started programming in 8th grade when I realized I wanted to build not just something useful, but something that people would know was made by me.
Built MindZan — a mental arithmetic platform with modern design, gamification, and dual web/mobile access. Created in 3 weeks. Attracted training centers as early clients.
Sold MindZan for $10K to FOC, Central Asia's leading mental arithmetic olympiad organizer, and joined them as CTO of FOC World to scale it beyond the region.
I spent 5 years competing in mental arithmetic and became a republican champion before leaving to learn programming. Came back to rebuild it better — and it worked.
My first project was a Telegram bot for school. Then freelance orders, informatics and database olympiads, hackathons — including NASA Space Apps Challenge finals out of 8,000 teams (Oct 2024) and WorldSkills regional gold.
Worked at Traffy, Asquids, and various Telegram Mini Apps projects. Built a crypto payment gateway that's still being used today. By age 15, I was earning 500,000 tenge/month doing Telegram Mini App backend work.
Worked as Software Engineer at bfinance.app and Fullstack Middle Developer at nFactorial.school (Sept 2025 – Jan 2026).
Summer 2025, got into nFactorial Incubator, made it to Demo Day among 80 projects with menoai.site (800+ users).
Had startup attempts before MindZan — CatOps (AI-powered monitoring for developers), among others. Researched problems, markets, spaces. Nothing clicked until I returned to a field I actually understand.
Built chatly.top in 7 days for a documentary.
Languages: Python, Go, JavaScript, Node.js Frameworks: FastAPI, Express.js, aiogram Blockchain: Crypto payments, Web3 DevOps: Docker, Monitoring, AI/ML
- GitHub: @mfhonley
- Twitter: @mfhonley
- LinkedIn: @mfhonley
- YouTube: @mfhonley
- Telegram: @mfhonley
- Email: zhan@mindzan.com
17 · Almaty · 2026