myceleum is a desktop app that runs atop a docker container running Ubuntu with language SDKs and runtimes installed on top of it.
myceleum is a highly personalised and customisable local development environment.
It makes the lives of developers easier by presenting all the fields required to set up a development environment in a user friendly GUI. Once the developer (regardless of their level of experience) customizes the environment as they please, myceleum builds the corresponding Docker image in minutes. It also allows the users to synchronize the environment across all devices while integrating with their favorite IDEs.
The Team
Bassem Makarem
Co-Founder / CEO
Bassem is a full-stack software engineer who enjoys working on tooling and DevOps. He currently ranks 7th among his selves from other dimensions.
Ghassan Achi
Co-Founder / CTO
Ghassan is a full-stack software engineer with a keen interest in DevOps. He has been banned from attending Bassem’s multidimensional gatherings after “accidentally” eating the entire cake.
Samer Corban
Co-Founder / COO
Samer graduated from AUB with a BBA in finance and entrepreneurship before working as a management consultant for a few years. He is leading the “ban coriander from all meals” movement.
Our Story
[Editor’s note]: Heavy dramatization
The myceleum story started on a cold winter’s night in Lebanon. Bassem was staying late in the office setting up a development environment, the 3rd one he had to set up in as many months. While a seasoned developer with plenty of experience in DevOps, Docker, and the setting up of development environments, the task seemed incredibly tedious and pointless.
“I was working on a react native mobile app, there was an update to MacOS that broke the build. I spent hours trying to fix it, eventually the only thing that worked was recreating a new project / environment and copying the existing code. That got me thinking that there should be a way to have environments isolated, and that you should be able to download pre-configured environments at any point if your existing environment breaks, somehow.”
He surfed the internet for a solution but couldn’t find anything that seemed to address this particular pain point. This is where he came up with the idea of developing a desktop app that would set up the development environment for you. He pitched the idea to Ghassan who immediately jumped onboard. They started working on a mockup of the design and then pitched it to the CEO of their old company (and one of the biggest software firms in the MENA region). The CEO fell in love with the idea, gave them some time off to work on it, and invested in it.
9 months and a thousand cups of coffee later, myceleum was born and Bassem and Ghassan went on to win the Prix HEC Entrepreneur and got accepted into the Smart ESA Incubator Boost Program where they met Samer. The three immediately hit it off and had very good synergy and complementary skills so when Bassem and Ghassan asked Samer to join them, he couldn’t but agree.
Having won the Prix HEC Entrepreneur, myceleum moved its headquarters to Paris and is currently incubated at the HEC incubator in Station F.