Sand Battery Legal Fight Update: Court Documents, Claims, and What Happens Next (SAND - Part 16)

A lot of you have been asking what is going on with the case. In this post I'll show you the single most revealing piece of evidence so far — one that came from Alterno's own court submission — and at the end, I'll ask for your help.

⁉️ Critical discrepancy in court evidence

Among the stack of documents Alterno submitted to the court is the central claim of their defense: that I violated the Labour Code by being uncontactable from 01/08/2024 to 03/09/2024. Nothing new so far, if you have been following the saga.

Here is the remarkable part: the very same stack of documents contains clear evidence to the contrary. Buried in their own submission is an email exchange from August 29, 2024, at 3:35 PM, between myself and Kim Tuyen (HR Executive) — squarely inside the window during which I was supposedly unreachable. Tuyen had even called my phone that same day to ask if she could email me the draft contract. They filed the proof against their own claim.

This is not the only email that happened during the period, remember that I also sent an email asking the entire board of Alterno to arrange for another meeting? It's just right after 8 Aug 2024 as I've mentioned before. I'm going to keep the rest of evidence for the court.

What does this mean?

They shot themselves in the foot 🙃

Alterno’s management seems to be working against the company’s mission. Instead of resolving disputes or fostering a positive environment, the remaining founders are pouring energy into creating documents to falsely claim I abandoned my work.

For someone with PTSD, revisiting painful experiences and personal journals to counter these misrepresentations is exhausting. It’s tough to justify actions I didn’t take while trying to grow my separate businesses (more on that later).

Instead of focusing on R&D to perfect the product (TRL 9), the team is in disarray, with low morale and little creative output. Even the junior engineers who once worked closely with me every day have been swept up in this insular, us-versus-them environment. Would you want to work in a place like that?

So you see, the entire time last several years while I was doing my research work on Sand Battery, trying to understand the nuances of manufacturing at scale, while I was reaching out to all sort of people (universities, professors, distributors, investors) to find a way to push the invention forwards. Even after incident, I still continued my work on IoT solutions for Thermal storage on the cold side. You can read all about the technical details and equipment we used in my Alpha Bits technical blog.

What do I really do?

My 20+ year career has been about building software solutions and teams from the ground up: everything from calculator apps to dating apps, management systems, data platforms, and entire ERP teams. I’ve probably formed 100–200 teams (the “mafia” is 500+ strong). I love coding and collaborating with talented engineers daily, geeking out over algorithms and code optimization.

That was the reason why Grab acqui-hire part of my company back in 2016. That is a long story for another day. Moving on during the pandemic my team worked on transforming data infrastructure of multiple companies including the largest coffee chain and multiple retail, education chains in Vietnam. Basically I was holding the data lifeline of the entire corporation, we helped to consolidate, cleanup and automate a lot of mundane reporting.

Call me a nerd, I don’t care. I introduce myself as a “programmer” because I’m still coding daily. My GitHub is public, check it out if you’re skeptical. With AI tools, I’m building products 100x faster than before!

At Alterno, I was frustrated because I couldn’t code much. I taught the junior engineers some basic Node-RED, but I spent most of my time running the lab hosting guests, while the other two co-founders worked from home. As the one who researched and experimented with Sand Battery technology first, I naturally wanted to step down as CEO to focus on the technical side: CFD simulations, automated BOM tracking, and more. But that didn’t happen.

What next?

Are you tired of the drama? I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t, but I have to keep fighting as part of the court process. Thankfully, it doesn’t derail my work as my lawyers just need my signatures and input on materials (such as the one above).

Some people think I’m just fighting this case or doing nothing, but that’s far from the truth. Here’s what I’m working on, and where I need your help:

• AlphaBits.team
  • An AI Automation Agency, the natural evolution of my digital transformation work. If you know someone who needs to replace manual business processes with AI, please share this with them!
• Konductor.ai
  • Join the waitlist! I’m building my own AI Agents to help manage my crazy ideas and schedule and assist others with time management and daily tasks.

• Thermion.energy - Hit an unexpected delay with R&D progress. Need help with engineering (details later).

How You Can Help

I’d greatly appreciate it if you could spread the word about AlphaBits.team and Konductor.ai to anyone who might benefit.