Built by a father of three. Not a guru.

Ivan Vatchkov

I am a father of three, living in Singapore. I spent fifteen years in finance — as a portfolio manager at multi-billion-dollar funds in Singapore, and before that at Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank in London. I hold an MSc from the London School of Economics, I am a CFA charterholder, and I have been part of the World Economic Forum's Young Global Leaders community since 2014. I now run Kalibra, a healthspan company that turns health data into action. With my wife I co-founded ReachOut.BG, a Bulgarian charity supporting abandoned children.

I list all of that not to impress you but to be inspectable. The checklist above is the provision half of a man's ledger — career, credentials, solvency. Nine Rites exists because I learned, the slow way, that the provision half is the easier half.

Why Nine Rites exists

Somewhere in the second decade of a demanding career and the first decade of fatherhood, I noticed the pattern this site describes: competent everywhere, drifting at home. Present in the house, absent in the room. I did what men like me do — I read. And I found that insight rarely survived Tuesday. What worked, when anything worked, was never a better idea. It was structure: a commitment made out loud to someone who would ask about it, a daily action too simple to argue with, and a written record I could not flatter.

Nine Rites is that mechanism, written down and made repeatable. It borrows honestly — from Stoic practice, from what the research on habit and accountability actually supports, from the unglamorous machinery of initiation that most cultures had and ours dropped. It invents no ancient wisdom and grants me no special status. I am not a therapist, a coach with a certification wall, or a man who has finished the work. I run the rites myself, and the first cohort runs with me, not under me.

The editorial standard

Everything published here is held to the Constitution, and to this: every page has a named author. Sources are real and cited, or the claim is cut. No grievance content — nothing that monetises resentment. No invented rituals or warrior cosplay. Clear boundaries stated on every protocol: this is structured practice, not therapy, and we say so even where it costs a sale. When we get something wrong, we correct it visibly.

If a page ever fails that standard, I want to know: the fastest way to hold us to it is to say so when you reply to any email we send.