About

How I got here

I started writing code at 12, messing around with YaBasic on a PlayStation 2. Sony had shipped the PS2 as a "home computer" to dodge import taxes, but for me it was a gateway into software that's now lasted over two decades.

Since then I've worked across the stack at real-stakes companies — crypto trading at Archax, collateral management at CloudMargin, digital banking at Nationwide, dealer software at CDK Global (seven years), and most recently AI chatbots at OneBot. I've been a software engineer, a technical lead, a Scrum Master, and the person who gets called in when something's broken and nobody can figure out why. I build and ship my own products too, so I know the founder's side of the table as well as the engineer's.

Twenty years in, the thing that's stayed consistent is the same instinct: cut through the noise, find the decision that actually matters, and make it.

What FortyTech is

FortyTech is how I work with founders now: as a Founder Technical Partner. It's for founders turning an idea or their expertise into a software product, with no engineering team of their own. I become the technical half of your venture: helping you steer what to build and what to skip, building it with you, bringing real AI leverage, and staying in your corner month to month. It's a partnership, not contracting — priced on the progress it creates, not on a clock. Build is simply part of having me; a bigger build (a whole product) gets scoped up front, so you always know exactly what you're getting. Here's how the partnership works.

The front door is free. There's a founder assessment — a few minutes, and you get a clear read on where you stand — or just get in touch and start a conversation. No paid entry tier, no barrier before you know whether it's a fit.

The differentiator is AI done properly — not theory, but the workflows that actually make building faster: custom Claude agents, slash commands, debugging loops, scaffolding patterns. It's how one person ships a whole product, and it's leverage your venture gets from day one.

How I work

My focus is the work that compounds — clarity on what to build, decisions that scale, and the AI workflows that make founders without an engineering team move faster. Less "extra hands to code," more of:

• Technical direction — what to build, what not to, in what order, with what tradeoffs.
• Hands-on build — getting the real thing (site, funnel, AI agents, integrations) in front of customers fast, because experience and AI do the heavy lifting.
• Architecture ownership — system design, standards, the decisions that compound.
• AI leverage — finding the places AI genuinely helps your venture, and ignoring the places it doesn't.

Engagements are remote, UK hours, with in-person time when it actually helps.

Who it's for

Most partners run an expert practice — coaching, consulting, clinical — and are turning that expertise into a software product or a smarter way of working. Some are pivoting, building something new on the back of everything they've built so far. If you're earlier than that, get in touch anyway: the whole point of the partnership is a trusted technical peer who's done this many times, from wherever you're starting.

Either way, you're buying clarity and confident decisions, not just advice you have to process yourself. The one thing it isn't: raw engineering capacity — bodies to hand a spec to. That's a different shape of arrangement.

Tech I know well

Frontend: React, Next.js, TypeScript, Tailwind, web3/Ethereum integrations Backend: Node.js, TypeScript, Express, C#, .NET Databases: Postgres, MySQL, Redis, DynamoDB, MongoDB Cloud: Mostly AWS (Lambda, SQS, SNS, ECS, DynamoDB) AI: Claude (Anthropic) for agentic workflows and production integrations, OpenAI APIs, vector databases (Qdrant, Pinecone) Other: WebSockets, real-time systems, API design, testing, observability

I can work with other tech when it's the right call, but these are what I reach for when I'm building or reviewing from scratch.

Elsewhere

I publish at The Random Coder — short videos on AI-assisted coding and contrarian takes on familiar problems.

Get in touch

Use the form on the homepage — name, company, what you need, rough timing. I'll reply within two business days.