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 and teams now. It's one practice, not a menu — applied technical judgment, hands-on build, and AI leverage, priced on the value it creates rather than the hours it takes. Two ways in, depending on who you are:

• Founder Technical Partner — 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, getting it built fast, bringing real AI leverage, and staying in your corner month to month. It's a partnership, not contracting — you're buying progress and confidence, not a stack of hours. Light, high-leverage build is simply part of having me; a bigger build (a whole product) is scoped deliberately up front as a defined piece, never open-ended.
• AI Acceleration Sprint — for engineering teams. Over 2–3 weeks I install a working Claude Code / agentic AI system into your team — custom agents, slash commands, integrations into your tracker and observability tools, per-engineer setup, and recorded workshops plus a written playbook so it sticks once I'm gone. Then I leave you running it.

The front door is free for both. There's a founder assessment and a team assessment — a few minutes either way, 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 across both is AI done properly — not theory, but the workflows that actually make building faster: custom Claude agents, slash commands, debugging loops, scaffolding patterns. For a founder that's leverage on the build itself; for a team it's the whole point of the Sprint.

Worth knowing: with teams, the harder install isn't the technical one — it's persuading a sceptical engineering team that AI tooling is worth their time. I've taken a team through that conversion directly: leadership-led adoption, deliberate rollout, and the engineers who pushed back hardest are now the daily users. That's the install pattern the Sprint productises.

How I work

My focus is the work that compounds — clarity on what to build, decisions that scale, and the AI workflows that make small teams and solo founders 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 — for founders, 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 or your team, and ignoring the places it doesn't.

Engagements are remote, UK hours, with selective in-person time when it actually helps. I take on one to two new engagements at a time.

Which one is for you

It's less about whether I'm a fit — it's about which product fits where you are:

• Founder Technical Partner is for founders building without an engineering team. Most partners run an expert practice — coaching, consulting, clinical — and are turning that expertise into a software product or a smarter way of working. 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.
• AI Acceleration Sprint is for engineering teams that know they should be getting more out of AI and want it installed properly, not left to chance. It's built for small teams — the install works best when it can reach everyone in the room — but if your org is bigger, start the conversation and we'll work out the right shape.
• Either way, you're buying clarity and confident decisions, not just advice you have to process yourself.

The one thing neither product is: 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.