I've been learning about and helping people gain momentum in the tech industry for about 30 years. My first computer was a ZX81, and then an Amstrad 6128 back in the mid-1980s. But, I was primarily a sportsperson at school. I grew up on Rugby and Baseball, in the UK! Even though I reached top levels in both those sports: (Middlesex country rugby, and UK champions at baseball), I still failed at earning a place on the England U19 rugby team at age 17 and then failed to get selected for the Olympics Baseball team for Seoul in '88, at 17. But at 19, I did finally earn myself a sports scholarship to college in Wisconsin in American Football (Gridiron) as a running back (fullback).

After severe injury, and 3 universities later, I got my degree in electronic engineering, building silicon chips, and optical computers in the UK, and then took my first job as a research engineer at Nokia Research Center, in Tampere, Finland. I loved my work, but it was not what I really wanted to be doing; flying planes, skydiving and rock climbing have always been my significant areas of interest and joy in my 20s and 30s.

I learned programming in my early teens and levelled that up in Nokia, building various innovative technologies in hardware and software there, self-learning Borland C++ initially. My wife and I worked in Finland, then moved to Malaysia and then explored New Zealand on our next adventure together, where I ended up in the tech startup world. Several failed startups later, I joined tech giant Microsoft as a Consultant, and that led me all over the globe from India, Singapore, and Australia, back to Europe in Sweden, Germany and Latvia and then on to the U.S, Argentina, and back to NZ helping various businesses get their products and tech teams back to sanity, ina variety of product roles.

Hundreds (probably more like ~150 or so) of tech engagements, teams, organisations and codebases later, I learned that there is far more to great tech than just the writing part of the software. And worse, many, many competent and capable people doing this kind of work are trapped in overbearing, unscalable and seriously underperforming working environments and organisations, sucking the life and innovation out of them. Rendering them ineffective at making the great products they should have been making.

After building my own tech startup from the ground up, and staying on the latest tools of the trade, I now understand deeply what it takes to make a great tech company of makers, where previously I have consistently tried and failed to convert existing companies, who just didn't know what good looks like. ✌️

Splitting Product people from Engineering people is not a useful or optimal division of labour to start a new tech business