Blogging again after a long hiatus
It has been a long time since I wrote on this blog. Roughly 10% of the world’s population wasn’t even alive yet when I last posted - that’s sobering!
I was in my late thirties, now my mid-forties. My kids were just approaching their teens - I now have two adult children. Gower Street was a real adventure, as expected - we 5x’ed the team, iterated the product and weathered the devastating impact COVID-19 had on the global film industry.
I’m now four years into co-founding and building Cherrypick with TFC. (It is a fantastic meal-led shopping assistant to help people eat better with zero effort - you should try it!) Founding a venture capital backed company myself has been a huge learning experience. I have learned much about just-enough technology, consumer startups, company culture, management, raising money and how venture capital actually works.
Setting up my user account on BlueSky reminded me about this blog, and awakened a latent desire to write again. I’d love to say more about the new tech we have been building for Cherrypick, and write more about the incredible wave of AI innovation that’s crashed through our industry in the last few years.
I have also been running technology organisations for 25 years now, and scaled a few tech teams - my experience could be useful to first time CTOs, tech startup founrders, and lead developers taking their first steps into management.
I used some of the time during COVID writing on a now-defunct blog called Delivery Doubled, aimed at helping agile teams ship faster. Some of that content made it to Twitter, and some more will end up here. I could have just started again, but it’s quite nice to look back over old posts and to see the journey. It has been long, varied and meandering, and I have learned so much from everything I have worked on and everyone I have met so far.
Here’s to the next chapter.
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How to Build a Robust LLM Application
Last month at Cherrypick we launched a brand new meal generator that uses LLMs to create personalized meal plans.
It has been a great success and we are pleased with the results. Customers are changing their plans 30% less and using their plans in their baskets 14% more.
However, getting to this point was not straightforward, and we learned many things that can go wrong when building these types of systems.
Here is what we learned about building an LLM-based product that actually works, and ends up in production rather than languishing in an investor deck as a cool tech demo.
Read moreWhy Hybrid Work Works
As someone who lives an hour and a half from my London office, I love working from home. I can help my teenagers out of the door in the morning, and I am present when the family comes home. I can have coffee with my wife Ellie before we start work. I prepare dinner during my lunch break, and receive deliveries. I can contribute more effort during my day to Cherrypick, free from distractions, interruptions and the long commute. I would struggle to work effectively five days a week in London.
I also love working from the office. It is an opportunity to spend real time with the people I work with. Communication is easier and I spend less time on screens. I can train less experienced colleagues much more efficiently than video chat. I can ask for and give advice and help in person, cutting down long feedback cycles. I would struggle to work effectively five days a week from home.
Much of the debate around hybrid working appears to be a zero sum argument about why working from home is “better” or “worse”, and why working in the office is “more” or “less” productive.
One is not better than the other; they are just different. I think we need both for a balanced life.
Here are some pointers for how to have a productive conversation about hybrid in your team.
Read moreThe Job Is Not To Build
Startup CTOs or founding developers are the first technical people in the business. It is natural to think your job is to write code and build software. This is backwards.
Your first job is not to build software. Your role is to use your technical expertise to help the startup figure out fast if you have a valid solution to a compelling problem, and then a valid product for a big enough market.
You might do this through building software, but you might not need to.
Here is a story of how I did this wrong, and how you can do it right.
Read moreThe First Thing A Startup CTO Must Do
Perhaps you are a technical co-founder who has managed to raise funding and you have been catapulted into the startup life. Perhaps you have just been brought in to handle the startup’s tech after the first round came in.
As the CTO, or the most senior technology person in the company, there are so many calls on your attention at this stage.
There is plenty of interesting new tech to build. There are potential customers to speak to (hopefully). There are investors to keep updated, who will want to know when the company is going to grow. There are people to hire. It can feel like you are drowning in possibility.
In the midst of all of that, we neglect this one thing at our peril.
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