At Martello, I partnered with Henry to simplify the home buying process and help more people find high-quality homes. I led the development and launch of our MVP, engaging with property professionals to shape our roadmap.We built our initial product around core technologies like Ruby on Rails and Postgres. I went on to hire a small team of data engineers and software developers and together we developed Airflow ETL pipelines on AWS (managed by Terraform) to power a second Rails application that serves as our API. Throughout this process, I built and mentored a diverse team, fostering their growth and ensuring our development stack supports their success.In my day-to-day role, I oversee product development, introducing effective project management strategies, and cultivating a culture of testing and continuous improvement. My focus has been on "building the machine that builds the machine," ensuring our foundations remain solid as our product evolves. Today, I am excited to continue building a strong team, a robust product, and ultimately helping more people buy great homes.

In late 2014 I undertook an equity crowdfunding campaign to raise capital to take DeskBeers independent. We raised ~£180k from ~80 investors, completing the round and starting the new company in March 2015.Over the next five years we grew the business to break-even. We fell some way short of our ambition at the time of raising, and when the pandemic hit we did not have the balance sheet to survive the prolonged absence from offices that our business model was predicated on. I took steps to wind up the business in October of 2020.During this time I, again, wore many hats (only this time much faster and sometimes all at once):- I developed and shipped improvements to the existing platform (including a box picking algorithm, new product lines, courier integrations and more).- I conceived of and released our fully-managed office beer tap service, KegHop, which went on to account for +50% of revenue within 18 months. - I developed and shipped "DeskBeers Distributed" to allow sending many packs of 2 beers to multiple addresses under 1 invoice (in 4 days when the pandemic hit). - I hired a warehouse manager, operations assistant and an in-house delivery person (and also bought a super-cool, branded cargo bike to do deliveries on). - I hired and fired bookkeepers (including myself) before finding The One.- I created stock management procedures and policies.- I trained staff.- I ran payroll.- I filed taxes. - I bought insurance. - I developed an outbound sales process. - I conceived of, designed and executed marketing campaigns. - I hosted too many beer tasting events to count. - I became a "certified beer server" and studied for the Cicerone exam (I never found the time to pass it in the end - still hope to one day). - I cycled all over London making deliveries, checking in on customers and chasing down leads. - I got a lot of late trains home.In the end it didn't turn out the way anyone would've wanted. I learned an awful lot though.

Through Channel 4's "4Talent" scheme I won a 6-month internship as a "web producer" with Mint. The 6 months elapsed and no one told me to stop coming in. 8 years later I left to spin our internal DeskBeers product out as an independent company. I suppose the internship was a success.While at Mint I took on several roles. I wrote pitches and proposals for new work, helped with project management, undertook QA duties and made a lot of tea and coffee. I moved into a supporting roll for the company's short-lived TV production enterprise, Menthol TV, where I again wrote a lot of pitches and proposals and worked to help produce the educational TV show "Osama Loves". I moved back to QA full-time where I was tasked with developing an automated approach to testing websites. This lead to helping with fixes and, eventually, a move onto the development team proper.As a software developer, I worked on agency products for a number of clients as well as our in-house products.Some highlights:Post-sale of Stickygram to Photobox in 2013 I worked with the acquiring party to help transition the development of the product over to the new acquirers. I helped build their team, project managed new features, and helped migrate infrastructure. I lead the development of the supporting website for the Chanel 4 comedy panel show "Was It Something I Said" which was built in Python's Django framework rather than the usual Ruby on Rails. It worked out great and I also got to go to the studio to see the pilot being filmed.On the in-house side I lead the development of Foldable.me and later DeskBeers, both of which were great fun to work on.I was lucky enough to work on countless projects as a software developer at Mint, always tackling new problems and learning new things. I've not seen it all by any stretch, but I've seen quite lot.