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How I got here

Engineer by background.
Product guy by heart.
Marketer by accident.

I’ve had a full and varied career in Information Technology. I’ve been a network engineer, a systems engineer, a sysadmin manager, a network manager, a consultant, a business development director, a product manager, a product marketing manager and an adviser. With that variety of experience, if there’s one thing I now realise, it’s the more I learn, the less I know. I would say my experience has given me the tools to ask better quality questions, to speed up the next phase of learning.

“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities; in the expert’s, there are few”
Shunryu Suzuki

Near the beginning of my career, I was lucky enough to work for the largest corporate internet service provider in the world, UUNET, during the dot-com boom. It was the most compressed and accelerated learning experience of my career, and it was fantastic.

“They say a year in the Internet business is like a dog year… equivalent to seven years in a regular person’s life.”
Vint Cerf

Connecting globally significant companies like The BBC, CNN and Nasdaq to the internet was remarkable.

I then spent 14 years freelancing, consulting on infrastructure architecture and engineering. Typical projects involved automation of large, scalable, repeatable, systems. Almost 10 years of that time was spent working on critical infrastructure projects in investment banking — including the technological innovation race that was high-frequency trading.

After a couple of decades of industry experience, I became more interested in how technology helped people, rather than the tech itself. I’ve always had a keen interest in good design, so bridging technology I deeply understood with the people trying to use it became a clear career choice.

I joined an automation software startup when the company was a little over a year old, taking on a commercial role. After a year of running the European business, quadrupling revenue in that time, we were acquired. Post acquisition, my wide-ranging experience translated into a Product Management role, where I became the voice of our largest customers.

It was during this time that I also took an interest in building companies. How company culture can embrace innovation, without creating inadvertent roadblocks to progress.

Reading Thinking, Fast & Slow introduced me to the fascinating rabbit hole that is behavioural science. An interest that has proven valuable in creating winning marketing and product strategies.