I take senior technical leaders to the next level.
Helping startups to transform their tech capability by coaching CTOs and technical leaders to cut through the noise, focus on what matters and test ideas within hours not months.
- Want to know how to build just enough high quality tech, and spend less doing it?
- Need to improve collaboration between the CEO and technical leaders?
- Looking to build and scale a world-class technical team?
- Need to align technical strategy with business goals?
- Want to validate technical architecture choices?
- Need expert guidance on your AI/LLM strategy?
- Want to avoid the wrong engineering culture?
- Need to accelerate your development velocity?
- Need help finding product/market fit efficiently?
- What to know how much process is needed, and how much is just slowing you down?
“A great mentor for me… Chris is very experienced both in the technical side of setting up a well functioning tech team, but also in the business side, possessing a keen eye for strategy and a good sense for what will and will not work in any given environment. If you’re a startup looking for someone to help build a great team, or you need someone experienced to help develop a sound tech strategy, I would thoroughly recommend Chris.”
“Chris has clearly learned a *lot* about the world of being a delivery-focused CTO, he has a very clear understanding of the need for pragmatic planning, knowledge sharing, team up-skilling and the paying down of technical debt… I hope to continue to learn from Chris’ experience.”
“Chris is fantastic at building self-sufficient teams and giving them what they need to deliver impactful product changes and experiments. He provides a lot of freedom while setting clear goals, which creates highly productive teams in early-stage startups. At the same time, he’s an empathetic leader who always keeps a pulse on team morale. This is an extremely punchy combo when it comes to pre-product-market-fit companies, where hyper focus, productivity and seeding the right company culture are key.”
I have led 5 startups over 20 years:
- I cofounded 4, and was an early CTO at one
- 3 were bootstrapped, 1 backed by super angel + 1 by VC
- 3 were B2C, 2 were B2B
- 1 was an agency, 4 were product companies
- I scaled teams to 5, 12, 25 & 50
I have been through a wide variety of startup experiences multiple times. I can help you hire great technical teams, set culture, find product market fit and build just enough tech at the right quality level. I’ve also got several years of experience working on AI products so can help you build robust LLM application that scales well and that your customers love. Read more about me here.
Why Founders and CTOs Need a Coach
Coaching helps founders and CTOs grow and achieve their goals. A startup has high stakes and huge potential value so getting support makes a real difference to the chances of success. I have benefited from a number of excellent coaches and mentors over the years, and my startup experience has been vastly better and less stressful thanks to them.
Technical leadership faces evolving challenges at every stage:
- Making strategic architectural decisions that align with business goals
- Building and scaling high-performing engineering teams
- Balancing high-level strategy with hands-on leadership
- Staying current with emerging technologies like AI/LLM
- Maintaining velocity while ensuring technical quality
Having someone in the CTO’s corner who has been through these challenges before, as I have at multiple startups, helps transform uncertainty into confident progress.
Coaching vs Mentoring
I am part coach, part mentor.
Coaching is a conversation to move you from where you are now, to where you would like to be. You get independent assistance to help you move forward without any judgement or anyone telling you what to do. You find your own answers and are then supported while you make changes.
Mentoring is benefiting from past experience, knowledge and mistakes to help you make better decisions. You can be coached by a non-expert, but a mentor can provide lots of extra value as they have been in your position before.
A founder or CTO benefits from a coach but working with someone who has been through the same challenges before is much more valuable. I have walked this journey through several startups over 20 years and can help you avoid plenty of mistakes and find a way through the maze of uncertainty.
My Recent Articles
How To Avoid Bad Startup Culture
If you are not paying attention to your startup culture, I have news for you: you are already building a culture into your company. Chances are that is not the culture you want.
Every company has a culture. It is a summation of all the habits and practices that make up the work. It is every choice, good or bad, made by every person involved. Every action sets a precedent, a “how we do things here.”
This is how we are wired. We are naturally social beings and are strongly predisposed to fit in to the group we find ourselves in, and to emulate their behaviour. This reinforces culture further, and compounds when more people are involved.
A culture grows like plants in a garden. You cannot stop the life from growing, but you can decide how and where it grows. Left unattended, weeds will grow alongside the flowers. The key is recognising this and putting in the work to shape it.
Here is a quick primer on how to do the minimum to avoid bad culture, and how to get good culture going with a little attention every so often.
Read morePrompting Sucks (And What We Can Do About It)
Prompting sucks. If you have spent any time working with LLMs, you already know this.
It is not just that prompting is difficult - it is fundamentally broken as an approach to working with AI. It is brittle, model-specific, and endlessly repetitive.
Here is why we need to move beyond prompting, and what we can do about it.
Read moreFounder mode is emergency surgery
“Founder mode” is emergency surgery. It is not the right way to run a healthy business.
If your company is sick, you need to fix it. That means courageous decisions only you can make. You will need to dive in and operate sometimes. That doesn’t mean you create bottlenecks by deciding everything for years to come.
Read moreSee the Archive for more articles.