The blog · since 2015

Insights for founders,
CTOs & investors.

Essays, playbooks and field notes from our CTOs, architects and leads. Written for people shipping real product.

Latest posts

Due diligence

Due diligence for AI startups: what actually matters

Founders and investors due diligence: how to dig beneath the “AI-powered” facade and verify that their systems won’t break in secret.

AI

The enshittification of the internet: are you building value or friction?

AI agents shouldn’t become CAPTCHA solvers: discover how monetisation-driven UX patterns have turned the web into a hostile environment and what honest design can do to reverse the trend.

CTO

Why front-end rewrites are more common than refactors

Why do engineering teams keep rewriting frontends? Let’s explore the leadership bias and tech churn that makes refactors feel harder—yet ultimately more sustainable.

Engineering

Lynx: a new contender in cross-platform development?

Lynx could revolutionize cross-platform mobile development with its unique approach and performance benefits. Is it time to switch from React Native or Flutter?

Leadership

Building a customer support machine: a pragmatic approach for startups

When customer support becomes a blocker for engineering progress, it’s time to build more than just your product—you need to build your support infrastructure. This article explains how to scale support before chaos kills your velocity.

AI

Three cursors walk into a codebase

A cautionary tale about interns, AI tools, and outsourcing delivering 80% of a project—leaving internal teams with the clean-up. Learn why shortcuts often come with hidden costs.

madewithlove

Making an impact by combining our services

Madewithlove combines interim CTOs and staff engineers to help SaaS scale-ups align strategy with execution and build resilient tech teams.

Engineering

Another early-stage SaaS founders dilemma: buy a pre-built app or build one from scratch

Should SaaS founders buy or build their MVP? We compare pre-built apps vs custom development across cost, time, scalability, and code quality — so you can choose the right foundation for your product.

Engineering

Branded types in TypeScript: when string just isn’t enough

Discover how branded types can improve your TypeScript code quality, make your intent clearer, and catch bugs before they even compile.

Engineering

🌶️ Why Native PHP shouldn’t exist

Building desktop apps with NativePHP misuses Laravel’s core strengths, creating potential security risks and practical limitations.

Leadership

Why involving engineers in product meetings saves time and money

Involving engineers in product specification meetings reduces costly iterations and accelerates feature launches for SaaS startups.

Engineering

🌶️ SaaS startups should never use microservices. Like, never-ever.

Many SaaS startups over-engineer their architecture with microservices. Here's why that's usually a costly mistake—and what to do instead.

Due diligence

Should we really ship fast and break things?

Should startups test everything before shipping? We break down how to balance testing with product velocity—and why 100% coverage is often the wrong goal.

AI

Vibe coding and the junior developer dilemma

AI tools are transforming how we code, but they're not replacing the experience needed to build real software. Let’s talk about what vibe coding gets right—and what it gets very wrong.

AI & agentic tooling

AI-first engineering

We use AI and agentic workflows daily. From coding agents to AI strategy, we help teams adopt what actually works.

Read our AI insights

Engineering leadership

CTO Insights

We <3 sharing content for CTOs, senior engineers and founders with real-world insights.

40+ expert authors

For investors & VCs

Due diligence done right

Technical audits, codebase assessments, and risk analysis for portfolio managers making investment decisions.

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