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

CTO

Communicate or be micromanaged - the engineering edition

Micromanagement rarely starts with bad intent. It usually starts with silence. When nobody knows what you are working on, meetings multiply, trust erodes, and focus disappears. This piece shows how clear, boring communication is your best defence.

Leadership

The value of code review

Code reviews improve more than code quality. Done well, they shape better problem-solving, expose edge cases, and spread knowledge across teams. Learn how small, focused reviews and AI support help teams ship faster with confidence.

Leadership

Your startup does not need more engineers, it needs fewer mistakes

Hiring to fix velocity often multiplies your problems. Reduce avoidable mistakes first: tighten decision-making, align product and engineering, and put foundations in place that make a small team dangerous in the right way.

Engineering

Getting started with performance testing

Performance bugs erode trust quietly until users explode. Three pragmatic steps help you catch slowdowns early: explore real bottlenecks with Sentry, test with production-sized data, and add lightweight API load tests.

madewithlove

Navigating Outages: lessons from recent cloud failures

Outages can strike unexpectedly, impacting businesses and users alike. In this episode of the SaaS Show, hosts Andreas and Sjimi delve into the recent outages experienced by major cloud providers like Amazon and Cloudflare.

AI

How to pragmatically leverage AI as a startup

If you believe what you see on LinkedIn, startups don't need employees anymore, real founders just have agents building their companies. You write a prompt, fire off the agent, and wait for customers. In reality, you get a vague workflow that produces a mediocre demo at best.

AI

The End of “AI-powered”

Of course your product is AI-based. There is no need mention this anymore. Tech loves a fashionable label. Web 2.0 had its moment, then mobile, then the cloud. Do not tell me your product uses AI. Tell me what your product can do that was impossible before AI existed.

AI

Cloudy with a chance of function calls

In the first of a series exploring infrastructure fundamentals, Brenden addresses the most frequently asked questions about what's really happening under the hood with complex pipelines and AI/data systems, bringing the cloud to life.

Engineering

Analyse your tables for better performance

I recently encountered a issue with MySQL query performance. A particular query would perform very badly in production, but perform very well in the testing environments.

Leadership

Stereotypes: are these the biggest misconceptions about software engineers?

Outdated myths about developers—like “they hate meetings” or “only care about code”—create friction, missed context, and rework. Learn how to build healthier collaboration across engineering and product.

AI

No designer? No problem with v0

For small teams without a designer, v0 is a game-changer. The cost justifies itself by letting you explore and validate ideas in minutes rather than days.

AI

Why I switched from BugBot to Claude for code reviews

I switched from Cursor's BugBot ($40/month) to Claude Code for code reviews. Setup is straightforward in VS Code, and Claude's bug detection has been notably better. While it still flags null reference checks like most AI reviewers, the difference in catching actual bugs is significant.

Leadership

Why freedom beats control: building a proper remote culture

Building a thriving remote-first culture takes more than allowing people to work from home. Discover how hiring for ownership, embracing asynchronous work, and saying no to misaligned projects creates a sustainable remote future.

madewithlove

The stainless steel lesson: why boring technology outlasts shiny frameworks

Shiny frameworks promise magic, but like cheap non-stick pans, they scratch, peel, and end up in the bin. Boring technology, like stainless steel, isn’t sexy, but it lasts for decades if treated well. The lesson? Build for the long haul, not the quick thrill.

AI & agentic tooling

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

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Engineering leadership

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