I am passionate about early-stage companies and have spent most of my career working inside of them; first as an engineer and manager, and later as a founder.
I draw on all of this experience to support startups and scaleups in the many challenges of getting an idea off of the ground: from MVP development and technology choices up to user testing, roadmapping, hiring and go-to-market. Most of my experience has centred around SaaS applications, both B2C and B2B. My involvement can take on different formats, from time-boxed support to longer-term advisory roles. I sometimes work as a Fractional CTO.
My experience
I’ve spent the last 10 years building teams and companies and have been writing code for nearly 20 years. Here are some highlights:
- Co-founder and Head of Engineering at Almanac (now Blaze). I built the initial product, contributed to our roadmap and vision, created our hiring pipeline and brought on 15 engineers. Together, we raised a $9m seed round followed by a $34 million Series A. I also provided technical leadership on our version control and real-time, multi-user editing features. Day-to-day, I worked as Head of Engineering, leading our small engineering team to build a platform that competed with Google Docs and Notion.
- Founder of OpenSit, an online meditation community where people could share public meditation journals. Starting as a solo passion project, OpenSit was acquired in 2017 and I went on to work with the new team as CTO. We developed a mindfulness app to assist people struggling with chronic pain in the US.
- CTO of SchoolGuide.co.uk. I was responsible for new feature development, product roadmap, managing engineers, data quality, and delivery of 30,000 UK schools worth of data. Technical point of contact for both Rightmove and Mumsnet, two of the UK’s biggest property and parent sites.
- Engineering Manager at GoCardless, a Fintech unicorn based in the UK. Managing two high-performing engineering teams whilst deputising as Product Manager, working closely with high-level stakeholders in company-level objectives & contributing to strategy around Open Banking and reconciliation.
- Wrote a Perl script at the ripe old age of 14 that was featured in a Linux magazine.
- I’m fluent in Ruby and still use it to build personal projects and in some hands on consultancy work. You can view my LinkedIn profile here.
Testimonials
From Victoria Bond, CEO of School Guide:
“After a decade of growth and a number of changes in the development team, School Guide was in urgent need of a ‘big picture’ technical review. Dan came on board as a fractional CTO, carrying out a thorough audit of the site; preparing a clear and concise report; and helping prioritise planned upgrades and improvements. Dan ensured the engineers were on board with changes and oversaw a number of stages of work from critical fixes to a schema for ongoing maintenance. In addition to being a highly skilled and experienced engineer, Dan communicates brilliantly in Plain English – essential for a non-technical CEO like myself to understand tasks and plan budget – and will always roll up his sleeves and take on any element of work to ensure delivery of the highest quality. I’d highly recommend Dan to any organisation looking for effective technical leadership without the headache (or costs) of a permanent hire.”
How do I get started?
- Book a free 30-minute consultation and we can discuss what you’d like support on.
- Once we’re both happy that there’s a good fit, we can put an agreement together for how we’ll work going forward.