Things I changed my mind about in 2025
It's still the tail end of January so I am going to use this time as an excuse to sneak in a '2025 reflection' type post. This could easily be just about things I've changed my mind on recently but I figure I'
Elliot Smith
Doing more things just for the hell of it.
One of my 'not written down' goals for this year is to try to do more things just for the hell of it.
I have historically fallen into the trap of trying to optimise, maximise or commercialise just about everything I do. It eventually managed to make a
Has AI removed the appeal of vertical SaaS?
Let's put aside for a moment the question of 'is AI bad for humanity' and accept that it is a thing that exists in the world. Particularly in the world of 'tool that writes code'. Right now, for circa $200 a month you can
Playing around with Google Stitch
This week I spent some time using Google Stitch, an AI chat interface for product mock ups. There are a lot of these kind of products, Figma has one, so does Canva. Stitch is the first one I've used that is filling a real need for me. That
OKR Hierarchy - Detail not Distance
OKRs are a very popular goal setting technique in startups. Despite this, they seem to either be loved or hated. In theory, they help to ensure every person, team and department is spending their time on things that help move the company towards its goals. In practice, I've
Sunny Days Are Warm: Why LinkedIn Rewards Mediocrity
I, like many people, find LinkedIn particularly annoying. I like the premise of it, don’t get me wrong, a resume you don’t need to update all that often seems cool. Unfortunately though, its turned into the worst possible version of itself. It’s a place where people post
Common modes of communication failure
For almost everyone, a big part of your professional life will be communicating ideas to others. Your ability to communicate those ideas to others will be directly correlated with your success. I’ve noticed, over many years of trying to communicate ideas, that there are several common failure modes in
Spinning up SaaS in an service business : Lessons Learned
Over the last twelve or so months I’ve been working to spin up a new line of revenue at Explorate. The company has, for most of its history, been focused around growing a freight forwarding services business. Rather than use off the shelf software, we developed our own. Fit
Things I've Done: Maxwell Plus
It’s taken a long time to write this. Not because it was a secret but it has taken me about that long to decide what I wanted to say. The short version is that Maxwell Plus was an AI startup in health that we ran for six years, ending
Color TV and Chat GPT
Sometimes I think technology has hit a bit of a wall. There are lots of every day things that I feel should be solved by now. For some vague definition of solved. The logical part of me, the part that has been building technology products for the last dozen years,