Independent Technology Advisor for B2B SaaS
Solving hard problems and seeing them through
Problems I've helped solve
Most established software businesses have problems that never get fixed. The team is too busy, the work is risky, or nobody wants to own them. Here are some I've helped UK SaaS companies with.
An ageing product
The product still sells, but each change is slower and riskier than the last. I plan the modernisation around what to keep, what to replace and in what order, usually without a full rewrite.
Key people moving on
The people who know the system best are leaving or close to retirement. I uncover the gotchas nobody wrote down while they're still around to ask. Hacks in the code, quirks for particular customers, deployment traps, and all the pain points.
A stalled project
A project has run late or been left half-finished, whatever the reason. I pick it up, decide what's worth keeping, and get it finished.
A platform that has to scale
Growth or a big launch is coming, and the platform has to cope with the load. I test it under realistic traffic, find where it would give way first, and fix that before it happens live.
Pressure to add AI
The board or customers are asking about AI, and it's unclear where it would genuinely help. I work through the ideas with the business, pick the most promising, and prove it with a working prototype before serious money is spent.
Something else
These are the most common, and the list isn't fixed. Any technology problem that's holding the business back, and that nobody has the time or appetite to own, is worth a conversation.
How I solve problems
I start by understanding the business, the product and the code. A focused technology assessment can help settle a specific decision or establish where to start. From there I work in three ways, and stay involved to see the fix through.
Recognise the problem
Twenty years across media, fintech, insurance, real estate and health and safety have shown me both success and failure. Few problems are entirely new, and that breadth helps me recognise them early.
Make risk manageable
Risk is often the reason a problem has been left alone. I make it visible, adding the right level of structure, ownership, and governance without slowing delivery down.
Test before committing
Where the answer isn't obvious, I use focused research, experiments, and prototypes to test the most important assumptions before serious investment.
Planning the modernisation of a safety-critical SaaS product
How an advisory engagement took a long-established, safety-critical B2B SaaS product from a vague need to modernise to an evidence-led delivery plan.
High-performance, cloud-based voting platform
A high-performance, cloud-based voting platform built for Channel 4's interactive talent show The Singer Takes It All, handling up to 300,000 concurrent users securely on AWS.
Improving data quality in insurance quoting with AI
An agentic research assistant that turns a company name into reliable, structured data for live business insurance quoting
Trusted by leading organisations
Some of the great companies I've had the pleasure to work with.
Using AI on an existing codebase without handing over ownership
AI agents can do real work on an old codebase. One way to get the benefit without losing control is small but fast changes, read by a person.
Moving a 20-year-old SaaS product onto GitHub
Lessons learned moving source code, development workflows and operations into the GitHub ecosystem.
Modernising legacy SaaS without a big-bang rewrite
A staged modernisation, starting with the customer-facing experience, can give an ageing product a future without betting the business on a multi-year rewrite.