Your Startup Technical Advisor

Every month, I offer a limited number of free 30-minute consultations to startup founders and business owners. If you’d like to benefit from this, please get in touch. Ideally come with a specific problem you want advice on and I’ll see how I can help. My background is technical, so non-tech founders might particularly find […]

Read more
Gamification and EdTech: Here be Monsters

How gamification motivates people to do extraordinary things (sometimes) One of my recent reads has been Gamify: How Gamification Motivates People to Do Extraordinary Things by Brian Burke. The concept of Gamification has been around for a long time, it’s nothing new. But, how can Gamification be used for good? In the realm of education […]

Read more
Does your EdTech Startup need an Advisor?

Avoiding the pitfalls of working in a vacuum As humans, we know we need oxygen to survive, and the same goes for ideas. Stifle an idea in a vacuum and it’s probably going to die. How do we avoid this? In a word: collaboration. Collaborative learning I am a great advocate of collaborative learning. As […]

Read more
Embed, Partner, Validate

Advice for Early Stage Startup Founders If you can, embed yourself in the market well before you launch. It’s much easier to sell as an insider than it is as an outsider. You can partner with prospective customers to help them understand their problems better and therefore find solutions to those problems more easily. Make […]

Read more
The Journey to Chartered IT Professional (CITP)

From teenage coder to Tech Advisor with CITP status I’ve been in tech since I was a teenager. Of course, back then, things were very different to today. The web was still evolving. Social media platforms were still up and coming. Facebook? Twitter? Nope… none of that. My adventures in web development began with with […]

Read more
You call that Agile?
Why do startups fail? What is agility and agile?

Agile doesn’t mean you take an 18 month project and break it down into month releases Why do startups fail? 🤔 Too many startups begin with the idea for a product that they think people want… and they actually don’t. When we talk about “Agile”, the Agile Manifesto, and some of the principles around Agile, […]

Read more
The Influence of Venture Capital on the Future of Education

EdTech VC investors are in a position of power and are able to influence the education agenda I recently attended a fascinating Digital Education session on the current trends in EdTech investment, and particularly Venture Capital. Essentially, VCs are investing in the future of education and therefore having a direct impact on what the future […]

Read more
Creating opportunities through connections and conversations

Guess what. Talking to people makes good things happen. I’ve written about this topic before but there are so many different angles to consider, one could probably write a book! Mental note: write a book. Networking might feel like a dirty word. What do you think of when you hear “networking”? Do you imagine a […]

Read more
Making Users Happy: User Experience in the Digital Age (Webinar)

I enjoyed delivering this webinar for Bucks HSC in association with Buckinghamshire New University back in January 2021. I covered the following: Why User Experience (UX) is so important to the success of any technology project Understanding your users User Experience is not User Interface design The importance of keeping things simple Examples of good […]

Read more
A Celebratory Tale of Connections, Conversations and Creations

Human connections are important. They’re how things happen. Recently I visited the University of Surrey to discuss an associate lecturing opportunity with the head of their Digital Media Arts programme. A nice opportunity in itself; the chance to have another university listed on my professional profile (are we still calling it a CV?) and to […]

Read more