I can speak corporate governance and investor language, those mature business practices have useful lessons. However, I believe startups do not need enterprise bureaucracy to scale responsibly.

One of my strengths is translating technical complexity into practical human understanding helping founders, technical teams, and stakeholders align without unnecessary jargon, fear, or overwhelm.

My focus is backend systems, database scalability, governance/legislation awareness, and helping founders make clearer technical risk decisions before growth exposes problems later.

Founders need proportionate maturity, pragmatic guidance, and honest conversations about what matters now, and not yet.

Dependable experiance

For 40 years I have worked across New Zealand IT;

• As a developer I focussed on backend systems (mainly databases).
• I have worked in diverse industries including:
  • Healthcare
  • Electricity Generation/Retail
  • SaaS
  • Finance/Banking
  • Property Management
  • Real estate
• I have worked in large corporates as part of a team and been the sole programmer in a boutique retail shop.
• Over the COVID years I pivoted to cyber security where I gained my CISA qualification.
• Most recently I worked as a Lead Database Reliability Engineer for a late stage startup (is 10 years old still a startup?)

Disclaimer

• I am not a full-stack agency/developer.
• If you need an outsourced CTO/CISO then please keep looking.
• I am not available a 3am when your server is down.
• I don't configure SIEM, I don't monitor security logs.
• I am not a front end dev (just look at this website).
• I have been a middleware developer long enough to understand their needs and pain points.
• I can READ code in multiple languages but no longer consider myself current (except SQL)