Articles
I've built 30+ products over 20 years — some shipped and still running, some sold, some abandoned, some that never made it past a prototype. These articles cover what that actually looks like: where AI-powered products break in practice, how to scope an MVP when you've watched your own fail to validate, and what it costs to wear all the technical hats at once. Practical and specific — not startup advice for its own sake.
LinkedIn's 2026 labour market report puts FDE role growth at 42× in two years. OpenAI just built a $4B company around it. I've been doing this work since 2021 without knowing the name for it. Here's what the engagement actually looks like.
The usual argument against wearing all the hats is burnout. That's real, but it's not the most expensive part. What wearing every hat actually does is corrupt your judgment — and your product pays for it.
I've been the CTO in the room — not fractional, fully embedded. Here's what the work actually looked like from inside the role, and what that tells me about when the fractional model makes sense and when it doesn't.
Most MVPs fail because they try to be the full product. The ones that succeed are ruthless about scope, realistic about architecture, and clear about what gets built now versus later. Here's a working definition of MVP that survives contact with real users.
The gap between an impressive AI demo and a production AI system is enormous. Most projects get stuck in the gap. Here's how to tell the difference before you commit time and money — and what to actually build if you're a UAE business in 2026.
A fractional CTO is the right hire at a specific moment in a startup's life. Too early and you're paying for capacity you don't need. Too late and the technical debt is already compounding. Here's how to know when the moment has arrived.