Ticketmaster Crashed Because of Legacy Software — How to Start Modernizing Before It’s Too Late”
🎤🚫“Ticketmaster Crashed Because of Legacy Software — How to Start Modernizing Before It’s Too Late” Ticketmaster servers crashed after 3.5 billion hits for Taylor Swift tickets. The Ticketmaster meltdown during the Taylor Swift “Eras Tour” presale wasn’t just bad luck – it was a harsh lesson in failing to modernize old, creaky tech. Here’s how […]
CTO IS NOT your first hire — Here’s Why
CTO IS NOT your first hire — Here’s Why I’ve seen this mistake far too often. A founder has a big idea and immediately thinks: “Let’s build it, launch it, and people will come.” 🚨 Wrong. Before writing a single line of code, before hiring a CTO, you need to ask: Do people even want […]
Can ChatGPT Replace Your CTO?
Can ChatGPT Replace Your CTO? Here’s the typical early-stage startup flow: 1. Founder has an idea 2. Raises pre-seed 3. Hires a product manager to spec it out 4. Brings in a CTO or dev agency to build the MVP 5. Launch → test → scale (or pivot) Let’s zoom in on step 4. Traditionally, […]
I just got scammed $10,000 by a developer working 5 jobs at the same time.
I just got scammed $10,000 by a developer working 5 jobs at the same time. Here is what I learned Hiring the right developer is harder than shipping code. I thought I had found the perfect hire—until the second sprint revealed the truth. When companies modernize their tech stack, sometimes the hardest part isn’t the […]
Excelling post.
Excelling post. It is the CTO’s job ti protect his team from getting pulled to nonsense tasks I have had in my previous company technical developers that werr asked to be team leaders. When you let a talented developer burn his precious time on calls and babysitting instead of writing code then the team and […]
My secret to dev speed ?
My secret to dev speed ? Tiny teams deliver faster and better than Giants How many developers do you really need to scale? Most founders assume the answer is “a big team.” I’ve seen the opposite play out. The 2-Developer Principle You don’t need 10 engineers to build scalable systems. You need 2 senior developers […]
Part 3 of The Hidden Margin Framework: Teams & Throughput
Part 3 of The Hidden Margin Framework: Teams & Throughput In Part 1, I wrote about infrastructure waste. In Part 2, I covered subscription and tool sprawl. (You can find both on my profile.) Now the harder layer: teams. AI has dramatically increased developer leverage. Which makes one thing very clear: Coordination cost now scales […]
I audited a platform last week.
I audited a platform last week. Found a system built 25 years ago. Still running. Still processing real transactions. Real money. Nobody on the current team fully understands how it works. Nobody knows why it was built the way it was. And nobody has ever asked whether it still needs to exist. But it costs […]
AI-Era Problem, Pre-AI Solution
AI-Era Problem, Pre-AI Solution A CEO called me a few weeks ago. His SaaS platform was a mess. He needed help sorting it out and preparing for scale. Normal enough. Then I asked about the team. 50 people in R&D. That number alone told me most of what I needed to know. In 2026, a […]
Outsourcing and staffing as we knew them are dead.
Outsourcing and staffing as we knew them are dead. Over the last year I ran technology audits across several companies. When I got to the people layer, the numbers were hard to ignore: (downsizing/rightsizing) Company A: 20 engineers → 5 Company B: 17 engineers → 2 Company C: 17 engineers → 5 Same output. In […]