Revisiting the agile manifesto in the age of AI

If you’re an engineer I can already hear you letting out a sigh.

As long as I’ve been in the world of building software I’ve heard the term “agile” and I’ve never really dug into it too much.

It’s always had connotations of “work” and project management and, to be honest, Jira.

Yuck!

It was only recently when someone shoved the core principles of the Agile Manifesto under my nose that I thought to take a closer look.

If you haven’t come across the Agile Manifesto before, you can find it on a website that appears to be unchanged since the 90s. It’s gloriously old school.

But the words are as relevant as ever. If anything they feel more relevant and important.

For convenience, here are the principles, with a little interpretation of my own.

Satisfy the customer

Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.

Satisfy the customer. Satisfy the customer.

If nothing else, this is the most important principle of all. If this was the only principle, and every single organisation and individual adopted it, I think software would be perceived in a much more positive light by people. And I think we would perhaps have a lot less, but better, software.

Embrace change

Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer's competitive advantage.

Changing your mind when new information emerges is a good thing.

Working software in weeks

Deliver working software frequently, from a  couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale.

I'd argue this should now be hours, or days, in the age of AI.

Don't ignore the business

Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.

By "business" people I'd include customer service, marketing, sales, and leadership.

Trust motivated people

Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.

Speak to each other

The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.

Technically Google Meet and Zoom are face to face. But nothing beats being in person.

Actual working software is the priority

Working software is the primary measure of progress.

Yes you can get a fancy dashboard to measure user numbers, activity, and more. In fact, I am inclined to believe analytics can be very helpful! But don't lose sight of the top priority: working software.

In an age of tokenmaxxing, and having witnessed previous phases of optimising for "lines of code written", this feels like a rather important goal to keep in mind.

Sustainable development is sustainable

Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.

You can only move fast and break things

Focus means saying no

Ask anyone who's been in business for a while how they got successful, and they'll almost always highlight the importance of focus.

In the famous Apple video called "Intention" that opened one of Tim Cook's first keynotes as CEO — there was the unforgettable line:

There are a thousand no's for every yes.

And as Jony Ive has said many times: people think focus is about saying yes to one thing. In reality, it's about saying no to (sacrificing) many fantastically good ideas. All so you can focus on the one thing that really matters most.

That all sounds rather obvious, perhaps.

But of course, that is all a lot easier to accomplish if you're incredibly sure of what you should focus on.

The challenge, I have often found, is choosing what to focus on.

What is actually most important? And can those other ideas, asks, and requests really be a "no" right now?

Surely there is a balance?

The more you can gain conviction on what is truly important — what truly deserves your time and attention — the more confidently and therefore successfully you can focus.

And with that focus — only with that focus — can greatness be achieved.

A non-exhaustive list of suggestions for a better life and a better world

Shop local.

Shop independent.

Eat less meat.

Eat less processed food.

Drink less coffee.

Get to bed earlier.

Use your phone as little as possible.

When you’re bored, sit with the feeling a little longer. Creativity often comes from boredom.

Make eye contact.

Smile.

Say please and thank you.

Hold the door open for someone else.

When you travel, eat, drink, and live like a local.

Avoid plastic like it’s a disease. It is.

Think more about the second and third-order consequences of your decisions.

Price is not the only metric to make a buying decision.

Discomfort is a signal, you don’t always need to find a quick fix for it.

You tend to learn a lot from mistakes, so don't be afraid to make them every once in a while.

Comparison is the thief of joy.

Your true health will never be measurable as a number on your Apple Watch.

Most of what we call "normal" has only been so for at most a hundred years. So it's OK to be "weird" every now and then.

Read more books and fewer tweets.

Pick up litter when you can.

Don't do things to please others, do things out of pride.

Leave the world better than you found it — every day.

Seven and a half hours of scrolling social media

Perhaps related to my recent post on overcoming overwhelm, I realised how much social media has been eating at my attention and time.

I don’t blame social media, I blame myself. And if I blame myself then I know I can take action to address it.

After taking a little time for myself at the weekend I reflected on where my time had been spent over the recent weeks. I looked at Screen Time on my iPhone to assess whether my suspicions were correct.

Yes, I was spending a lot more time than I wanted to on social media.

Mark Zuckerberg and his team have been excelling at pulling me into their world and keeping me there. I counted at least seven and a half hours of time on Instagram and Threads across the week. Even though I have a Screen Time limit of 30 minutes per day on all “social” apps on my phone.

Seven and a half hours… that’s on top of TV and other distractions. That’s time I could be truly resting, or giving my best to a creative pursuit, or exercising.

It’s junk food time.

As anyone who has tried Apple’s Screen Time features knows, “Ignore for fifteen minutes” is an easy button to press when you’re deep down the rabbit hole of your Instagram feed at 10pm.

I struggle with social media on my phone, not because I feel addicted but because I feel there is an aspect that is core to my job — to stay up to date, to post, to keep on the pulse of the industry.

But I realised, I don’t need these apps on the device I carry everywhere.

I deleted Instagram, Threads, Bluesky, and X from my phone. They're gone.

Let’s see how this serves me — perhaps the added friction that I must go to my iPad or my Mac to access any of these social feeds will not starve me of knowledge or make me a social pariah like I think it will.

Perhaps against the rhetoric of AI being a socially destructive technology, there are ways it could be employed to save us time, to shield us from modern day distractions, to be looking out for us, rather than to work against us.

If you’re struggling with distractions yourself, here are a few resources I have found helpful:

Some more tools and links

I am an eternal geek and I love finding new tools, gadgets, and things on the internet. I hope you enjoy these, too. If you do let me know!

  • Blankie — ambient sounds to help you focus and get into your flow state. Beautifully designed native app for iOS and Mac.
  • Coop — an app and network that makes it easy for you to buy goods (like bread, plants, and other food) from those nearby. Seems to only be in the US right now, but this seems like the sort of thing we need more of in today's over-commercialised world of "bigger is better". No: smaller is better!
  • AppZapper — the return of a classic Mac app. Super nerdy but so fun. It's literally just an app for deleting apps on your Mac. But you use a laser gun to delete them. Proof that software doesn't need to be boring.
  • Clop — a handy Mac app that automatically optimises images and other files you copy to your clipboard. Just like how EcoSend optimises images in your emails, this does it for you on anything you've got on your Mac, even PDFs. And does it all locally so there are no privacy concerns at all.
  • RecipeTables — I can't believe I have reached this age and only just discovered this ingenious way to present recipes. A tabular form that makes it easy to see all ingredients, all of the steps, and the order you prepare them in, for a recipe. Data visualisation and the engineering mindset at its best.

Seen anything cool lately? Found a tool you simply can't live without? Let me know!

Your product is a conversation with the market

Des Traynor and John Collison on Stripe's Cheeky Pint podcast

A while back I watched this talk from two legends of the software world: Des Traynor of Intercom and John Collison of Stripe.

I love these discussions and this series I find to be a relaxing, fun environment. How could you not enjoy watching a couple of smart people sharing a Guinness or two, discussing topics you've always wanted to ask them about?

A few quotes that really stuck with me:

A product is a conversation with the market.
Your launch is your opening bit, and then you have to basically adapt and react to what gets thrown back at you, which might drag you in different directions. And then you need to have, again, the confidence to prune certain things.
People massively underestimate what it means to have a truly happy customer base.
Word of mouth doesn’t have a UTM code.
Don’t afford yourself too much freedom on pricing. You will end up crippling yourself in a quagmire of complexity.

The whole discussion is worth a watch or a listen.

And it's worth noting that since this aired, the company Des co-founded, Intercom (and Fin) sold to Salesforce for $3.6 billion.

Why individuals have an incredible advantage over teams when building software

If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.

I’ve written about building software (primarily web-based software for small businesses) many times in the past.

It’s pretty much the only thing I’ve ever done.

There has been more change in the last two years than the last twenty combined.

Thanks to AI, the processes and methods and tools have changed unimaginably, and continue to do so.

But what amazes me is that many people — and many businesses — have barely changed at all.

Both in small teams and large ones, I still hear timeframes quoted in months for building features that could be crafted in days.

It’s easy to think everyone is on the cutting edge if you’re someone who enjoys checking the latest releases of each model, seeing what the Hacker News community have to say about every new AI developer tool, or have spent any time building things with AI recently.

But most of the world isn’t yet doing that.

Most people work in teams and many work in teams at bigger businesses. From what I’ve seen, the structures in place at most larger businesses are largely incompatible with — or at least are limiting — how they can truly embrace AI to build software.

The current (old) way

The old way of building software often meant doing something along the lines of the following:

  1. Talk to users.
  2. Digest their feedback and figure out what to build.
  3. Design a prototype (often a wireframe).
  4. Hand over a written document and a wireframe to developers to build out.
  5. Do some more design to polish up what the developers have built.
  6. Get the thing deployed and live on a server somewhere.
  7. Go back to your users and see how they like it.
  8. Depending on what the users say, go back to step 2 and repeat.

Every step of that journey could take hours if not days… if not weeks.

In an early-stage startup, that is time you don’t have. One of the most critical processes to speed up is that loop of feedback > build > ship.

But when the steps in between can take hours or days. Communicating and translating ideas into actual built products is extremely hard. Yes it may take a week to deploy a new database but have we accounted for the days of discussion between product and engineering to make sure its clear why we need that database and what it should do and what it’s strengths and weaknesses are and how much it’ll cost?

The advantage of the individual

I think individuals have a tremendous advantage right now because they don’t need buy-in and they don’t need to agree with anyone but themselves.

You could also see that as a disadvantage. Sometimes you need to be told no. But more often than not, you need the market to tell you that, not the developer.

I'm

Don’t devalue instinct

Being data driven is an extremely prevalent theme in the tech world.

Everyone wants to use data to make better decisions, and ensure they’re not being stupid.

But in the rush to be data-driven, it seems many people and many teams frown upon instinct as a method for making decisions.

The smaller you are, and the earlier you are, the more you need to rely on your gut.

As you grow, you gain the privilege of more users, more customers, more feedback, and more data.

Instinct and intuition is a form of data, and I’m convinced that we are still in the early innings of understanding how best to apply it to decision making.

Overcome the overwhelm

From time to time, it all gets a bit much for me.

Life gets on top.

I start to find myself playing catch up. Chasing. Trying to stay afloat.

This is a terrible place to make big decisions from. It’s a terrible place to be for any meaningful length of time.

I’ve started to realise my way of fighting the overwhelm — and it’s to go against my instinct.

It’s simple but it’s often so very hard to do in practice: do absolutely nothing.

Not forever, not even for long, but just for a bit. A day ideally, or maybe even just a morning.

Do nothing. With no one. With no screens. No sounds. No commitments. No chores. Escape everything.

Modern life is filled with deafening noise — every app, every podcast, every TV show, every ad, every crisp packet, every delivery, every email, every WhatsApp, every sign, every thing.

The only way I’ve found to overcome the overwhelm is to stop, and let my mind and my body pause. Just for a little.

The time to overachieve will come soon enough, but not a moment sooner.

Introducing Hotshot: a little app to track your caffeine intake

I drink a lot of tea. There's rarely a moment in the day where I don't have a hot drink in hand.

But at some point in the last year I started to wonder: with all these drinks, how much caffeine am I consuming?

And how does that compare to the recommended amount?

And how much caffeine is in tea anyway?

And how does that differ to a flat white at my local coffee shop?

And what does all of this mean for my sleep?

Is this all related to why I struggle to wake up early every morning and desperately need a lie-in on a Sunday?

After just 19 years of using and loving the iPhone, I finally made an app. An app that answers all of these questions and more. An app that is live on the App Store.

Get Hotshot on the App Store

I'm so excited to have built something that I (and now you!) can use on the devices we hold in our hands — it feels quite profoundly different to building web-based software. The result is something more intimate, that feels more personal, almost like a physical product.

A screenshot of the Hotshot app on an iPhone 17 Pro
A screenshot of the Hotshot app on an iPhone 17 Pro

Just a year ago, this would have been completely impossible for me. For as long as I've been working, I've been able to design — but never build or ultimately ship software.

This is both the final step of a long journey, and the very earliest start of a new one: of ideating, designing, building, and shipping real working software.

If you're interested in how the app works and what it does, I created a dedicated page to learn more about Hotshot for caffeine tracking.

I hope you like it, and I hope you download the app.

If you do, I'd love to hear what you think.

If there's anything I've learned from all my time working in the world of software, it's that you should launch before you're really ready (absolutely true here), and that your work is never, ever done.

Enjoy your next cuppa!

John takes over from Tim

Today is the day John Ternus takes over from Tim Cook as CEO of Apple.

I thought it was interesting to read Apple’s own biography of Tim now he’s Executive Chair of the Board of Directors — it’s a brief summary of the last 15 years at Apple.

I was pleased to see a few highlights that really go against the grain of the general business narrative in 2026:

Under his leadership, the company reduced its carbon footprint by more than 60 percent below 2015 levels during a period in which revenue nearly doubled.

As well as

He pushed for continued innovation in the accessibility space, believing that Apple products should be made for everyone.

And

He made central to his leadership the notion that Apple should be a place where everyone can feel they belong and where everyone is treated with dignity and respect.

I truly believe Apple’s success has been because of these core beliefs and values, not despite them.

It’s an extremely tough act to follow, but I’m excited to see John Ternus take the lead at Apple.

I’ve never tired of following Apple, from the thrilling and awe-inspiring tenure of Steve Jobs, to the calm yet explosive growth under Tim Cook.

Next week, Apple will hold their first event led by John Ternus as CEO, where they’re set to unveil their first ever foldable iPhone.

What will set it apart? Why would anyone want it? What will make it truly Apple?

It’s the dawn of a new Apple, and all will be revealed soon. I can’t wait!

Image optimisation in EcoSend

86.7% reduction in file size, overlaid on a photo of Hugo the spaniel.

I've wanted us to build this since the very first day of EcoSend, and I can't quite believe we finally have it: automatic image optimisation.

Almost every email carries an image of some kind, and it's far too easy to send something large enough for a highway billboard to people who'll only ever see it at the size of a post-it note.

Now EcoSend quietly fixes that for you — resizing every image to the size it's actually displayed at, choosing the best format, and compressing it as far as it'll go without losing an ounce of quality. In our own tests we've seen images shrink by over 86%, and it all happens invisibly in the background with zero extra work for users.

What thrills me most is that this took years of wanting before we had the foundations to do it properly. Building on our all-new email builder finally let us solve a problem we've been slightly obsessed with for as long as I can remember.

Every byte we save is a small win for deliverability, for the people opening emails, and for the energy consumed in the whole chain — and when you multiply that across millions of recipients, those wins add up to something quite meaningful.

More than anything, this makes me excited for what's ahead. Not just for EcoSend, where I think we're only getting started, but for software more broadly.

The best tools are the ones that do lots of hard, invisible work so people don't have to think about it. The constantly improving tools and landscape, with lots of help from AI, are enabling us to bring forward a future which once could only be dreamt of.

Dirty business

In February of this year, Channel 4 released Dirty Business an incredibly well produced, and hard-to-watch dramatised series about the dire state of "public" water in England. It's based on true life, real data, and heartbreaking real events .

Since the 1980s, water has been privatised in England, meaning instead of it being in the government's control, it is now under the control of for-profit organisations like Thames Water, Southern Water, and South West Water, who have, for the most part, left their infrastructure to fall apart, while ensuring "customers" (everyone who lives here) pay ever more for the privilege.

A huge focus of the program is the heartbreaking impact that pollution and spills have had on local habitats and environments, leading to countless issues for wildlife, and human illnesses and deaths. Of course, these have all been challenged and questioned by the heavily lawyer-ed up water companies themselves.

The show is beautifully shot, incredibly well written, and brilliantly acted. It deserves all the attention it can get. The issues surfaced deserve to be as big of a story as the British Post Office scandal that has been through a similar cover-up and subsequent exposé conveyed through brilliant storytelling and creative efforts.

If you are running short on things to get you angry, then give this a watch. I share it here because I hope that more visibility and awareness will ultimately drive change.

Playing to win

You can’t just boot the ball from the goalie and hope it’ll land in the back of the net on the other side of the pitch.

But that’s what sales efforts can sometimes feel like. And of course that almost never works.

When watching the World Cup final on Sunday I was rather impressed with how Spain played against Argentina.

I’m not the biggest football obsessive, but I enjoyed the match and I have to admit I enjoyed watching a lot of the World Cup.

There’s something that has grown on me over time about seeing 11 people (and many more behind the scenes) come together to achieve something that none on their own could.

Seeing a team play with hunger, patience, and fluidity can give you a lot to think about in the world of business.

After all while any team, on or off the pitch, may have superstars, they can rarely achieve their potential without working together in a unified passionate way.

What the heck does this have to do with sales? Perhaps not much, but a little thought came to my mind.

When you’re trying to sell a service or an offering, it can feel tempting to do what a junior footballer might do: get the ball and hoof it at the goal and hope it goes in.

This is what I see most people do when they’re just starting in sales. They go for the sale almost immediately — before they’ve made any rapport, and before they’ve even established if the other person is at all interested or even the right person to make a buying decision.

Don’t do this.

If it works, it’s because you got lucky. You may win a sales once or twice but it’s not a robust process that will enable you to win in the long run.

Instead you want to take your time. Build momentum, build control, be patient. Don’t rush, and don’t make unforced errors.

If I’ve learned anything from watching the World Cup, to win you must do more than score lucky goals. You must work together as a team, and have patience.

In football, in sales, in business, and in life, you rarely want to just score a goal. You want to win the championship.

What has the BBC ever done for me?

This aired during the World Cup final last night and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

The BBC may have its fair share of problems but there really is nothing like it anywhere else on earth. It’s something that makes me truly proud and fortunate to be British.

It builds on a much older (and arguably more entertaining) sketch that first aired in 1985, featuring John Cleese and many iconic figures that have left their mark on the nation.

Siri is about to become good, but that’s not the problem

What happens when 1.5 billion people suddenly get a good AI assistant in their pocket?

In just a few days time, when Apple holds the keynote for WWDC 2026, we are likely to finally see (and hear) a Siri that doesn’t suck.

While this has been rumoured in the tech press, I don’t think most people are quite ready for how big of a deal this is.

And even if Siri stops sucking, it’s going to take a long time and a lot of advertising dollars to persuade people it’s actually true.*

Apple is a victim of its own doing. They are the boy who cried wolf on AI.

The lowest barrier to entry for AI


For years, the modern wave of AI has been mostly opt-in.

People have had to:

  • Download ChatGPT
  • Sign up for Claude
  • Try Gemini
  • Learn new habits

A lot of people have, of course, but many (most?) people still haven’t.

And even for those who have downloaded and used any of those apps, I suspect the majority of iPhone users don’t use AI regularly, or benefit from even a slither of its capabilities.

But everybody knows Siri.

Everybody has a button for Siri.

Everybody has a microphone for Siri.

Everybody has already been trained to understand the concept.

The problem was simply that Siri sucked.

If Siri suddenly becomes genuinely useful, Apple will be transforming an existing habit that they’ve spent years training users to be disappointed by.

It’s potentially enormous, but it’s going to take a while for people to catch on.

Learned helplessness

Siri has created a form of technological learned helplessness.

Users stopped asking difficult questions of Siri. In fact, many users stopped asking anything of Siri.

They learned the answer would usually be disappointment.

If Apple has fixed that, the hardest part won’t be improving Siri, but teaching people to try again.

How is Siri suddenly getting better?

Multiple reports suggest Apple is increasingly turning to Google and its Gemini models to power some of their AI ambitions. Google event tweeted about it:

You can look at Google’s latest announcements to get a sense of what’s coming to the iPhone. If you squint, repeat the announcements in a Tim Cook voice, and apply some Liquid Glass to the UIs, you’re on the right track.

Apple is essentially forming their own variant of a multitude of Gemini features and models.

If Apple doesn’t screw this up, then WWDC is sure to be a demonstration of great AI functionality actually coming to iOS and Apple’s other platforms.

You can also look at the recent accessibility features

A few cool tools

There seems to be an explosion of great, useful, and beautifully designed tools popping up lately.

Perhaps this is in part down to the new powers we all have thanks to AI coding tools, but not exclusively. When combined with initiative, passion, and taste, the outcome is a wonderful renaissance of indie software development.

Screen Studio is not new but it’s a tool I find myself using more and more to create engaging screen recordings. It’s the optimum balance between Loom and a full-on video editor. You can create slick “produced” screen recordings and have a link on your clipboard ready to share with your team in minutes.

Quiche Browser is delightful Safari replacement for iOS. I have never seen an app balance this level of beauty, craft, and simplicity, while allowing for such extensive customisation. What a delicious treat.

Bevel is an “all in one” health tracking app that gives an unbelievable amount of value for free. If you wear an Apple Watch and want to track your health a little more intensely, this is worth a look. It’s worth it alone if you want to geek out on some cool data visualisation.

MacNotch is essentially the iPhone’s Dynamic Island but for your Mac. It makes great use of your MacBook’s “notch” and offers an extensive array of options and customisations.

Blank Page is a delightfully minimal Notion-like editor you can use without any need to sign up, pay, or install anything. It’s just a beautifully minimal writing experience through and through.

Clearly is a markdown editor for the Mac. It also offers “knowledge base” functionality allowing you to link notes together. It’s beautifully implemented and truly Mac-assed Mac app. And it’s free. If you use Obsidian on a Mac then this is worth a look. Pink Floyd fans might like the icon too.

Sofa has existed for a while but the new version is a big update. It’s a beautiful iOS app to keep track of all the TV shows, movies, podcasts, and books you’re consuming.

Granola is a meeting note-taker I have previously written about, but continues to "just work" for me. It's just so good at staying in the background and being a silent helper to my daily meetings, giving me genuinely helpful notes and nothing I don't want.

Dato is a menubar-based calendar app for the Mac that makes it easy to see your upcoming events and pop new meetings in with a few clicks. It is reminiscent of the original Fantastical — before it offered to replace your whole calendar experience. I use it with the built-in Apple Calendar app to manage my schedule.

Let me know if you've recently discovered a new favourite little app or tool — I'd love to hear about it.

Newer isn’t better: why I switched to a 100-year-old razor

It’s very easy to be different, but very difficult to be better. — Jony Ive

This is a post about shaving.

For years I used whatever razor was easiest to buy.

Gillette. Harry’s. Subscription refills. Plastic handles. Multi-blade cartridges.

A lifetime of marketing persuading me a “better” shave would be available with every new version.

Two blades. Three blades. Five? Why not!

It felt like progress, and who was I to disagree? Everyone I know has one of the well-known brands, and every ad I see shows me that the latest gaudy multi-blade razor really is “the best a man can get”.

But recently I started questioning that assumption.

Is this actually better? Or is it just newer and marketed better?

So I tried something older: wet shaving.

A safety razor. A brush. Proper soap. A setup that hasn’t fundamentally changed in decades.

It’s been a bit of a revelation.

The quality of shave

The biggest surprise was the shave itself.

More blades are supposed to mean a closer shave. In reality, it often means more irritation—multiple blades dragging over the same skin.

A safety razor is the opposite. One blade.

You slow down. Let the weight of the razor do the work.

The result is a closer shave with less irritation and fewer ingrown hairs.

It feels calmer, more deliberate, and less like scraping plastic across your face.

Skin and experience

Wet shaving isn’t just the blade, it’s the process.

You build a lather. You prepare your skin. You take a minute instead of rushing through it.

My skin feels noticeably better. Less redness. Less dryness. And the act itself has become something I look forward to.

There’s something grounding about it.

In a world optimised for speed, it forces a little slowness.

The cost

Cartridge razors are expensive. There’s a good reason most pharmacies lock them down and hide them behind the counter.

It can cost £10–£20 for a set of refills.

So a single cartridge will often be ~£1-2.

Safety razor blades cost pennies.

Even factoring in a razor, brush, and soap, the ongoing cost drops dramatically.

It’s one of those rare cases where the higher-quality option is also cheaper.

So much of the shaving industry today is seemingly focused on newer and flashier, with “improved formulas”. But so much of the cost you pay goes to profit margin and marketing. And the rest goes to product and packaging that I’d argue doesn’t need to exist.

The environmental angle

This was part of what pushed me to try it.

Plastic handles. Disposable cartridges. Excess packaging.

It all adds up, and I’m continually inspired by how many solutions to our environmental challenges are not “new” ways of doing things that we need to invest - they are old ways that we need to bring back and normalise again.

Safety razor blades are just a slither of metal. Small. Recyclable. There is

20 years of GoSquared

On Tuesday of this week, GoSquared turned 20. Yes, we've been in business for twenty years.

I thought it was the perfect excuse to resurrect the Lost and Founder podcast to reflect on our journey to this point.

In this long-overdue episode, I share 8 lessons from building GoSquared: on team, leadership, and focus. And I dropped in a few inspiring quotes for good measure.

On team

  1. Never underestimate what a small group of focused, aligned, motivated people can do. 
  2. Celebrate the small wins. Have fun along the way.
  3. Most meetings don’t need to happen.
  4. Knowing yourself is a superpower.

On business and leadership

  1. Simplicity is a war.
  2. If you think you’re repeating yourself too much, repeat some more.
  3. Focus is impossibly hard, but without it you’re doomed.
  4. Just do it.

To see more about our 20th birthday, you might also want to check out:

Thanks, and after this reflection, here's to the future!

Listen here:

Or watch it on YouTube:

When should you separate “growth” and “product” in a startup?

In the summer we removed any concept of a “growth” and “product” department at EcoSend.

I should say “department” is a loose term. We aren’t a big team (less than 10 people) so the terms mostly applied to meetings, and areas in our tools like Slack for chat and Linear for project management.

The distinction between the two was starting to cause more issues than it was solving.

The problem with separation

I found myself asking questions daily:

  • Is this a growth thing?
  • Is this a product thing?

Those questions can be helpful in a larger team.

But at our size, the primary thing I care about is: What will this do for the business? How will this make things better for our customers?

And often the answers to those questions don’t naturally fall into one bucket or the other.

What’s a product thing if it’s not about growth, for a team of our size?

How do you classify and prioritise a product feature that’s designed to help us grow? Like a viral loop or a public facing design change?

With the two concepts labelled separately, a lot of the most valuable work fell through the cracks.

Almost everything one could label “Product Led Growth” (PLG) was in the middle. And it rarely got done!

We needed to change, and thankfully as a small team, changes like this don’t have to be a big deal.

The results so far

We removed the distinction over the summer and it went far more smoothly than I expected.

What we’ve shipped since this change: 

These are the real results.

But I’m just as excited about the underlying changes, behind the scenes.

As a team we are now prioritising as one. One list, with a focus on impact.

We are uncovering problems that used to get passed around — yes even in a small team — and actually discussing them and finding a solution.

When coming up with ideas or reporting a problem, there was an overhead on every addition to Linear: where do I put this?

Now it’s all in one place. The prioritisation and decision is separate, and weighed up against everything, not an isolated set of priorities in one part of the business.

Some of this likely sounds obvious.

Or maybe you’re reading this thinking “hah! There’s no way that will scale!”

You’d be right to have either of those opinions.

Yes it’s quite obvious for us, but obvious solutions can stare me in the face for months before I try them. And often the change is not as bad as my worst fears.

I don’t believe this would scale to a team even with 10 people. But as I’ve noted in the past, referencing the wonderful Joel Gasgoine of Buffer: there’s an optimum level of process for any company. And too much,

Apple's muted climate stance

Yesterday Apple held their annual event launching the latest models of the iPhone and Apple Watch.

As always, the devices are beautiful, and show Apple at its best in almost all regards.

Except one area where they were conspicuously quiet: climate.

In previous years, there has been a steady drumbeat proudly declared from the Apple Park rooftops: “our first carbon neutral Apple Watch!”, “Our 2030 goal for net zero”, the Mother Nature skit, and an array of responsible, climate-focused details when describing each new product introduced.

One can criticise Apple’s previous climate messaging as being misleading, as not being enough, and as a ploy to reduce the climate guilt of buying a new electronics device you don’t need every year or two.

But you can’t argue that Apple was trying to get a message out there.

This year, however? It was different.

None of the new products introduced were declared as carbon neutral. They barely spoke about the sustainability story, apart from a few brief mentions of their use of recycled aluminium and titanium.

The sustainability story was mute.

What gives me hope, is Apple seems to quietly be doing the hard work under the hood — each product page on the site has a section outlining their work to reduce the use of virgin materials, prioritise renewable energy, and underscores their 2030 goals.

They just don't seem to want to talk about it too loudly any more.

I love my iPhone. I love my Apple Watch.

But in 5-10 years, the 200+ million iPhones that people buy in 2025 will be at the end of their useful life.

All electronics products ultimately end up in some form of landfill. We need to do better — a companies and as consumers. And it starts with talking about it.

Let’s hope Mother Nature can cope with another iPhone cycle.

It’d be nice if she got more airtime from Apple in the future.

Don’t stop

I’ve been away for a week, and whenever I travel I tend to find time to pause a little.

I love to stop and break from routine every now and then.

Being in a different place gives an incredible opportunity to see how different people and different cultures act differently. Perhaps more interesting is what stays the same across countries and cultures.

A realisation I’ve come to is that so much of the world we live in is built on the assumption, or perhaps the hope(?), that we don’t stop to think.

Don’t stop to think about where the ham in your ham sandwich comes from.

Don’t stop to think about why that t-shirt is only £4.

Don’t stop to think where that plastic water bottle will end up after you’ve used it.

Don’t stop to think what that packet of crisps will do to your body.

We live in a world where we are surrounded by nudges — both big and small — to act in a certain way.

It’s normal to buy a plastic-wrapped cheese and ham toastie at the airport.

It’s normal to buy clothes from Primark.

It’s normal to drink a plastic bottle of Coca Cola.

But today’s normal won’t be normal forever.

It once was normal to smoke cigarettes. It once was normal to drink pints of ale all day.

You don’t have to act like today’s normal is OK. You don’t have to accept “what everyone else does” as the only way.

To change the world for the better takes awareness and understanding. But it also takes courage.

Changing the world starts with the smallest of questions and individual decisions.

Other things

Jony Ive (who previously led design at Apple) gave a wonderful interview with Patrick Collison at Stripe Sessions this week.

It’s wonderful to see Jony making a few more public appearances lately. His opinions and thoughts are greatly needed as a counterbalance in the world of technology today.

A few comments that really stood out to me:

  • While you may not always sense care in a product, you tend to sense carelessness.
  • Finishing the back of the cabinet: it’s what we do as makers when no one is looking. That’s why it matters.
  • What often kills ideas is people’s urge to express their opinion.
  • Make things for your colleagues. It could be breakfast, a cake, or a tool or product. That’s how you can care for your fellow workers.
  • There is more to making a product than to deliver something functional. We owe it to our species to do more than that. To do otherwise is a waste.
  • Everyone can have an opinion on design. That is easy. But that does not mean everyone’s opinion should be treated equally.
  • The worst place to make product decisions is in a conference room! Nobody has ever wanted to spend more

34 lessons

I’m turning thirty four years old. I had been meaning to write a post on my birthday for at least four years, so it’s long overdue that I get my typing fingers out and commit myself to writing this.

Let me be abundantly clear: these are not lessons I have fully learnt. But they are lessons that I hope will prove as useful to you as they have to me.

What started as a ”30 lessons at 30” post has turned into “34 lessons at 34”.

Which is a wonderful tee up for lesson one…

1. Start today

The best time to plant a tree was thirty (four) years ago. The second best time to plant a tree is now.* Get started and stop thinking you're too late.

2. Get a coach

Find someone who can support you, listen to you, never judge you, and help you be the best version of yourself. I have worked with a coach on and off for the last four years. In that time I have become clearer than ever about what I want from life, I have co-founded a new endeavour, proposed to my partner, become fitter and healthier than ever before, and I feel more comfortable than ever in my own skin. For me, coaching has given me the space I didn't realise I needed to explore and articulate my thoughts. You can solve so many of your challenges if you give yourself the space and ask the right questions.

3. Wake up earlier

Wake up early — you can be a morning person if you fix your evenings. I believe I am naturally a night owl, but I love an early morning when I can do it. Earlier dinner, earlier bed-time, reducing screen time, and a consistent routine seem to be the path to earlier mornings for me.

4. You can run a marathon

You can run a marathon, but you need to put some trainers on first. Master putting your kit on and the rest will get easier. I still don't really think of myself as "a runner", but I find immense satisfaction from running.

5. Write a diary

It’s therapeutic and develops like a second brain. I can look back on any day in the last year and recall the tiniest details I noted down. Magic. Much like coaching, it enables me to clarify my thoughts and spot patterns in how I approach situations.

6. Take a break

Take a break – don’t quit. One day may be all you need to check in with yourself and get yourself back on track.

7. Overnight success is easy

Overnight success is easy once you’ve spent years (or decades) practicing, building, failing, and learning.

8. Build habits

Build habits a day at a time. This applies to both good and bad habits. Acknowledge what triggers both, and try to avoid living on autopilot with all of

It just works

There’s a saying, much popularised by Apple, that distinguishes certain products:

"It just works."

It seems like a very low bar on the surface, doesn’t it?

Surely every product works, to some extent.

“It just works” only becomes a selling point when you consider how much hassle most products are to use.

Remember the last time you bought anything significant — was it entirely effortless? Was it a pleasure? Was it obvious at every step what you needed to do to start getting value from it?

I think this concept applies to services and experiences as well as products. I've written before about the experience of using my gym for the first time. And there are plenty of restaurants and hotels I've been to that fall short of the mark when judging them by the "it just works" assessment.

I don’t believe these are exhaustive, but here are a few principles that come to mind for building a product or service that just works:

  1. “It just works” means a lack of cruft and complexity.
  2. "It just works" means the product is reliable and consistently so over its lifetime.
  3. “It just works” means the maker has an opinion.
  4. “It just works” cuts to the chase, and gets the user to their desired outcome as quickly as possible.
  5. “It just works” eschews end-user choice for simplicity and obviousness.
  6. “It just works” means prioritising the primary function of the product above all else, even if that is at the expense of other meaningful uses.

These are easy to write, but very hard to achieve in a team building a real product.

It begs the question, then, why do so many products and services not “just work”?

I believe most products on the market exhibit some combination of the following:

  • A lack of care. The designers and makers just don’t care enough about the end user.
  • There is a misunderstanding of the core purpose of the product.
  • Feature creep. In a drive to make the product more attractive to more people, extra features are added in.
  • Short-term financial incentives drive cost-cutting and profit over product quality.

There are too many products that fall short of the "it just works" goal. Fortunately, that leaves tremendous opportunity for makers willing to go the extra mile.

A few products I’ve used recently that just work:

  • Granola — we’ve all been on a Zoom call that has had some form of AI note taker unexpectedly join. We’ve all experienced how useless a transcription can be. And we’ve all tried taking notes from a meeting only to find we either weren’t paying attention or missed a critical piece of information. Granola is the first note taker I’ve found that truly “just works”. You install it on your Mac, there are no awkward bots, and the results I've seen have been exactly what I wanted. It just works!
  • The Journal app — one of