Product leader building AI that acts for people. A quant who became a creative builder, then a founder, and now puts AI to work on people's money. This is the long version. The short one is my CV.
I grew up in the New Forest, where getting hold of music meant a train to Southampton or London and an afternoon CD hunting for the one album you'd read about. No streaming, no searchable internet, no social media, but a curious boy with a Spectrum computer in his room.
I studied computer science at the University of Warwick, drawn to AI, machine learning, neural networks and image processing. My final-year work was in multi-agent systems: software agents with beliefs, desires and intentions, bidding against each other in reverse Dutch auctions. Twenty years later the word "agent" means something to everyone.
My first career was in the City. Over seven years at Morgan Stanley I became a Vice President, leading a global team of data-warehouse and quantitative developers across Asia, Europe and the US, building analytical tools for the secured-financing trading desks. It's where I learned to engineer at scale, to work across time zones, and to design data systems that cannot go down.
Then I wanted to make things, not just models. I left the bank to join a startup and started taking art classes at Central Saint Martins. Spending my days in a small team that shipped every week and my evenings drawing and making next to people who thought completely differently changed how I saw my own work. Data and code stopped being the end product and became materials. That's when the creative builder in me showed up.
Games were the perfect place to be a data-minded builder. At NaturalMotion in Oxford I built one of the first product analytics teams in mobile games, and we launched CSR Racing and Clumsy Ninja on one of the first live-ops teams, helping the company grow to a $527m exit to Zynga. At Zynga I became Director of Product for the social, chat and matchmaking platform used by more than 200 million players, and led the product side of bringing the two companies together.
Zynga took me to San Francisco, and San Francisco did the rest. I put in my ten thousand hours as a product director among some of the best builders in the world, learned how the biggest consumer products are really made, and went to Burning Man, which rewires how you think about community, creativity and what people will build for each other when nobody is selling anything.
After San Francisco I spent a year travelling the world with a single bag. It taught me to love living as a minimalist: experiences over objects, people over stuff, and how little you need when the days are full. I still pack light, and I still try to build products that give people time and experiences back rather than more things to manage.
I came back to build from zero. As Entrepreneur in Residence at Founders Factory I designed and launched new ventures with partners including LEGO and L'Oréal. Then I founded my own company: Faraday, a concept-testing platform for checking demand before you build, which became Tapkit, a platform for brands to build interactive QR and microsite experiences. A team of three, used by 600 brands, and acquired by noissue in 2022.
Since then I've been putting AI to work on one of the most important problems people have: money, and the stress that comes with it. At Cleo I built the Grow subscription around personalised spending challenges during growth from $42m to $142m ARR. At Plum I led AI and automations, turning people's own transaction data into personalised, funded plans and an AI coach for around two million customers. The aim is simple: help people save more, worry less, and have AI do the work for them, carefully.
Products, and especially AI, should be on the side of the person using them. If it isn't clearly working for them, it shouldn't ship.
In products and in people. Do what you said you'd do, show your work, and own it when you get it wrong. Autonomy, like friendship, grows with a track record.
No dark patterns, no flattery, no spin. Tell people what's true, including when it's awkward, and say it with care.
Ship small, ship often, learn in the open. A rough thing in someone's hands beats a perfect thing in your head.
The best teams are small, generous and a little bit weird. Give credit freely, coach often, and leave people better than you found them.
Fewer things, more moments. Pack light, and say yes to the trip, the night out and the long conversation.
The boy with the Spectrum is still in there. Music, art and play are where the best ideas come from.