Why I decided to switch to purpose-driven CTO work as a consultant

I spent over half a decade as the CTO of a user research company whose job it was to help Fortune 500 companies expand their dominance by getting deep intel on users. I made crypto investment vehicles. I built AI technology from the ground up to streamline employees’ work lives.

Did I get to work on amazing technologies, build fantastic teams, and surmount some crazy scaling challenges? YES! I was never bored for a second. But something was missing. I’m not going to revisit the cliché of the disilusioned developer who laments his contribution to unchecked techocapitalism. Capitalism is a good thing when checked, and I’m not here to argue that. Rather, I was seeing intelligent, critically thinking developers create these super impressive platforms and products that just didn’t matter (I include myself by the way). They mattered, but for growth’s sake. But what did that matter after a point? We nerd sniped ourselves into making charts for certain metrics go up and to the right (or for just figuring out raw, complex problems in general), and got rewarded for it.

The worst part was that I recognised it, but didn’t see a way to escape from it, regardless of the industry. It seemed ubiquitous due to the way many tech products either fit into existing supply chains or ultimately serve consumers in an almost forced-fed way. I had boards and executives telling me what was right and wrong. I felt at a certain point that I needed to make a choice between choosing my work based on the most exciting technical challenges, which usually meant staying on the “purposeless wheel,” or choosing based on a mission and forward progress. It turns out they’re not mutually exclusive.

While this seemed like an inescapable cycle, the tumultous state of the world (and peoples’ conciousness) right now shed an unexpected light on things. This chaotic state, in my view, is just the time to reset our perspectives and focus on what matters to us (even if it’s one of the things I disagreed with above) and reinvent as necessary. Right now in tech, I’m seeing the opposite mentality, however. The industry have largely been driven by the AI narrative right now, and we are likely in full bubble stage. While I’m certain that AI is not going away, its spotlight is making it difficult for us to see some big shifts in thinking about how we can make progress in this world (with or without LLMs). There are a lot of companies outside the AI narrative in tech that are starting their missions right now, and I’m here to help build and grow them.

This is the start of my experiment to hone my focus as a technologist and startup strategist and consultant. If you are interested in working together, see my Work with me page.