Founder-engineer
building clarity tools.
Based in London. I build software that strips noise out of domains where individuals are otherwise overwhelmed by it. I ship a lot of it, fast. A few turn into products; most don't need to. Writing about the rest.
Currently building
- CasefileMost of my time
- Court-ready document bundles for self-represented UK litigants. Live with paying users across family, employment, civil, and property matters. The thing I'm putting the most time into.
- Murmur
- Speech-first practice for language learners, Italian first. I built it for myself, while learning Italian and not loving the existing options. Just went live.
- Cryptofinance
- A weekly briefing on digital assets, regulation, and market structure, written for the people who'd rather skip the hype cycle.
The track that got here
- 2026 — now
Founder
Casefile · Cryptofinance · Murmur
Between acts, and using the room to work out what starting a company even means now that AI has collapsed the cost of building. Casefile (court-ready bundles for self-represented UK litigants, live since April 2026), Cryptofinance (a weekly briefing for institutional readers tired of hype), and Murmur (a speech-first Italian app) are the serious probes; smaller one-offs are the fast ones. Different domains, same question.
- 2017 — 2022
Founder & CEO
Qadre
Founded June 2017 to modernize financial markets infrastructure: supply chain, pharma, settlement. In 2018 the underlying Plug framework (which I'd written in 2014) raised $68m via a token-generating event with Centrality and SingularDTV, which at the time was the largest blockchain raise covered by CityAM. Qadre operationally wound down in 2022 (Mirror Identity, a beta-stage subsidiary, shuttered alongside it), but Plug outlived the company; I no longer hold a stake in it.
- 2014 — 2016
Co-founder & CEO
Credits
Built the first non-cryptocurrency blockchain framework ever created. The technology later became Plug. By 2015 it was running in production at a central securities depository issuing euros directly against the European Central Bank. Central-bank money on a blockchain ledger. First blockchain provider in the UK Government's G-Cloud Marketplace. Built the world's first government service running on blockchain. Blockchain Startup of the Year, 2016 Europas. Shut down Spring 2016 after a co-founder dispute.
- 2011 — 2015
Ring Game Manager
PokerStars
Poacher turned gamekeeper: the player got hired to run the product the players played on. Ran product and operations for Ring Games, the largest real-money online poker product in the world. Shipped the "Buy-in Obligations" system to curb ratholing. First-hand schooling in running live financial software at scale. Got into Bitcoin in parallel around 2010.
- 2008 — 2011
Professional online poker player
Played for a living. To find edges I started mining my own hand histories. Writing the scripts to do it is how I learned to program at all. The poker paid the bills; the code became the career.
- 2006 — 2009
Cross country & track
Illinois Institute of Technology
Distance runner on scholarship. Worked in hedge fund administration alongside studies, which is where the fintech instinct started.
How I work
I gravitate toward serious domains where the existing options are noisy: legal paperwork, language learning, crypto coverage. The version I try to build respects the people who actually have to use it.
I came up through poker (playing, then building the platform others played on) and blockchain (when it meant building infrastructure, before it meant speculating on price). Most of what I do now traces back to one principle: serious systems should be calm, not loud.
The best way to understand a domain is to ship in it. The best way to ship in it is to remove anything that isn't earning its place. Most products break by addition; mine try to break by subtraction.
Right now I'm mostly chasing one question: what does it mean to start a company when the cost of building has collapsed? Each project is a way of answering it. A few will turn into something; most won't need to. Doing a lot of them is the point.
I'm most useful when product judgment, systems thinking, and shipping all meet on one project. The tools matter less than what I'm pointing them at. For the curious, here's what's in current rotation.
- / TypeScript
- / Next.js
- / Python
- / Postgres
- / LLM tooling
- / Editorial workflow