CTO Chat Show Episode #4 - the Christmas Special

I’ve long dreamed of having my own Christmas special (I sense a theme here…) and now I’ve got the opportunity to have one! Everyone loves a Christmas special, whether it’s Smithy and Gavin singing ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’, David Brent being as awkward as ever at the staff Christmas Party or Wallace and Gromit trying to solve a murder mystery in ‘A Matter of Loaf or Death’. They’re a staple of the British festive experience.

Check out Episode #3 from last week...

Now I’m joining the party and the thing that makes this Christmas special really, really special is that apart from some random couple in the picture being in front of a Christmas tree (no idea…), there is nothing Christmassy about the episode whatsoever. 

The producer has high expectations, apparently the Only Fools and Horses Christmas Day special attracted over 19 million viewers. He said I’m deluded to even think about thinking about it, but it would be nice to get some people watch it at least. I’m going back to one guest format for the special (because only one person wanted to record on Boxing Day).

So I introduce to you Nick Mullen – straight talking northerner, fantastic CTO with nothing better to do on Boxing Day…

Welcome to the show Nick!

Nick Mortimer: We’ll start off with a light-hearted one… Litecoin or Bitcoin?

Nick Mullen: As a get-rich-quick gamble, Bitcoin. As a genuine longer-term form of currency, Litecoin.

The mining side of Bitcoin is broken - transactions take too long and cost too much to process, so I don't see myself buying my coffee with it anytime soon.

NMo: What inspired you to choose a startup at this stage of your career?

NMu: It wasn't really the stage of the company that was important to me, it was the commitment of the people involved to doing something new and disruptive. 

Within a startup environment, you're likely to be ripping up the rulebook in a market segment, in a larger organisation, you also need to be willing to rip up rules about how you structure and manage teams. Large companies can move quickly when they allow themselves to do so, and then have the advantage of resources. 

I've had the opportunity to do both in my career - and I've enjoyed both.

NMo: What was it about your product that inspired you to join, or start up?

NMu: When I first met the founder, Michael - we sat down for what was supposed to be a 45-minute conversation and ended up talking for nearly 3 hours.

Fixter was instantly relatable - anyone who has owned their own car has to deal with garages, and very few of us find it a pleasurable experience so that was an easy sell. What really swung it for me though, was looking through the eyes of the garage and realising the challenges faced by them in managing costs. It was a perfect scenario where we feel we can make the experience an easier, more cost-effective one for both sides. 

NMo: When working with the CEO (and other non-technical stakeholders), how do you plan and balance short term commercial priorities vs strategic product development plans?

NMu: As a leadership team, you can have created the best long-term plan in the world, but that means nothing unless you're paying the bills. As long you have a healthy, open discussion about WHY something is important in the short term and can structure it in such a way as to take you at least one or two steps closer to your long-term plan then it's usually not too hard getting everyone to buy in. I've always shared commercial targets with development teams - being problem solvers at heart, they can be just as passionate about hitting sales targets as anyone else.

NMo: What are the biggest challenges you have faced or are facing during the scale up phase?

NMu: Initially, the biggest problem was customer acquisition - so our focus was pretty much entirely on the consumer side of things and A/B testing whilst still having comparatively little traffic to make tests viable. 

Over the past couple of months though and as we've expanded nationally, our focus has shifted much more to the back-office tooling, making sure that we would actually be able to cope with 10 times the volume that we have today. For that, we've been looking at every edge case we've encountered, and then prioritised development of tools for our team to handle them.

NMo: How have you found resourcing your team?

NMu: Time-consuming, but very rewarding! Hiring is THE most important task you have, so it needs the right level of attention. I was very clear from the outset about the kind of team and culture that I wanted - a mix of levels of experience and a fanaticism about Agile delivery. 

My biggest joy has been taking on a novice in his first programming job and watching him really grow over the past 12 months into a really great developer and more confident individual thanks to the support of his colleagues.

A disappointment was finding the developer market still so very London-centric - I initially advertised in both Manchester and London - but the response rate in my home city was decidedly poor and so I based the entire team in the south.

NMo: Just to finish off… we’ve been having a debate here at Troi about beards… what do you think about them?

NMu: Go for it. Once mine gets long it shows all the grey so I'll stick to my short stubble.

Thank you very much Nick, really enjoyed that insight into your CTO career and the challenges you come up against on a day-to-day basis

There’s something I need to address. This was actually pre-recorded so Nick did not give up his time on Boxing Day – as if any of you believed that. In fact, I’ll be eating my 17th turkey, cranberry, parsnip and pigs & blanket ciabatta by the time this comes out whilst throwing Bombay Mix at my Nan and watching the Only Fools and Horses Christmas special for the 118th time in two days. 

I’ll be back next week when you’ve all broken your New Years’ resolutions, already cancelled your gym memberships and Dry January becomes Dry Gin January…

Thanks for watching folks, see you next week, goodnight!