Topic · 8 articles
CTO Insights
A CTO's view of the technical decisions behind websites, products and vendors.
CTO Insights
Stop Logging Out Your Best Users in the Name of Security
A "random logout" bug that only hit the heaviest users. The cause: an overloaded service throwing 401s, and a frontend that logged people out on every 401. Here's the fix, the 401/403/5xx decision table, and the questions to run against your own auth code.
CTO Insights
How We Made a Healthcare Tracker Feel Trustworthy (Without a Single Flashy Feature)
Most healthcare products chase trust with glossy dashboards. We earned it the boring way: fixing the bugs, broken flows, and data issues that quietly made staff doubt the system. Here is the framework we used to separate trust work from shiny work.
Website Performance
That "Cool" Mobile Design Is Quietly Killing Your Conversion Rate
A carousel-versus-stack decision on a real product page, plus a five-item mobile audit you can run on your own site in fifteen minutes. Boring but obvious beats polished but hidden.
CTO Insights
What Stripe, GitHub, and Twilio Teach Non-Technical Leaders About API Design
A customer got charged twice during a renewal meeting. The cause was not a bug, it was the API. What Stripe, GitHub, and Twilio teach leaders who will never write a line of code, plus a one-page audit you can run this week.
CTO Insights
How We Turned a 76-Page App Spec Into Something One Developer Can Ship
A 76-page MVP spec landed on one developer's desk. Three boring decisions turned it into something shippable: three named batches, an explicit Phase 3 list in writing, and developer annotations as part of the file.
AI & Technology
Agentic AI Vendors Are the New Dev Shops: A Founder's Playbook for Evaluating Technical Partners
The pitch is new. The failure pattern is a decade old. Three conversations to have before signing any AI agent vendor: references that look like you, architecture not demo, and who carries the pager at 2am. Same due diligence as a dev agency. New buzzword.
Business Strategy
Your Marketing Budget Has a Leak (And It's Not Where You Think)
Your marketing team is optimizing campaigns while your website quietly bleeds conversions. Here's the infrastructure checklist that could save your next quarter.
Technology
Someone Just Weaponized Google Docs to Spam Me: The Cold Outreach Tactic That Bypasses Every Spam Filter
A cold sales pitch disguised as a Google Docs notification. How the tactic works, a five-year timeline of Google's failed fixes, and a complete protection guide for founders and business owners.