I wrote my first production C code in 1995, building energy trading systems on Sun Solaris. That was the era of dial-up modems and Oracle 7 — almost adjacent to the metal.

Through the late '90s and 2000s, I climbed the enterprise architecture ladder. Lead Solution Architect for a global software vendor, managing teams and bids across Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, and Shanghai. A million frequent flyer miles in two years. Managed the architecture for a $95M billing system project. Presented at international conferences.

Then I realised I'd got so far from the technology that I'd lost the connection to building things. The titles were impressive. The distance from code was vast.

So I went back to building. Founded SmartEnergyGroups — an energy management startup where I built everything from open-source sensor hardware and firmware through to the web platform and analytics. Then eight years at ICU Solarcam, designing and building a national IoT video security platform from device to dashboard — custom gateways, thousands of managed devices, AI-powered alarm verification.

Two startups. Built from scratch. Hardware to software to operations.

When AI arrived, I didn't add it to the toolkit — I rebuilt the toolkit. Retooled how I design, build, and deliver software. Built my own orchestration systems. Failed at it, learned from it, iterated until it worked. That investment — the unglamorous, time-consuming, deep retooling that doesn't show up in YouTube tutorials — is what I bring to every engagement.

otageLabs is the embodiment of samotage — every system shipped, every architecture that failed in production, every startup that taught me something the books didn't cover. Now applied to the most significant shift in how software gets made since the internet itself.