Software used to be built for the average business.
Writing software around one company's actual way of working took a large team and a long time. So most businesses bought something generic and bent themselves around it, then spent years working around the parts that did not fit.
That constraint has moved. What used to take a team and a year now takes a small studio and a matter of weeks. Software can be built to the shape of one business, including its language, its habits, and the handful of things it does differently from everyone else.
Personalisation at that level is no longer a premium feature. It is the sensible way to build.
Personalisation held up by people, retyping.
I worked in guest experience at The Dorchester. Knowing which room a guest asked for last time, which newspaper they read, which allergy to flag, which anniversary was coming up. Done well, a guest feels known before they have said anything.
Behind that was an enormous amount of typing. Preferences arrived by email, by phone, and in conversation, then got re-entered by hand into systems that did not talk to each other. The thinking was excellent. The infrastructure carrying it was people.
Rena's, and the quote that took all afternoon.
Then I co-founded Rena's, an events space. Same industry, same problem, except this time the hours were mine. Every enquiry is bespoke. A different headcount, layout, menu, staffing ratio, hire list and timeline, every single time.
So every quote was built from nothing. Costed line by line, formatted, then written up into an email. Hours of work before anyone knew whether the client was serious.
There was no one to hand it to. So I built the thing I wanted.
An enquiry arrives. That is the only action required of me.
- Enquiry landsA client email arrives in my inbox. Nothing is copied into a form and no one opens a spreadsheet.
- Chain firesReceiving it triggers a chain of programs. The enquiry is read and its details extracted.
- PricedThose details are costed against my own cost structure, line by line.
- FormattedThe result is laid out as a full breakdown of the event cost, using my own brand assets and templates.
- DraftedA reply is written and left waiting in my inbox. I read it, make any call that needs a human, and send.
It prices the way I price. It sounds like me. It is not a product I configured until it was close enough. It is my quoting process, built.
Physics, finance, and systems that have to hold up.
I studied Theoretical Physics at Edinburgh. Much of the work was learning how to take a complicated system, reduce it to first principles, and build a model that still worked when the easy assumptions fell away.
Find the variables that actually matter. Test the answer rather than trusting that it looks right. Being nearly right was still wrong.
After university, I spent two years as a stockbroker in an ultra-high-net-worth team and became registered with the FCA as a financial adviser.
A recommendation affected real money. Every decision had to meet financial regulation, be recorded properly, and stand up to scrutiny after the fact. If something went wrong, it was not enough to point at the process. I was accountable for the advice I gave.
The clients included fund managers and billionaire investors. They did not all need the same conversation. Some wanted the model. Some wanted the risk in one sentence. When markets moved, the job was to explain what had changed and make the call.
I had planned to take a master's in AI. The field was moving faster than the courses, so I learned by building the systems instead.
The first answered a small question that is surprisingly difficult in London: where should a group meet if the aim is to minimise everyone's travel time?
So this is what I built:
- Stations inEach person enters their local station.
- Network builtTfL data is modelled as a weighted, directed multigraph of the network.
- Routes testedIt compares journey times to every possible meeting point, for everyone in the group.
- Answer outIt returns the station with the lowest average journey time.
It was not a map with a pin dropped in the middle. It worked from the way London actually moves.
The same shape, in every industry we look at.
Once you have seen it work in one business, you start seeing the pattern everywhere. Lettings, recruitment, agencies, trades, e-commerce, logistics. Different work, same shape: information arrives in one place, and a person moves it somewhere else by hand.
Synced studies how a business actually runs, then builds the software that connects it. Not a product you adopt. A system built around the way you already work, filling the gaps that are left.
Most businesses run on a patchwork of tools, spreadsheets and habits. That is normal, and it is where we start. Nothing needs tidying before you talk to us.