The Contraction?

I am a fractional CTO. I work with startups from zero to series A. This newsletter contains what I have learned and what I have learned about the challenges of being a founder and CTO. This newsletter is a form of personal technology meditation (and a bit of theory). I have built this to provide the tools and insights I wish I had access to. Committing patterns into words and concepts in solutions allows me to test different approaches to real-world problems.

You can find my consulting information at Stephan Smith Solutions LLC.

Is there a contradiction (in the name)?

Yes. If you are asking how the terms 'Low Code' and 'Chief Technology Officer' come together, then you are asking the right question. The irony is apparent: how does a tech founder advocate for non-code-centric solutions?

I did not get to this point by accident. In 2016, I helped co-found a startup in the biotech tech space (like FinTech, but for research).

Wired Magazine described us as "The AirBnb of Genetic Sequencing." Before the start of COVID-19, we were laser-focused on enabling researchers around the United States to access expensive and hard-to-find genetic sequencers.

When the pandemic emerged, we had to pivot quickly from a research focus to a diagnostic health focus. From the winter of 2020 to the fall, we worked around the clock to convert our research workflows so that they could provide at-scale diagnostic health solutions.

By October 2020, we were live and testing hundreds of thousands of people and students for COVID-19, using 31+ different diagnostic tests with 100+ custom workflows. All while meeting the reporting requirements of state and city health departments while meeting HIPAA regulations.

We event-tested the US Olympic team and helped get them to Japan!

Why the contradiction? We built a ton of fantastic tech solutions. We did it at breakneck speeds. Once the company wound down and the team dispersed, I had a few brutal late-night revelations.

We built too much! We could have moved 10x faster if we had a better perspective on bringing solutions to market. The tech team defaulted to using code to solve all challenges. We often (willfully) overlooked options that required integration in place of custom-coded solutions. The patterns that helped us start in 2016 did not serve us well in 2020.

It took a while. The hunt for replacement options, alternative patterns, and solutions led to an Airtable that mapped stack components to No-code and Low-Code options. The Airtable grew into this newsletter and my consulting practice.

Breaking the work of 20+ people over six years into logical pieces and then assigning costs in weeks or months of developer effort is a humbling process. 3 Person Months for X feature. 3 Person Years for that Feature.

So yes, it's a contradiction. I love to code, and I love a well-built technology stack, but I am obsessed with an approach that enables speed and impact.