👋 About Me
Hi, I'm Simon Ashley — Managing Director at gotripod.com, fractional CTO, and someone who actually likes sorting out tricky problems.
I do a bit of everything: run a punchy digital agency and jump into growing businesses as their go-to tech person. I build stuff that actually works day-to-day, not just looks good in presentations.
I've got one foot in the tech and one in the business side. I have run dev teams and helped founders figure out how to grow without everything falling apart. I've worked in start-ups, heavily regulated places and IoT stuff where you can't just "move fast and break things." All that's taught me when to build something from scratch, when to buy off the shelf and when to step back and think differently about the whole thing.
I'm pretty curious about how things work — not just the technical bits, but how teams function and how people actually use what we build. That's why I write here, sharing the stuff I wish someone had told me years ago. You'll find thoughts on leading teams through the messy bits, making decisions when you don't have all the info, dealing with the growing pains that come with scaling.
I'm based in the UK, don't get enough sleep and reckon good communication beats any debugging tool you can buy.
Feel free to drop me a line — I'm usually about and pretty quick to get back to people Monday to Friday, 7am–5pm.
Quick pitch for my company. At GoTripod, we build custom systems that bring together hardware, software, and the human bit in between. Whether it's sensor networks out in the field or client portals and apps, we take complicated stuff and make it make sense. We're big enough to deliver but personal enough to give a damn.
si [at] gotripod [dot] com