Hi, I'm Paul

I've spent close to two decades building software, co-founding businesses, and getting properly stuck into the things I work on.

I'm a .NET developer and CTO based in Essex, working remotely with clients across the UK. I co-founded The Code Zone (coding education for kids) and ClubRight (gym membership SaaS serving 2M+ members). I also build and run my own SaaS products. I'm not a guns-for-hire contractor - I get involved in the businesses I work with and I care about what happens after the code ships.

If I take something on, it's because the problem is interesting, the people are good, and I can genuinely move the needle. That focus is how I do my best work.

The Story So Far

I studied Computing for Artificial Intelligence at university - which feels oddly prescient given where things have ended up. After graduating, I joined a company called Internet Geeks where I grew a technical team, built a CMS from scratch, and worked on projects like Channel 4's River Cottage website. That's where I figured out that I'm happiest when I'm building things, not managing things.

In 2011 I started my own agency, Intelligent Penguin. We grew to 13 people, built pension auto-enrollment platforms, and did some solid work. But agencies are brutal - lose a couple of big contracts at the wrong time and the whole thing can unravel fast. That's exactly what happened in 2015.

I'm not one to stay down for long. I rebranded as The Code Guy, stripped everything back to what I actually enjoy - writing code and solving problems - and within the first year I'd won the IPSE Freelancer of the Year Award. Since then I've co-founded two businesses, built multiple SaaS products, and found my way into the CTO seat at ClubRight.

Things I've Built

The Code Zone

I co-founded The Code Zone with Ashley - a coding education business that teaches kids aged 6 to 16 to code through game development. We started with physical clubs across Cambridgeshire, Essex and Suffolk, then built the UK's first interactive virtual coding club (backed by Innovate UK funding). It's been a brilliant project - watching kids go from zero to building their own games never gets old.

ClubRight

I co-founded and built ClubRight, where I'm CTO. It's a gym and club membership management platform that handles everything from member sign-ups and direct debit collection to access control and class scheduling. It now serves over 2 million members across 500+ facilities. Building a platform at that scale taught me more about architecture, reliability, and what happens when things go wrong at 2am than any textbook ever could.

Healthcare & NHS

I've done extensive work in the healthcare space, including NHS integrations with FHIR, MESH, and GP Connect. I've built breast cancer screening systems, welfare monitoring platforms for vulnerable people, and patient referral applications. Healthcare software has no room for "good enough" - when the stakes are real, you learn to build things properly.

SaaS Products

I currently run three SaaS products - Task Board, TestPlan, and CoSurf. Each one started as a solution to a problem I kept running into. Previously I built Doddle (project management for freelancers), plus client platforms including betting display systems for the Racing Post and e-commerce solutions.

AI Isn't a Feature. It's How I Work.

My degree was in Computing for Artificial Intelligence - back when that meant neural networks on paper, not ChatGPT. Now the stuff I studied has exploded into something genuinely transformative, and I've been deep in it since day one.

Claude Code is my pair programmer. Not in a novelty way - I mean it writes production code with me every single day. Copilot handles the boilerplate. I'm building LLM integrations into the products I ship. I've built MCP servers, AI-powered test tooling, intelligent workflows that actually save people time rather than just looking impressive in a demo.

I've also spent a lot of time figuring out practical LLM integration strategies for high-volume SaaS applications - the kind where you need to think carefully about token costs, latency, caching, and when AI is genuinely the right tool versus when a well-written if statement does the job better.

AI should amplify what you're capable of, not replace the thinking. The best AI integrations are the ones where users don't even realise they're using AI - they just notice things work better.

The Stack

Languages: C#, .NET 8+, Blazor
Cloud: Azure (App Service, Functions, CosmosDB)
Data: MongoDB, SQL Server
Frontend: Blazor Server & WASM, ASP.NET Core
AI Tools: Claude, Claude Code, Copilot, MCP Servers
Integrations: FHIR, MESH, GP Connect, Stripe, GoCardless
Architecture: Multi-tenant SaaS, REST APIs, event-driven

I have opinions about how software should be built.

After building a membership platform that serves 2 million+ members, coding education tools used by thousands of kids, healthcare systems for the NHS, and three SaaS products of my own - you develop some strong views.

Simple beats clever. Every time.

The best code is boring code. I've inherited enough "clever" codebases to know that complexity is a cost, not a feature. I build with .NET, Blazor, MongoDB, and Azure - not because they're fashionable, but because I know them inside out and they let me ship fast without surprises.

I build things that make money.

I run three SaaS products. I know what it takes to get from an idea to something people actually pay for - and more importantly, keep paying for. That changes how you think about architecture, about features, about what's worth building and what's a waste of everyone's time.

I care about where this ends up.

I'm not the kind of developer who writes code, pushes it, and moves on. I ask awkward questions early. I challenge assumptions. I'll tell you if I think you're building the wrong thing. That's what a CTO does - technology decisions that serve the business, not the other way around.

Want to Talk?

If any of this sounds relevant to what you're working on, I'm always up for a chat.

Get in Touch