Helping founders make a positive impact
Kodehort runs discovery and rapid prototyping for early-stage and scaling companies. The work happens inside your team, not alongside it.
Why Kodehort?
Discovery is technology and strategy workshops that find the smallest, quickest piece of work with a measurable impact on your goals. We balance user-centred requirements against risk, complexity and cost to identify real options.
This suits organisations seeking continuous improvement around existing business needs but feeling constrained by technology, and teams that would rather test a legacy of assumptions than commission a large IT programme before exploring the options.
Alistair’s story
I spent 15 years inside agencies, much of it senior enough to watch how the work was won. Pitching costs real money before a client is ever met, and that cost has to be recovered across a long contract. A long contract has to say what it is for, so the scope gets written out at the moment the least is known about the problem. Nobody I worked with was cynical about any of it. The shape was decided upstream of all of us. I left to work somewhere the next experiment needs a conversation rather than a proposal.
Looking for the right career
I read a book about helping businesses use introspection to remove impediments and realised that is what I am good at: getting to know a business, identifying the bottlenecks, and using technology to remove them. I became technology partner for a venture builder and formed 14 new businesses, many of which went on to attract series A and B funding or were acquired.
Changing the arithmetic
After 4 years I founded Kodehort with a small cost base and no pipeline to keep full. That was not merit alone. Earlier successes paid for the risk, and my family carried the rest while the model was unproven. That cost base is what lets the next experiment cost a conversation rather than a proposal. It fits what I believe about how work should be done, and it leaves room for a young family, which counts for as much. I work with independent consultants when a client needs more capacity or a specialism I do not have.
Making a positive impact
Nearly ten years on, I am still helping founders make a difference, and my enthusiasm for coding has not wavered. In the evening once the children are in bed I write code and keep learning about newer technology. My current area of research is serverless architecture and tooling, which suits early-stage companies well.
What I am driven by
- Authenticity
- Everything I do comes from either experience or a genuine belief that it is the right thing to say or do.
- Integrity
- It guides me to choose the right path. Things have to be done the right way, and the right way by people.
- Curiosity
- I look at things closely. I tinker, take things apart, put them back together. I want to understand why things work and why they do not.
- Resourcefulness
- When there is a roadblock I find my way around it, changing the shape of the problem until a solution is available.
Start with a conversation
30 minutes, no pitch, and a straight answer on whether Kodehort is the right fit.