Founder field notes by Mark Nicoll

Rust Crate

Building complex software, AI systems, graph infrastructure, product architecture, and decision systems in slow-moving sectors.

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Latest writing

Where Is Your Data If Europe Goes Dark?

The rhetoric of war in Europe has arrived. UK SaaS founders need to ask an uncomfortable question about their hosting decisions, and the answer is not simply "switch to US.

Bubble and Squeak and FDS

How founder delusion syndrome took a Brexit-era hiring idea, through a three-sided marketplace, past a competitive wipeout, and into something that actually needed to exist.

Startups Are Just FAFO Maxxing

Every line of code, every pivot, every 'aha' moment. It was always just fucking around and finding out. The methodology nobody puts in the pitch deck.

All Stored in the Old Rust Crate

Two weeks of heat, halyards, a storybook promise, Behaviour OS, and the unnamed third system. A field note from the build.

Why I Built Deployed Works

I built Deployed Works because modern teams often need deployable capability before they need permanent headcount.

The Oak

Why a relational database gives you the trunk and nothing else, and what it takes to build something that can read across the wood itself.

The Workstation

A boring but useful breakdown of the hardware and tooling behind every Rust engine I build. People always ask. Here is the actual answer.

SS-DD (Same Shit, Different Day)

Why the same Rust engine can power six different health surfaces, and why nobody can copy the blueprint without having lived the context that produced it.