We got to interview Will Beattie, the Founder & CTO of AlphaBridge. Being one of the rare commercially-savvy technologists, Will has had a diverse career bridging the gap between business objectives and technology. An early pioneer of Cloud Computing, he adopted Cloud architecture as early as 2008 for commercial projects.
In addition, Will has built three commercially successful SaaS products from the ground up and has been a publicly traded company’s Chief Technology Officer.
Further, he has led and built from the ground up numerous multi-site Engineering teams and led the agile transformation at four organizations. Learn more about Will and his company through our interview below.
The Idea Behind It All
We started by asking, “Tell us about your career journey.”
Will says, “Starting as a Software Engineer in the early 2000s, I quickly found myself in leadership and architect roles and eventually worked up to a CTO level in 2016. I am a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors and have held board positions offering technology oversight at the board level. In addition, I also had three successful exits as a Co-Founder/CTO/VP of Engineering.”
We were also curious about the starting of AlphaBridge, so we asked Will,
“What inspired you to develop the idea of your company?”
He replied, “I have encountered many software startups that make costly mistakes because they are led down a technology path by well-intentioned agencies that aren’t aligned with the founder’s vision.
This can lead to rebuilding products from scratch in the early stages, which can be disastrous for startups. AlphaBridge started as a way to solve such disastrous problems of startups.”
A Way To Tackle Challenges For Startups
There are different types of challenges that come across startups. We wanted to understand in what ways AlphaBridge helps them. So, our next question was:
“What are the most challenging situations that your company helps with?”
Will Beattie, the CTO of AlphaBridge, said, “We help non-technical founders and CEOs set their technology strategy.
Small startups struggle to attract the experience required to set a viable technology strategy. Instead, they hire inexperienced Software Engineers and give them the inflated title of CTO when they have neither the skills nor experience to perform this pivotal business role. “
What’s the key strength to overcome it?
“With over 20 years of experience in building software startups, I bring this experience to help early-stage startups maximize their technology investments,” he added.
Factor Of Uniqueness
We also wanted to know a bit more about the business ways of AlphaBridge, so we asked, “What makes your company stand out from all the other businesses in your industry?”
“We employ transparent pricing under a subscription model where customers can cancel at any time; this is similar to how SaaS is priced, so it will be a familiar model for CEOs and founders,” Will replied.
What KPIs do you use to measure your business success?
“The success of our customers defines our success.”
During the discussion, we asked Will to share about his company’s services and what they are working on.
He said, “We provide a CTO as a service, AKA Fractional CTO. Essentially this allows businesses to leverage an experienced CTO for a fraction of the time and cost.
Also, AlphaBridge Labs, the product development arm of AlphaBridge, has recently launched ChatPulse, a sentiment and emotion analysis app for Slack, to boost employee engagement and happiness.
We’ve also just launched ChatComply, a PII (Personally Identifiable Information) data detection app for Slack to prevent data leaks.”
Nowadays, continuous technological changes are visible, and several businesses focus on aligning with them. We wanted to understand how it’s going with AlphaBrdige. When we asked Will about how he stays on top of new technologies and trends in his industry, he replied:
“As a professional Chief Technology Officer, staying on top of trends is critical. I subscribe to many industry blogs and magazines and have an RSS feed that I read on a daily basis.”
Word Of Advice From A Professional CTO
Lastly, we asked, “What advice would you give to starting entrepreneurs?”
He said, “If you’re starting a software company and don’t have a technical background, you don’t need to hire a CTO or agency immediately as this can be very expensive.
Before starting to build any product, you need to validate first that customers are willing to pay for your product, and secondly, you need to do a feasibility study.
Before investing heavily in product development, you need to figure out your Minimum Viable Product and how to get there as quickly as possible for as little as possible.”
Connect with Will Beattie on LinkedIn.
Find AlphaBridge on LinkedIn or visit Alphabridge
