Not many people know this but I go through phases of getting obsessed by certain people. I call it ‘studying them’, but really it’s an obsession. The people I get ‘obsessed’ with often come from different fields of expertise, like Clay Christensen and JK Rowling. …

Startup connections from London to Myanmar “New sign up called NEX from Myanmar” Companies have signed up to CharlieHR from all over the world, but when the above popped up in January 2016 it really caught my attention. …

How reading the story of Nike changed my thinking Over Christmas I read Shoe Dog by Phil Knight, the creator of Nike. There isn’t another book I’ve read which captures the entrepreneurial g̶r̶i̶n̶d̶ magic as well, and it firmly rocketed into one of the top 10 books. It really got…

The one question we always ask when designing Charlie 2016 was a big, exciting year for us at Charlie. So much has changed and developed from when we launch towards the end of 2015. One thing that that has remained remarkably the same is how we think about design. From…

One of the original inspirations for Charlie was the PC game Football Manager. It’s where I wasted many of my teenage days pretending to be Sir Alex Ferguson and also took Brighton FC from League 1 to Champions League glory. The game was, and (I hear) still is, amazing. You…

Some people can remember numbers easily. Rob, my co-founder, can tell you the registered company address and VAT number for every company he has ever incorporated, just like that. I, on the other hand, have to have it written down or stored somewhere. And ‘somewhere’ can be loosely defined. For…

The million dollar question… If we had a pound for every time we’d been asked this, we’d be richer than we are. But seriously, it’s a good question. Let me explain the story behind calling our free HR platform “Charlie”. I̶t̶’̶s̶ ̶p̶r̶e̶t̶t̶y̶ ̶s̶i̶m̶p̶l̶e̶.̶ ̶W̶e̶ ̶n̶a̶m̶e̶d̶ ̶i̶t̶ ̶a̶f̶t̶e̶r̶ ̶o̶u̶r̶ ̶a̶m̶a̶z̶i̶n̶g̶,̶ ̶b̶r̶i̶l̶l̶i̶a̶n̶t̶…

And why it’s got everything to do with Apple’s Car — My friends are often ahead of me on real technology trends. None of them are into tech or work in this world, but they are the people we’d like to use the products that we build. So when they start talking about something it’s usually an interesting sign. I first…

And it’s a good thing. My co-founder Ben often replied to my emails with ‘x’. Just ‘x’. That’s all, nothing else. You can call it a kiss if you like (we are pretty close!), …