I am a technology executive with a long track record of doing one specific thing well: walking into software businesses and making them work better.
That has meant serving as an operating partner across private equity portfolios, building and rebuilding engineering teams, and sitting in the CTO chair for companies ranging from early stage to mid-market. I have done this independently, through MacLaurin Group which I co-founded, and as Partner at New Harbor Capital where I ran TechOps across a growing family of portfolio investments.
Most recently I was CTO at HiBid, the world’s second largest auction platform behind eBay, where I led a complete reimagination of the core platform.
I am currently open to CTO and operating partner roles, particularly within PE-backed businesses that need technology leadership with both depth and commercial awareness. I know how PE works, I know how engineering teams work, and I know how to make those two things speak the same language.
Background
I grew up in Scotland and graduated from the University of Paisley with an honours degree in Computer Science. I was the first UK Java Champion, a programme by Oracle/Sun recognising the top 100 contributors to the Java ecosystem globally. I have spoken at over 30 conferences worldwide, contributed to major open source projects, and built systems that have powered some of the largest sites on the internet.
I am also an author. My latest book, Think Like a CTO, is available in English, Russian, and Japanese. It is the distillation of everything I have learned sitting in that chair across more than two decades.
This site
I have been writing here since the early 2000s. It is where I think out loud, mostly about technology, occasionally about life, and sometimes about the uncomfortable overlap between the two.
Get in touch
If you are working on something interesting and think I could help, I would like to hear from you.
alan@alan.is · LinkedIn · BlueSky
Speaking
Alan was an adjunct professor at Virginia Commonwealth University where he designed, delivered, mentored and examined the course for a class of 60 students – Object Design and Algorithms. He also taught an MBA class, on Cloud Computing, at University of Richmond in the summer.
Alan has spoken at over 30 conferences, all over the globe, on topics ranging from deep Java technical sessions, open source licensing, big data, cloud techniques and most recently IoT. He has spoken at the jChampions Conference, on Serverless.
Alan has appeared on a number of podcasts, including AWS, Private Equity Funcast, HockeyStick, University of Paisley, Rob Liddiard, Techlead Journal.
Open Source
Alan has contributed code and patches for many open source projects over the years, including; JQuery, Apache Commons, Mongo Java driver, Jetty, JavaMail and the core Java SDK.
Alan was the core architect behind BlueDragon/OpenBD – a Java JEE engine that supports and renders the Allaire/Adobe CFML web scripting language. Built from the ground up, BlueDragon went onto power the 5th largest website in the world and the largest CFML website – MySpace.com.
The project was later ported to run on Microsoft’s .NET platform, offering the only .NET implementation for CFML and powering many US State Government sites. In later years, code was released under a GPL open source license.
Contact
LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/a1anw2/
Blog
https://alan.is/
Alan enjoys wood turning when he is not at the keyboard (ask about the butt-plug-candle should you get the chance) and is a huge movie buff, with an uncanny ability to quote movie lines from many an obscure title. Had he not had a fondness for computing, he would have explored a degree in Cinema and Media.
Alan Williamson 