Doug Silkstone · Founder, builder & operator
I’m Doug, an engineer and founder with 15 years of experience building products and growing businesses. I’ve hired and led engineering teams, founded and sold three software businesses, and led growth strategies for multimillion-dollar Black Friday campaigns. Bring me into your team or give me a difficult problem to own.
I’ve worked with teams including
Contra, Groupon and
The Motley Fool.

“Doug is a pro. I'd hire him again for any future marketing & technology initiatives.”
Brian TigheHead of Technology @ The Motley FoolClutch ↗Available for contracts, onsite in London or remotely. Open to the right permanent role.
Each one starts from a set price. We agree the scope on a call and you approve the quote before any work begins.
From £3,500Scope and quote agreed on the call
Your developers are rightly focused on the roadmap, but marketing needs things built too: an internal tool, an automated workflow, a CRM integration or a campaign landing page. The requests sit in the backlog while your team patches the gaps with spreadsheets and manual work.
So I pick up the work that needs an engineer, and I don’t wait for a perfect ticket. I work with your team to understand the problem, decide what’s worth building and ship it to your engineering standards. That can mean a new tool, connected systems, automation or better analytics. Marketing gets what it needs, and your product team can stay focused on the roadmap.
Marketing has to write every ticket perfectly, but engineering builds exactly what the ticket says, and the SEO detail or tracking detail that actually mattered gets lost. The tracking ends up slightly wrong, so nobody fully trusts the numbers either.
So I sit between the two teams. I understand SEO, analytics and growth, and I design and write the code, so the intent survives from brief to production. Changes ship the way they were meant, and the numbers agree with what really happened.
The work crosses half a dozen specialisms: a migration, a CDP, lifecycle email, the tracking that ties it together and the strategy behind it. But hiring for each one means several people, several handoffs and nobody accountable for whether the whole thing works. That gap is usually where big projects stall.
So bring in one owner-operator. I’ve spent 15 years across engineering, growth and running my own businesses, so chances are I’ve already done the thing you need. I set the direction, build it, run the project and hand it over working. You deal with one person, and that person answers for the outcome.
Contra / Indy.aiProduct Hunt #1 Product of the WeekProduct engineering · Built the extension and discovery pipelineView project →Growth SocietyEcommerce benchmarking for 200 UK brandsProduct engineering · Built the interactive MVP in four weeksView project →HogsendLifecycle messaging for software teamsFounder & CTO · Built the product, journey engine and cloud platformView project →Dinners With FriendsHosted dinners that help people make friendsCTO · Built the brand, booking platform, apps and search programmeRead case study →Living mockupsEditable 3D product mockups with live screens and LED wallsDesign & engineering · Built the scenes, surface mappings and inline editorView project →Digital patternsGenerative poster system for an events programmeDesign & engineering · Built the pattern engine, editor and exportView project →Three.js worksInteractive studies in 3D, shaders, sound and motionDesign & engineering · Built the scenes and interactionsOpen interactive gallery →Tau Ceti IVFan-made map explorer for MarathonDesign & engineering · Built the 3D explorer, squad sim and soundtrackRead case study →RaceMakeLive telemetry and analysis for sim racersInterim technical lead · Led architecture, team and deliveryView project →PatriannaGames for a social-casino platformStudio leadership · Hired the team and shipped five games to 1M playersView project →ctxdcInteractive context-engineering courseDesign & engineering · Built the course site and simulationView project →Helix.aiResearch website for an AI labDesign & frontend · Built the public research siteView project →“Doug was incredible to work with. He operated quickly & efficiently, and even proposed ways to improve the feature to exceed our expectations. 10/10!”
Allison NultyHead of Product @ ContraContra ↗“Smart, fast, and trustworthy.”