Benson

The one-man band

On 20 September 2026, the Vouchernaut repository was an empty starter. Twenty-two days later, on 12 October, vouchernaut.com had fifteen live products on it, from checked codes for 995 UK shops to a platform for brands with its own Shopify app. Behind them were 772 commits and about 530,000 lines of code, 145,000 of them tests.

I did every job myself: product, design, engineering, operations and selling. Agents did most of the typing while I wrote the specs, made the calls and checked the work. This is how that went, and why I came back to a site I started ten Black Fridays ago. There's a longer version too, with every feature and decision in it: the 40-page case study as a PDF.

Benson is back

On 24 September 2026, the Benson repository was an empty Turborepo starter. Ten days later, on 4 October, I relaunched Benson at trybenson.com with a Shopify app, a WooCommerce plugin, a dashboard, a marketing site, a press release and a series of explainer films behind it. By the end of the second week, the repository held 836 commits, 44 product specs and about 655,000 lines of TypeScript, with 785 test files among them.

The original roadmap for the same scope estimated 14 to 18 weeks. I built it with a team of AI agents doing most of the typing while I did the deciding.

Benson is still a work in progress. It's also the piece of work I'm proudest of, because it's the first time I haven't had to cut an idea down to fit the hours I had.

From a napkin sketch to a year of full tables

In November 2024, Dinners With Friends was a revived idea and a napkin sketch. By the start of September 2026, it had welcomed more than 500 guests across 50 dinners. Dates were routinely selling out six to eight weeks ahead, and nearly all of the remaining 2026 calendar was booked.

Pamela Silkstone first ran the concept twenty years earlier: put people who have never met around one table, give them a host, and make the first conversation easier. I took the relaunch from idea to first version, first paying customers and a business with more demand than seats. Along the way I built the brand, website, booking system, internal tools, mobile app and the search programme that now brings new people in.

The search programme delivered 5,530 Google clicks in June–August 2026, up 66.1% on the previous three months, alongside 381,345 search impressions. Building and maintaining a library of local guides gave the business a way to be discovered by people looking for food, activities and places to meet across Exeter and Devon.