Mapping the UK's top 200 ecommerce brands

A four-week MVP sprint. An ecommerce benchmarking report with KPIs, screenshots and McKinsey-style commentary on the UK's 200 largest brands.

#ecommerce #growth #nextjs

Doug Silkstonemax•Note

Four weeks from brief to a report clients paid for. The deadline made the product decision for me: anything that couldn't be automated didn't make the cut.

Doug Silkstonemax•Jan 2016 – Nov 2022

Lead Engineer / Founder — Vouchernaut

I built a voucher platform on programmatic SEO and ran it for six years at 90% margins.

I automated offer data for 100,000+ brands into landing pages, which is where nearly all the traffic came from.
250K sessions a month, with no paid spend and no content team.
Around £100K ARR at exit. Sold to private-equity investors in 2021.

#typescript #nextjs #nodejs #puppeteer #postgres #seo #growth #ecommerce #acquired

Doug Silkstonemax•Note

Stack: TypeScript, Next.js, Node.js, Puppeteer, Postgres.

Doug Silkstonemax•Nov 2024 – Present

Technical Founder — Dinners With Friends

I built the product, the operations platform and the acquisition for a social-events business, and then I ran it.

Shipped a mobile app on both the iOS App Store and Google Play, built with Expo, alongside the web product.
Product and ops: ticketing and payments on Stripe Connect, guest messaging, lifecycle email, AI-assisted admin.

…

dinnerswithfriends.co.uk

#typescript #react #reactnative #expo #nextjs #hono #postgres #gcp #stripe #seo #lifecycle #growth

Doug Silkstonemax•Note

Stack: TypeScript, React, React Native, Expo, Next.js, Hono, Postgres, GCP, Stripe Connect.

Doug Silkstonemax•Nov 2022 – Jul 2023

Lead Growth Engineer — Patrianna Ltd

I built an in-house game studio from nothing and shipped five high-stakes React games, scaling to 1M players.

I hired and led the cross-functional team across frontend, game development and QA.
The growth-engineering half was the job: monetisation surfaces, retention mechanics, experimentation, and the telemetry to read all three.
I owned product architecture, delivery, team structure and production quality for a top-three social casino.

#typescript #react #nextjs #redux #postgres #datadog #growth #leadership

Doug Silkstonemax•Note

Stack: TypeScript, React, Next.js, Redux, Postgres, Datadog.

Doug Silkstonemax•Nov 2016 – May 2018

Head of Digital — Reach Robotics

I led go-to-market for an AR battle robot that launched globally in Apple Stores.

I built the ecommerce and marketing stack: acquisition, attribution, lifecycle and checkout.
I hired and ran the team, and owned the commercial numbers for the launch.

#gtm #growth #lifecycle #attribution #ecommerce #leadership

Doug Silkstonemax•Note

Briefing the agencies on the commercial wasn't in the job description, and neither was ending up in it. Look closely enough and I'm in there.