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GrowthRunner

Analytics auditing in Chrome DevTools

Design & engineering · Built the extension and audit workflow

GrowthRunner is an analytics agency whose specialists check whether client websites record customer activity correctly. The engagement covered designing and building a Chrome DevTools extension that records user journeys, checks tracking events and produces audit evidence, replacing repetitive manual checks with a repeatable workflow.

Built a Chrome DevTools extension that records user flows, watches the dataLayer and flags missing or incorrect tracking.
Delivered the MVP in ten days and the finished build in two weeks.
Reduced the time for ten analytics audits to the time previously needed for one.
Used by GrowthRunner for clients including Wagamama and Net-a-Porter.

#typescript #react #growth #attribution

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Doug Silkstone

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.

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dinnerswithfriends.co.uk

#typescript #react #reactnative #expo #nextjs #hono #postgres #railway #stripe #seo #ai #lifecycle #attribution #growth

Dinners With Friends homepage showing the event-discovery and booking experience — The live product joins discovery, social proof, availability and booking in one path.

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Doug Silkstone

Hogsend

Lifecycle messaging for software teams

Founder & CTO · Built the product, journey engine and cloud platform

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Hogsend lets software teams automate onboarding, customer messaging and retention in TypeScript rather than a visual workflow builder. The founder and CTO role covered the whole product: strategy, design, the journey engine, developer tools, cloud infrastructure and launch.

Built lifecycle marketing as code, with journeys reviewed in pull requests and tested before release.
Shipped the TypeScript development kit, journey engine, automated tests, Studio, command-line tools and MCP tools.
Built journeys that survive restarts, provider failures and releases while running for days or weeks.

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hogsend.com

#typescript #react #nextjs #nodejs #postgres #hatchet #lifecycle #attribution #docker #railway

Doug Silkstone

Dinners With Friends

Hosted dinners that help people make friends

CTO · Built the brand, booking platform, apps and search programme

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Dinners With Friends brings people together to make friends over hosted meals at local venues across South West England. As CTO for the relaunch, the role covered the website, mobile apps, bookings, payments and host tools, alongside the brand, customer acquisition and analytics needed to run the business.

Relaunched a Social for Good concept that seats strangers around one table, first run twenty years ago by Pamela Silkstone.
Took the relaunch from a napkin sketch to an operating events business: brand, digital products, ticketing, operations and acquisition.
Built and ran the web product, the mobile apps and the internal operations platform.

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dinnerswithfriends.co.uk

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

Doug Silkstone•WithSeismic · for Contra

Indy.ai

Freelance opportunity discovery for Contra

Product engineering · Built the extension and discovery pipeline

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Indy.ai is a Chrome extension built for Contra that helps freelancers discover work by finding opportunities in their LinkedIn and X feeds. The engineering engagement through WithSeismic covered the extension and discovery pipeline, connecting browser-based collection with AI analysis to turn social posts into structured job opportunities for Contra's marketplace.

Built Contra's Chrome extension and its browser-based opportunity discovery pipeline.
Acquired 35,000+ users and doubled marketplace inventory.
Reached #1 Product of the Week on Product Hunt.