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Doug SilkstonePinned

Building products and businesses

I work across strategy, design, engineering, marketing, sales and operations. Over more than a decade, that has included work for Groupon, Vouchercloud, AWIN and The Motley Fool, product engineering for Framer, Contra and STRV, and founding and selling three software businesses of my own.

I’m good at taking a complicated business problem, making the work clear and seeing it through. That can mean deciding what to build, designing the experience, writing the software, finding customers or improving how the business runs. I work with colleagues across those disciplines and take responsibility for the work myself.

In my own businesses, product decisions, customer acquisition, sales, revenue and day-to-day operations have all been my responsibility. I bring that same connected view to client work, from shaping the offer to building the product and measuring whether it works for the business.

withseismic.comLinkedInGitHub
#typescript#rust#cpp#architecture#zerotoone#growth#leadership
The last year on GitHub
@dougwithseismic
AugSepOctNovDecJanFebMarAprMayJunJul
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Doug Silkstone

Patrianna

Games for a social-casino platform

Studio leadership · Hired the team and shipped five games to 1M players

View Patrianna project
  • Built an in-house game studio from zero and shipped five high-stakes React games to 1M players.
  • Hired and led the cross-functional frontend, game-development and QA team.
  • Owned monetisation, retention, experiments and telemetry.
  • Owned product architecture, delivery, team structure and production quality for a top-three social casino.
#typescript#react#nextjs#redux#postgres#datadog#growth#leadership
Doug Silkstone

Reach Robotics

MekaMon AR battle robot

Digital Marketing Manager · Led acquisition, ecommerce and measurement

View Reach Robotics project
  • Led marketing and digital operations for MekaMon, an AR battle robot launched globally in Apple Stores. As Digital Marketing Manager, owned go-to-market strategy and delivery across acquisition, content, ecommerce, customer success and measurement.
  • Managed a £100K paid-marketing budget, alongside social media and influencer campaigns.
  • Led and curated the YouTube influencer campaign, including partnerships with SuperSaf and KhanFlicks, with campaign videos accumulating 750K+ views.
  • Hired and managed the marketing, video-production and customer-support teams, with responsibility for customer success.

Reach Robotics hiring presentation (PDF)MekaMon digital strategy, 2017–18 (PDF)
#gtm#growth#lifecycle#attribution#ecommerce#leadership
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.

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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