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Clarity

Adam Nelson

Nairobi, Kenya

Experienced startup CTO originally from New York and now in Kenya with extensive knowledge around Internet application architecture, hiring, management, as well as product design methods.

I can discuss best practices from a technology and product development perspective both and am well versed in the East African technology industry.

$2.00/min

1 Call

14 Reviews

30 minutes
Avg. call

Start-ups Software Development Linux Python Programming Python Django Technology Management MySQL Ubuntu S3

Call me to talk about

Website Architecture

I have architected numerous sites at scale, most recently using Amazon Web Services.

Kenyan Technology

Kenya is primed for growth in all sectors over the next few years, especially in the consumer and business technology sectors.

Technology Management

I have managed developer and systems teams from 1 to 12 in many diverse circumstances - mostly in startups or startups within enterprises.

Answers 0
Reviews 14

Answers

Reviews

Adam was great to talk to and very informative. He assisted me with some questions and concerns, as well as helped me mentally to get to the next step. I will definitely be checking in with him again as my project progresses.

Mike Rucker Source: Clarity

Adam scaled our technology and engineering team for the first 2+ years of Yipit. Adam took Yipit from prototype stage to a fully scalable, distributed system and our team from 1 engineer to 13.

Some of Adam's many contributions while CTO of Yipit include:
- Mentored several junior developers into highly performing senior engineers
- Held monthly Django meetups with over 100 developers each in order to expand our brand as an engineering organization in the community
- Leveraged open source communities, especially international open source communities, to recruit contributors to and authors of Python frameworks
- Built an internal technology curriculum to share knowledge and improve the experience of every Yipit engineer

I would highly recommend Adam to any organization as he has the entrepreneurial flexibility to build systems and teams from scratch, as well as the experience with process and scalability to lead much larger technology teams.

James Moran Source: LinkedIn

Adam, as CTO of Yipit, was instrumental in transitioning the company from a 2 person startup to a 20+ well-oiled tech machine. Not not only did he do an amazing job of mentoring our young developers but he was also able to effectively leverage third party open source talent to meet company goals.

Adam also intelligently pushed us to use third-party tools like Amazon Web Services to allow Yipit to keep up with our growth without needing to build a large infrastructure team.

Vinicius Vacanti Source: LinkedIn

Adam is not only highly knowledgeable but also thoughtful, patient and extremely helpful. As a non-technical employee in a technology focused startup, I benefited greatly from Adam's guidance, specifically with regard to our public API. Adam is a pleasure to work with and an absolute professional.

private private Source: LinkedIn

As CTO of Yipit, Adam focused a lot on improving the quality of the stack, including constantly emphasizing coding best practices as well as immediately handling bugs and taking care of technical debt. He was very invested in the personal and intellectual growth of his developer team. He regularly paired with us on tickets, did regular code reviews and often encouraged us to explore mature third-party libraries and contribute to open-source projects as a way of improving.

Suneel Chakravorty Source: LinkedIn

At Yipit I am the only engineer who works full time on our backend systems. Yipit is my first job where I was given such a large degree of responsibility and leeway with decisions regarding the future of our web site. Naturally, this put a lot of stress on me to perform. Being able to work with Adam was an amazing opportunity because it allowed me to dig in to interesting problems while having a knowledgeable supervisor who was able to give me advice from a different perspective, and provide me with technical expertise in areas I was unfamiliar with.

This pair allowed us to create what I believe to be one the best infrastructures I have heard of at a startup of Yipit's size. We created advanced networks on AWS combining a majority of their hosted services, built advanced automation recipes using Chef, all while managing to scale the website through the largest period of growth in the history of the company.

Adam was instrumental in getting me through some of our tougher problems as he had experiences analogous situations previously . He was able to advise me on the most feasible ways to create backups while avoiding the perils data bloat and stale data. When working on new an exciting features he managed to interject and make sure that operations mainstays like logging, monitoring, and alerting did not get left by the wayside. Working with Adam really allowed me to mature as a developer and as a systems administrator so that I can work with the challenges that will be facing Yipit in the future.

Andrew Gross Source: LinkedIn

As a Developer at Yipit, I've had the privilege to work with Adam for over a year. Adam is a great manager and CTO, and works very closely with developers, whether it be pair-programming or discussing new ideas. Adam comes up with creative insights and ideas that often make others view the problem differently - an important capability of any team. Adam has the ability to create a nurturing team-oriented work culture, which encourages developers to take initiative and allows their creativity to thrive.

Henry Xie Source: LinkedIn

I had the pleasure of working as a developer in Adam's team over the past two years. Adam is an extremely detail oriented manager who has a keen sense of technical architecture and system design and always had very great feedback to give my fellow coders and I. He is patient and articulate when communicating with the team and is very effective at meeting deadlines and getting things done. He is a positive and diligent leader and I have personally learnt a lot under his mentorship.

Nitya Oberoi Source: LinkedIn

Adam and I worked together at Yipit from November 2011 to September 2012. During that time, Adam built a formidable team of software engineers around him by developing successful strategies for identifying, evaluating, and closing candidates. He remarkably had an almost 100% acceptance rate on offers he extended to engineers who in most cases had competing offers from top tech companies and startups. Every engineer at Yipit views him as a true leader who can scale a company like few others while still maintaining a tight-knit culture. I hope our paths cross again in the future because I have no doubt that Adam will build and lead teams of technology professionals for top companies.

Joseph Johnson Source: LinkedIn

Adam was a pleasure to work for. He was extremely knowledgable and helpful with all technological aspects of the office.

Kelly Byrne Source: LinkedIn

Adam is a very effective CTO. He has an tech antennae -- somehow has a sense of what emerging technologies should be embraced. He also has a great sense of talented people. The team he assembled was one of the most talented and effective tech teams I've worked with. Their execution was impeccable -- we got a lot of moderate size project done for a small team. Adam will argue his point of view until reason prevails. Many good ideas are flushed out this way -- as well a couple of laughs. He's very hands-on and savvy with the technology -- not afraid to jump into systems or code and shake things up. That's a rare quality in a technology executive.

Anthony Ina Source: LinkedIn

Member since December 2012