Notes from the field
Every organisation tells itself a story
The story a company tells about itself shapes which facts get repeated and which get quietly dropped. It's worth examining as closely as the numbers.
Read article →Independent technology advisor
Technology judgement for high-stakes decisions.
I help founders, investors, boards, and technology leaders make better technology decisions — and write about what decades of doing this has taught me.
Not because I have all the answers. Because I ask better questions.
Independent, not a consultancy
25+ years of technology judgement
Track record
Twenty-five years in the room where the hard decisions get made.
Not client logos. Just the honest shape of the experience behind the judgement.
Thinking
A notebook, not a blog.
Patterns, questions, and stories from decades of helping organisations make difficult technology decisions. No SEO, no publishing schedule — just ideas worth sitting with.
Scaling & legacy
Three fracture planes for safer legacy migration
A framework for founders and CTOs deciding how much of the platform to rebuild — and how much to leave alone until it actually matters.
Read article →Notes from the field
Why architecture diagrams lie
A diagram is a hypothesis about a system, not a description of it. Treat it as one and it stops lying to you.
Read article →Written in public
I'm writing The Good Consultant.
A book about the craft of technology judgement — principles, approaches, and stories, written chapter by chapter, in public. Not a technical manual. Every chapter follows the same rhythm: story, observation, principle, approach, reflection.
A few chapters, in progress
- On Joining
- Fire SeekingEarly draft
- Meet Them Where They AreEarly draft
- Kind Isn't the Same as GoodEarly draft
Relationships
Not a service list. A set of relationships.
Founder Advisor
A trusted sounding board for founders navigating difficult technology decisions — growth, engineering leadership, AI, investment readiness, and organisational change.
Board & Non-Executive Advisor
An independent technology voice around the board table, helping directors understand technology risk, AI, engineering capability, and strategic investment without becoming technology specialists themselves.
Venture Capital Advisor
Supporting investors with independent technical judgement before and after investment — technical risk, engineering leadership, and long-term technology confidence.
Executive Thinking Partner
A confidential relationship for CTOs and technology leaders. Not coaching. Not consulting. A trusted place to explore difficult decisions before making them.
Speaking & Writing
Sharing ideas that help technology leaders improve judgement.
About
Curious enough to keep learning. Experienced enough to say what I actually think.
I'm Dave Sammut. For twenty-five years I've been the person brought in when a system, a team, or a decision needs to be understood properly before anyone commits real money to it.
I'm drawn to the moment before a decision is made — where a founder is choosing an architecture, an investor is trying to understand technical risk, or a CTO is working out whether the plan will actually survive contact with scale. My job is to make that moment clearer, not longer.
I don't think my value is in having all the answers. It's in asking the question nobody else in the room has thought to ask yet — and trusting that a clearer question is usually worth more than a confident one.
I still spend time with the code, the architecture and the people building it. It keeps me connected to reality and makes for better conversations in the boardroom.
That same curiosity is what's behind the book I'm writing — an attempt to write down the judgement itself, not just the war stories.
Start a conversation
Let's think it through.
Founder advisory, board and NED conversations, venture capital due diligence, and executive thinking partnerships — for leaders navigating an important technology decision.