Ned Lowe is the Chief Technology Officer of MISSION+ a technology-building firm sought out by the likes of Revolut and Draper Startup House.

He's a big believer that building software can be done differently. After 20 years of building solutions for finance and insurance companies, he's now working with MISSION+ to put the patterns and processes he's found to predict success in the hands of founders so their solutions have every opportunity to impact the real world.

👋🏼 How would you explain your job to someone outside tech?

I'm the CTO at MISSION+ where we're trying to support a better technology-backed future.

We do this by empowering the visionaries of today with the freedom to build by collaborating with them on innovation strategy, forming a tech team, and contributing to the building experience – all they need to do is provide the mission.

🧐 What's something about you or your job that would surprise us?

The delta between what's possible in tech and what's brought to market is growing wider daily. After 20 years of building solutions for finance and insurance companies, ​​I've noticed patterns and processes that predict success – I want to put these in the hands of founders so their solutions have every opportunity to succeed in the real world. My mission is to spread the word that building software can be done differently.

More than ever before, we live in a world where ideas can be transformed into working products. Software has not only eaten the world, it's about to take the whole buffet. Innovation and progress surround us, leading to a bewildering array of choice, a cacophony of optionality.

Attempting to tame this storm are the builders: product owners, engineers, entrepreneurs and hackers. Someone needs to guide the builders, and I've been navigating the storm from a variety of perspectives for a long time now. I certainly don't understand everything, but I've learned some of the patterns and can help others on their journey.

🏆 What has been the biggest highlight of your career so far?

Launching the Singlife Account — an insurance product with zero fees, instant liquidity, robust return on policy value and a VISA card for on-the-spot access to policy funds - was hugely rewarding.

It is (to my knowledge) a globally unique product and was put together in under a year by a tightly-knit group of passionate individuals. That experience was a career highlight for me.

That said, I think the best is yet to come. As I have learned more about building product, I have focused my thinking on some relatively simple principles that underpin MISSION+ development:

1. Product comes first

2. Simplify wherever possible

3. Iterate quickly — essential complexity is born out of iterative simplicity.

Sharing this thinking more broadly while working with visionaries and innovators allows me to make more of an impact, and I am sure there will be many more highlights to be proud of in the coming years.

🔍 What's a startup trend or space you're watching this year?‍

Like many others, I was blown away by ChatGPT — the leap in capability versus what I had previously seen was unexpected, and the use cases just immediately tumbled out.

But that is only built on GPT-3.5, so I am keenly watching for GPT -4's release this year. I think this area is going to be hugely disruptive and will create a divide between companies that are taking advantage of the advances and those that don't.

That said, we shouldn't forget the limitations of the models — they are trained on existing data, and so incorrect input will lead to incorrect output. I saw an interesting tweet stating that if you trained ChatGPT on all the data pre-1880, then asked it what causes malaria, the confident response would be "bad air".

Similarly, the image generated by MidJourney for "Afghan woman with green eyes" looks almost identical to the famous National Geographic cover due to the prominence of that image in the training data.

The speed with which these generative models have advanced is breathtaking, and seeing how startups and society utilize and respond to them is going to be thought-provoking and fun.

💼 What advice would you give someone starting out in your industry?

Get a job (or work for an established startup) before doing your own startup. This idea that you should immediately be out hustling or even quitting university is not helpful. If you have an idea for a startup, do it on the side first and build some prototypes. That will give you some early feedback and, therefore, an indication of whether you actually have an idea someone will pay for.

Don't get too attached to a particular technology unless you are literally a world-class expert on it (and are being paid as such). Instead, learn how to pick the best technology for a given problem within given constraints. That will be an ever-shifting answer.

Become a better communicator. Doesn't matter how good or bad you are, get better. Practice. Do public speaking. Write, even if you don't publish your writing. Give a demo of your software to another team. Being able to communicate your ideas is the single biggest force multiplier that is under your own control.

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🗣 What's one thing you can keep talking about for hours?

Pretty much anything as long as the person I'm talking to is passionate. I love speaking to people who share their energy with me. Talking about passion, Mark Cuban said (paraphrasing): "Don't follow your passions, follow what you're good at (and pays), and become passionate about it." I like that.

🎥 What's your favorite movie/TV show?

That's too hard to answer. I will say that I have always enjoyed Star Trek, and I think that as leaders, there are a lot of lessons to be taken from the management styles used by the different Captains.

Kirk is the lead-by-example startup guy but a little impulsive and attention-seeking. He would struggle as the complexity of the role grew. Picard, on the other hand, is a much better delegator but steps into the main role when necessary. I often try to ask myself, "what would Picard do?" when faced with ambiguous situations.

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🍨 What's your go-to ice cream flavor?‍

I don't really have a sweet tooth, but I can eat pizza all day, every day. Therefore I have to go with pizza-flavored ice cream!