It’s been 10 months since I’ve updated my blog and it’s not been for lack of want – for a lot of this time I was working for a startup in “stealth mode” – meaning there wasn’t a lot that I could talk about.

That startup was Sum (formerly Project Florida), which was a very ambitious startup focused on creating a meaningful purpose from wearable data – attempting to transform the way we think of our health from the reactive to the preventive.

Our hand was forced into creating our own wearable hardware as the existing wearable devices on the market didn’t have (and still don’t) have the accurate and rich data that we required.

It’s not called easy ware! It is incredibly difficult to make something beautiful, functional and revolutionary within a quick timeframe. We definitely had the design right, it was simply stunning.
We had some big challenges along the way – getting the interface to work in a natural way was something which frustrated for a while, but the product and hardware engineers iterated at this until it was intuitive.
Similarly the accuracy of data capture from the device posed some hurdles, leading the entire company to rally around to take the accuracy to market leading levels in just a few weeks, which was a huge confidence booster reaffirming the capability of our amazing team.

Unfortunately just as it seemed we were on the home stretch, planning the run up to launch, the backers opted to pull back meaning Sum had to close its doors.
The suddenness of the closing was a total shock – one week I had my six month review, the next I was job hunting.

Being in the US on an work visa (o1a) this meant a scramble to find a new job and have the visa transfer applied for before my employment status at Sum expired. This led to a frankly ridiculous interview schedule where I had 12 phone interviews in 1 week and then a further 8 face to face interviews the following week (including a 36 hour trip to San Francisco). I talked to many amazing companies and was fortunate to receive a number of really exciting offers.

I duly accepted one! News on that soon – I can’t wait to start – am currently awaiting USCIS approval for my visa migration and will spend the meantime trying to reinvigorate my blog – expect some forthcoming posts related to some of my recent work on system security.