Case Study
The Dots
Three years as fractional CTO for The Dots, a professional network for the creative industries. I led the replatforming that helped it grow to 750k+ users.
- Role
- Fractional CTO
- Duration
- 3 years
- Scope
- API, Web & Mobile
- Team
- Lead for 10-person product team
Forbes called The Dots “the LinkedIn for Creatives” — a professional network where members build a profile, post projects, browse jobs, attend events, and turn to the community for feedback, collaborators, and advice. Underneath it all sat an inherited legacy codebase that would sink the business without a drastic overhaul.
Over those three years I rearchitected the platform from the ground up, hired and led the 10-person product team, and shipped an API-first rebuild spanning web and iOS.
My responsibilities were broader than design and engineering. I led the company’s GDPR and privacy work when the regulation was new, introduced the OKR framework, interviewed incoming hires, advised on organisational design, and sat in the room when the company met Atomico and other prominent investors to raise capital. The relaunch carried the business from the UK across the EU and into the US, grew its users tenfold, and earned eight features from Apple.
The Dots was struggling to operate and grow. Its codebase had been inherited from a previous business in Australia, and the offshore team maintaining it was fighting to keep things running. Without a complete rebuild, the business was going to fail.
I joined as fractional CTO to fix that. My scope was to rebuild the platform from the ground up, hire an engineering team, and get The Dots to a place where it could scale.
The remit ran wider than the rebuild. GDPR arrived during my tenure, and I led the company’s compliance and privacy work when the regulation was new territory for everyone. I introduced OKRs and led that process, interviewed and selected incoming hires, advised on organisational design, and sat in the room when the company met Atomico to raise capital.
Scaling
The startup raised a venture capital round led by Hambro Perks. With stakeholder backing and a clear mandate, I began rearchitecting the database and back-end services from scratch. The new platform had to support a growing feature set and integrate cleanly with external systems.
I built the technical foundation that everything else would sit on, then hired engineers to help the business execute at speed.
Technology
A core goal from the outset was reaching a larger audience through mobile apps. The legacy system made this impossible. It restricted how data could flow between the database and users. I took an API-first approach on stress-tested frameworks, so one set of services could power the website, the iOS app, and future client-side applications.
I established a shared, open-standards specification to avoid thrash between the engineering teams. This helped the team ship faster and land features on every platform at once.
One of the hardest parts of any replatforming is porting existing data. Years of accumulated user data had to move from a monolithic, outdated system into the new architecture. Every legacy data structure was remapped to the new schema.
Design
With an expanded suite of products (web, iOS), it became critical to unify the experience. Whether you were on the website or a mobile app, you needed to know you were on The Dots.
The design language was clean and modern. Professional without losing the creative edge its audience expected. And a design token system kept colours, typography, spacing, and component behaviour consistent across every platform.
Mobile
The web and mobile clients were built with React and React Native, sharing common components and a large part of the codebase between platforms. As a result, engineers could move quickly, and the experience stayed consistent wherever members used it.
Impact
The relaunch itself was the proof. The new platform went live in front of a room full of the people it was built for, and sign-ups flooded in.
Membership grew from around 60,000 when I joined to over half a million by the end of my tenure, and stands at more than 750,000 now. A codebase that had been the business’s biggest liability became its engine — the foundation under every market The Dots entered and every feature the new team shipped.
- 10×
- user growth since relaunch
- 8
- features by Apple
Testimonial
“I’d absolutely recommend Josh. He is brilliant at being helicoptered into a problem and working alongside a founder. He challenges in the right way.”
Pip Jamieson
Founder and CEO, The Dots
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