A year ago, I hadn't written code in 25 years.
Today, I'm shipping software faster than I ever did when coding was my full-time job as a technical co-founder.
Looking back on 2025, I keep returning to one moment: a transatlantic flight where my Claude Code swarm built what would have taken a team 18 developer-days in 6 hours.
That flight forced me to confront something I'd been circling for months: I wasn't coding anymore. I was conducting.
The shift sounds semantic. It isn't.
Coding means writing every line. Conducting means orchestrating agents who plan, build, test, review, and deploy—often going beyond what you explicitly asked for. I've watched them debate approaches among themselves. Implement performance optimizations I hadn't considered. Even leave judgmental comments about code they found elsewhere that "could use improvement."
This is the concept of synthetic leverage that I have been exploring all year. The ability to multiply output without multiplying people.
But here's what took me longer to learn: synthetic leverage requires trust.
We're not quite ready to let agents write all the code, even though they are getting better and better... moving from raw interns to more seasoned developers.
It's because of this that I am now treating agents more as teammates. And the same principles I used to manage human teams apply. Clear context upfront—vision docs, architecture specs, EPICS, etc. Delegation with guardrails, not micromanagement. Regular audits to understand not just what they built, but why. And feedback loops that make the next sprint better than the last.
The agents who've absorbed my coding philosophy through documentation? They make better decisions and gain more autonomy.
The implications are profound:
For founders: A single person can now build and ship rich prototypes in weeks. The barriers to entry have collapsed.
For CEOs with large dev teams: The modern moat is a unique understanding of a problem domain and unmatched execution velocity. You don't get that from just adding more humans.
I've spent my career leading companies from $5M to $500M in ARR, at times, leading thousands of employees. I thought I understood leverage. I didn't. Not like this.
The uncomfortable truth? This isn't about the tools. It's about letting go. Letting agents review each other's work. Letting swarms find solutions you'd never consider. Trusting workflows to enforce standards you might skip.
After a year of building this way, I'm convinced we're witnessing a fundamental shift in how software gets made—and who gets to make it.
The question isn't whether AI will reshape your business. It's about whether you're ready to lead that AI-powered transformational change.
Thanks to the thrilling experience of building again, I know I am back solidly in founder mode ... so stay tuned for an exciting 2026 ... new things are coming!
Carpe Agentem. 🎼
#AgenticDevelopment #AI #StartupLife #SyntheticLeverage #ImageByNanoBanana
Mark Ruddock
Thoughts of an internationally experienced growth stage CEO and Board Member.
Thoughts of an internationally experienced growth stage CEO and Board Member
Mark Ruddock
Thoughts of an internationally experienced growth stage CEO and Board Member.
Experienced international CEO with three exits and over 20 years of experience at the helm of VC-backed technology and fintech startups. I've founded companies and come in as a later-stage CEO to help existing companies scale. My experience spans multi-country online financial services, mission-critical enterprise software and consumer-focused mobile applications.
Currently CEO of Kontent.ai, the industry's first CMS with native AI capabilities, kontent.ai helps the world's leading organizations generate an unparalleled return on their content by enabling them to create, manage, distribute, and optimize their content at scale with unprecedented speed oversight, and security.
Before that, I was CEO of Nuula (formerly known as BFS Capital), which Nav acquired. At Nuula, we believed there was a better way to help run your small business — so we built it. Nuula is a mobile application that gives small business owners instant access to critical business metrics and innovative financial products anytime, anywhere. It provides small business owners with the tools, content, and capital they need to be successful in a modern, competitive market.
Prior to that interim CEO of 4finance. Agreed to take on an interim role to help clarify strategy, accelerate the critical transformation of the business and set the company on a course for the next growth phase.
Before that, I was Managing Director, International at Wonga, responsible for overseeing all businesses outside of the UK, including consumer lending businesses in Canada, Spain, Poland and South Africa and our eCommerce and product financing business BillPay in Germany. Prior to that was CEO of Wonga Canada.
Prior to that, I was EO Viigo. When Viigo was acquired by Blackberry in 2010, the company had hundreds of partners, won numerous awards, including “PC Magazine’s Editors Choice“, the “Most Promising New Company of the Year” from the CNMA, and the “Wireless Leadership Award” from RIM, signed marquee enterprise customers such as Oppenheimer, UBS, BAT and Scotts and been downloaded over 3MM times, becoming one of the most popular BlackBerry apps of all time.
I started my career as the Founder and CEO of INEA. A software company that was a strategic partner to many of the world's leading financial institutions, INEA had deployments in over 44 countries. Backed by RBC, Ventures West, APAX and Edgestone, the company was acquired in June 2005 by Cartesis. Cartesis was subsequently acquired by Business Objects in 2007, which was later acquired by SAP.
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