Well, it's the end of another month, and it's time to check in on what the agents collectively have been up to.
TLDR: We have now delivered almost as much software in the past two months as in the prior eight months. And this is not just de novo creation (aka vibe coding), a significant portion is refactoring and extending a complex enterprise-scale LLM Observability app (which is still in stealth). And the pace is only increasing.
So what has caused this spike in productivity?
As I've moved more to swarm-based development, the velocity of what I'm able to produce has increased tremendously. The agents and I have seen a significant increase from approximately $11 million of equivalent developer output (lifetime-to-date) two months ago, to almost $18 million today.
Remembering that we started this journey in late September 2024, it took about eight months to get to $11 million, and only two months to get to $18 million. My estimates put that at 150 person-years of development so far.
Welcome to the economic leverage you can obtain from agent swarms.
This time, in addition to the approach that I've been following for the last few months, I've added a more industry-standard, SCC COCOMO approach as a comparator. This model is more sophisticated than mine and takes into account code complexity, etc.
The SCC COCOMO model, however, estimates a far higher equivalent of $55 million and over 380 person-years of output.
Hmmm ... that seems a bit outlandish ... so I'm going to stick with my more conservative approach for now.
But it just doesn't matter. The economic leverage is clear. The joy of coding again, though, is priceless.
Carpe Agentem
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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