What I do
I work with a small number of companies on long-term engagements, alongside founders and teams. Over the last decade, I've focused on advising and building software for companies in the US and UK across product, engineering, architecture, infrastructure and AI.
What I help with
- Technical leadership and architecture
- Full-stack web and mobile development
- AI integration and AI-powered products
- Product management and feature prioritisation
- Infrastructure, security and reliability
- Payments, APIs and third-party integrations
- Marketing technology and analytics
- Technical projects, teams and processes
Selected engagement
One of my current engagements is a US-based language-learning platform with thousands of paying customers and over 500,000 free users, now in its sixth year. I'm the technical partner responsible for its full technology function: web and mobile applications, backend, infrastructure, AI systems, payments, integrations, marketing technology, and analytics.
Past engagements
I've worked with many clients over the years, as technical partner and as developer, shipping production work across dozens of projects, among them Comeet, MyHeritage, and Checkmarx.
A builder, not only an advisor
I'm also a founder. I'm currently building Automette, a document automation platform for generating documents, PDFs, and images from templates through a UI and API. Before that, I founded and ran Finance Train, an education platform for finance professionals, for over thirteen years.
Running my own products keeps my advice honest. I feel the consequences of technical decisions the same way my clients do.
What clients say
Learn Kraft is my no. 1 recommendation for any web development work, globally!
I've been working with Manish for over a year now. We are an exclusive design house and had been working with many developers to execute our projects. That was a big challenge for us. Now all our projects are executed just by Learn Kraft.
Work with me
I prefer working in long engagements and take on two or three clients at a time. Most start with a small assignment: a code review, an audit of your tech stack, or a new feature. From there we decide together whether a longer working relationship makes sense.
If you're a SaaS founder who wants a senior technical partner, or you know someone who does, write to me at manish@learnkraft.com, or you can book a call.
Writing
I write Modern Software, a newsletter for founders and operators who make technology decisions without an engineering background. It covers how modern software actually works: API integrations, technical debt and what it costs, what AI features can and can't do, how to choose between vendors, and other such decisions.
It comes from the same place as my client work: sitting between the business and the technology. Most of the ideas come from client conversations.
Background
After an MBA in finance and systems, I started in 2001 in financial e-learning, grew from content developer to heading a software development centre in Bengaluru, and then spent two years as Director of Solutions at a data analytics consultancy, leading business intelligence implementations and pre-sales. I've worked independently since 2015. I've been involved in the business side of software, including pricing, positioning and economics, from the beginning.
