GreyKernel — founder and CTO
2015 · Founder and CTO chapter
I co-founded GreyKernel and led technology for six years, building immersive products and games alongside client work for companies including JPMorgan Chase and Anglian Water.
From game systems to a multidisciplinary product studio.
Building a company across products and client systems
I co-founded GreyKernel in 2015 and led technology for six years. We worked across immersive learning, enterprise XR, games, simulation, robotics, and physical training systems. The visible output changed from project to project, but the underlying work was consistent: understand the real task, choose the right form of interaction, and build the systems around the experience that made it usable.
As CTO, I worked across product definition, systems architecture, technical delivery, and the decisions needed to connect software with content, production teams, and specialist hardware. The role was not limited to writing code, and it did not remove me from implementation. It required moving between the prototype, the delivery plan, and the team responsible for taking it into use.
A portfolio with different operating requirements
| Area | What we built | What the product had to account for |
|---|---|---|
| IRA VR | Immersive lessons, virtual labs, learner applications, teacher controls, and assessment | A classroom session involves teachers, students, content, devices, and reporting |
| Enterprise XR | Onboarding, cybersecurity, industrial training, 360° tours, and empathy exercises | The right medium depended on whether someone needed to see a place, practise a procedure, or discuss an experience |
| MysticMojo | Mobile and AR games, including Chhota Bheem Jungle Rescue through Nazara | Controls, feedback, content production, and performance on the devices children used |
| Defense and robotics | Simulation software, physical controls, instructor systems, motion tracking, and robot-control research | Software and hardware had to respond as one training or control system |
The less visible half of an immersive product
The headset or game screen was usually the part people remembered. The harder product work often sat around it. IRA VR needed teacher controls and assessment. Training systems needed instructor setup and evaluation. Location experiences needed production workflows and a clear navigation model. Hardware-based simulation needed sensor input to agree with what the software displayed.
That changed how I thought about immersive technology. Presence was useful only when it supported the task. A realistic environment could still fail if the instructor could not run the session, the participant did not understand the next action, or the system could not recover when a device lost tracking.
My role
I led product and technical work while coordinating with engineers, artists, production teams, and domain specialists. The balance changed with the project. Some needed a product direction and architecture. Others needed a prototype that could answer a specific interaction question. Client systems also required a practical delivery plan that the team could support after the demonstration.
GreyKernel taught me that a founder’s job is partly to keep those layers connected. The technical approach has to fit the user’s task, the team’s capabilities, and the conditions under which the system will run.
What carried forward
The same questions later appeared in design software and applied AI. What does the user need to control? Which decisions must remain stable? What happens after the visible interaction? What does the next person or system need to receive?
GreyKernel is where I learned to treat the experience, the operating workflow, and the delivery system as one product problem.
Related work
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