Matt Watson

Full Scale

Helping companies scale with affordable talent in the Philippines. Provided $50M worth of dev services to over 200 clients since 2018.

Our 300+ employees are helping dozens of companies build their software quickly and affordably.

* Philippines based, English fluency is superb!
* Staff augmentation model, our team works directly for you!
* Focused on senior level developers
* No middle man project managers in the way

Founder & CEO

Product Driven

A must read guide for anyone working in tech or startups on how to build teams that think about customers and take ownership of their work.

Author

Full Scale Ventures

Venture Studio creating new SaaS companies

Chief Executive Officer

Startup Hustle

Podcast about entrepreneurship with over 6 million downloads! We interview entrepreneurs and others related to the startup ecosystem.

Podcast Host

At Capacity

The only smart ads platform for home services. We turn search ads off when our customers have full schedules or are "At Capacity". We turn their ads on and advertise special offers when they need more customers.

Founder, CEO, CTO

CAMP Digital

Leading the development and product teams to help take CAMP to the next level. CAMP Digital is the industry leader in digital marketing for home services. We have the unique ability to dynamically change ad campaigns based on the capacity of our customers.

Stackify

Stackify (sold 2021 to Netreo, then to BMC in 2024) provides the ultimate combination of tools for developers to monitor and troubleshoot their applications. We combine application performance monitoring (APM) with server monitoring, app metrics, advanced error tracking, and log management in a single, easy to use platform for developers.

Founder, CEO

VinSolutions

One of two original founders of the company in 2003. Started the company with the simple goal of helping car dealers upload car photos to the internet and syndicate them to internet classified websites. Over many years the product rapidly expanded in to an inventory management, website, CRM, and internet marketing product. VinSolutions became the market leading CRM solutions for car dealers with thousands of customers. I provided most of the product vision for the entire suite of products and as CTO was in charge of all product and software development.

Founder, Chief Technology Officer

Physicians Reference Laboratory

Designed and developed laboratory information systems

Senior Architect & Lead Developer

Ticket Solutions

Designed and developed software for tracking and retailing tickets

Senior Application Developer

Serial Entrepreneur, Startup CTO, Podcaster, Blogger @ VisionaryCTO.com

I’ve spent over 20 years as a founder and CTO, starting in 2003 when I co-founded one of the earliest SaaS companies. We bootstrapped VinSolutions to $35M ARR and sold it for $150M in 2011.

Since then, I’ve built and scaled multiple companies. I’ve led engineering teams through every phase of growth. I’ve also learned firsthand what breaks when leadership, product, and engineering aren’t aligned.

In 2018, I started Full Scale. It began as a way to help myself scale faster with top-tier engineering talent in the Philippines. Today, Full Scale has over 300 developers supporting fast-growing tech companies that need to move efficiently and with clarity.

I recently launched Full Scale Ventures, a venture studio focused on solving real problems for startup founders and engineering leaders. Our first product is EngagePath, a tool designed to help thought leaders identify warm leaders from their followers.

Most recently, I wrote Product Driven, a book for engineering leaders who want to stop playing whack-a-mole with tickets and start building real product momentum. The book is about aligning culture, leadership, and customer focus. Product thinking isn’t just for product managers anymore.

I also host a podcast and write a weekly newsletter focused on the gap between business and engineering and how to close it.

Read the book and subscribe here: https://productdriven.com/connect

Learn more about Full Scale: https://fullscale.io

We started Full Scale to do software development the right way from the Philippines. Our 300+ employees are helping dozens of companies build their software quickly and affordably.

* Philippines based, English fluency is superb!
* Staff augmentation model, our team works directly for you!
* Focused on senior level developers
* No middle man project managers in the way

Stop using JSON to cut your AI bill in half.

At least, that’s the promise of a new data format called Token-Oriented Object Notation (TOON).

If you’ve ever paid attention to token costs in AI, you know how fast they add up.
Every brace, quote, and comma in your JSON counts toward your token limit.
And when you’re passing structured data to an LLM, that bloat adds up fast.

TOON fixes that.

It’s basically the same data, just stripped down to no unnecessary formatting, no extra syntax.
Think of it as JSON without the noise.

Example:

{ "tags": ["jazz", "chill", "lofi"] }

Becomes

tags[3]: jazz,chill,lofi


That’s a 40–60% token reduction, without losing structure or meaning.
In other words, cheaper, faster, leaner AI.

We’ve optimized models. We’ve tuned prompts.
Maybe it’s time we optimized the data itself.

5x Founder & CTO | Author of Product Driven | Bootstrapped to 9-Figure SaaS Exit | CEO of Full Scale | Teaching Product Thinking to Engineering Leaders

A big VC told me this week that one of the top problems they see is this:

Every time a company hires a new CTO, the first thing that new CTO wants to do is rewrite all the software.

My first reaction was, then you’re not hiring CTOs.
You’re hiring senior engineers and architects who happened to get the title.

Because most true CTOs operate at a higher level. They care about customers, outcomes, and leverage, not showing off their preferred tech stack.

But here’s the twist.

Startup CTOs should still be hands-on. They should be close to the code and architecture.

Which means this:
If you hire a startup CTO who isn’t comfortable with your existing stack, you’re basically signing up for a rewrite. Not because the product needs it, but because they do.

And that’s a huge waste of time, money, and momentum.

Code exists to do a job.
The only real question is: Does it do that job?

If the answer is yes, rewriting is ego, not strategy.

The VC told me this problem got so bad at their venture studio that they stopped offering engineering services entirely. Every new CTO wanted to throw away the work and start over. 🤦🏼‍♂️

I’ve seen the same issue for years.

A great startup CTO is rare: product-minded, architecture-strong, and fluent in your stack. 

It's always hard to hire a startup CTO. Don't hire one that wants to start over.

fullscale-io

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Talks about #startups, #entrepreneurship, and #softwaredevelopment

My son wants to be an entrepreneur, but he refuses to do the one thing every entrepreneur must do.

My son is taking entrepreneurship in high school right now. I tried to give him a key lesson today.

Tonight is a big startup event here in Kansas City, and I tried to get him to go.

I even told him I would give him ten dollars for every entrepreneur he talked to.
Two simple questions.
What does your business do.
Why did you start it.

He still did not want to go.

This could have been the easiest five hundred dollars he will ever earn!!!

But here is the real reason I wanted him there.

Entrepreneurship is not about having a cool idea.
It is about people!

You have to know your customers.
You have to find partners.
You have to recruit employees.
You have to learn to sell.

You also have to understand that solving business problems starts with talking to customers.

Building software starts with understanding their pain and what actually matters to them.
You cannot create value in a vacuum.

Unfortunately, that is the part my son hates.
He does not like talking to people.
I could not even bribe him to try!

Will he make it as an entrepreneur??
Maybe. Maybe not.

The entrepreneurs who win are the ones who step out of their comfort zone.
The ones who show up.
The ones who talk to customers.
The ones who talk to people.

And that is a lesson he will learn when he is ready... but not tonight. 🤷🏼‍♂️

You hire smart engineers
You tell them to think like product leaders
Then you get frustrated when they challenge bad ideas, skip pointless meetings, or ask “why” too often

But that’s the whole point.

Real product engineers aren’t quiet.
They don’t just code what’s handed to them.
They think deeply about what they're building—and why it matters.

And if your culture isn’t ready for that, you don’t want product thinkers.
You want quiet executors who won’t rock the boat.

The fix?
Start leading like you actually want the people you hired.

✅ Give context, not control
✅ Share problems, not tasks
✅ Invite pushback, not silence
✅ Reward outcomes, not effort

If you want engineers who think like owners, you have to create a culture that treats them like owners.

Anything less is just lip service.

CTO stands for Chief Today Officer.

Most people picture a CTO as the strategist.
The visionary thinking three years ahead.

And in a large enterprise, that’s true.
You need a Chief Tomorrow Officer to steer the long-term vision.

But in a startup?
You need a Chief Today Officer.

You need someone who wakes up every day and asks:
What needs to ship? What needs to move? What needs to get unstuck right now?

Startups don’t have the luxury of spending all day with their heads in the clouds thinking about a future that may never arrive.

They survive by getting things done TODAY.
By solving the problem in front of them TODAY. 
By creating momentum when everything is uncertain TODAY.

A good CTO still cares about vision.
But they also feel the urgency in their bones.

Because in a startup, tomorrow only matters if you execute and deliver TODAY.

In a startup, CTO stands for Chief Today Officer.

Developers should love legacy code.
Heck, their ultimate job is to create legacy code. 

Startups and greenfield projects sound exciting.
You get to write shiny, modern code from scratch.

But here’s the truth: 90% of startups go out of business.
Their “clean” code never even had time to get messy.

Legacy code means the product was successful.
It means customers cared enough to keep using it.
And most importantly, it means your company is still in business and making money.

Legacy code is what success looks like.

If you’re lucky, your work will become legacy too.
Because something you built endured.

So the next time you open an old codebase, remember:
Legacy code means stability.
It means job security.
It means work-life balance.
It means the startup survived.

The difference between a junior and senior engineer isn’t technical ability.

It’s how they handle ambiguity.

A senior engineer has the experience and confidence to navigate uncertainty. They know how to ask the right questions, clarify the unknowns, and move forward even when things aren’t clear.

Most junior engineers simply don’t know what to do yet. They need direction. And that’s okay.

But the gap isn’t fixed.
A junior engineer who takes ownership, understands the product direction, and seeks clarity instead of waiting for it can close that gap fast.

They might not have the same experience, but with the right environment and the right kind of work, they can still make a massive impact.

The key is putting them on projects with less ambiguity or clear ownership boundaries so they can build confidence through action, not confusion.

Even senior engineers get stuck in environments full of organizational friction, endless dependencies, and unclear priorities.

Experience doesn’t matter much when no one understands the big picture.

Our job as leaders is to drive clarity and remove uncertainty.
If you need help doing that, I wrote a book called Product Driven.
I’ll drop a link in the comments.

Vibe coding works just well enough to fool you.

You give it a prompt.
It builds a decent app.
The UI looks fine. The code runs.
Everything seems okay… until it isn’t.

There’s always something weird—logic errors, data leaks, missing validations.

If you’re a senior dev, you’ll catch it.
You’ve seen enough code to know what “wrong” smells like.
You know when to override the AI and when to trust it.

But if you’re newer?
You assume it’s right—because it runs.

That’s where things get dangerous.

AI is changing the way we build. No question.
But too many companies are cutting junior engineers under the assumption that AI will replace them.

It won’t.

What AI lacks is judgment.
Pattern recognition.
An understanding of what good actually looks like.

And the more we treat AI as a shortcut instead of a collaborator, the more tech debt we’re going to rack up.

Mark my words:
The companies skipping junior talent today will be writing six-figure checks to clean up the mess in two years.

Remote doesn’t work the same because you can’t lock people in a room to figure shit out.

When you’re in an office, it’s easy to throw everyone in a conference room, order pizza, and say:
“We’re not leaving until we make a decision or figure this out.”

Be it a debate about the roadmap, architecture, how to fix a bug, etc. Sometimes you just need collaboration to solve complex problems.

That urgency to collaborate and solve problems is harder to create remotely.

As leaders, sometimes we have to recreate that same intensity on purpose.

That means calling a virtual war (collab) room.
Getting everyone together to talk through things, solve hard problems, and figure shit out.

It still works the same remotely as in person.
We just have to be more deliberate about it.

The only real difference?
You can’t order pizza. 🍕

People ask me how I raised millions of dollars for my startup.

We had a $150M exit and people are curious how we did it.

We tied up our bootstraps and chased customers, not investors.

We did not raise anything.
Nothing.

We gave $0 of that $150M to any institutional investors.

Bootstrapping is the default path for most startups.
It just does not get the press or the glamour.

Today it is even more possible.
AI makes it incredibly fast to build a product.
Global talent makes it affordable to scale.

It has never been a better time to bootstrap a startup.

2015: Copying code from StackOverflow
2025: Vibe coding with AI

Different decade. Same problem.

The real question isn’t where the code came from.
It’s whether they can explain what it does.

A real software engineer can.
A basic coder can’t.

AI has created a new kind of engineering paradox.

Some less-experienced engineers have mastered AI tools and can “vibe code” their way to fast results. On the surface, it looks like the productivity every company wants.

Meanwhile, some senior engineers have not fully embraced these tools yet, even though they could benefit the most.

But here is the catch:

The people vibe-coding their way through tasks are also the ones most likely to ship code they do not fully understand. And when that code breaks in production, they are stuck.

That is the paradox:
AI makes it easy to write code fast, but even easier to get in trouble if you do not understand it.

It is just like aviation.
Pilots rely heavily on autopilot, but they still train for years because when the system fails, real skill matters.

A lot of people who vibe-code into engineering roles got into tech for the paycheck, not the craft. And when you treat engineering as a shortcut rather than a discipline, AI becomes a crutch instead of a multiplier.

Personally, I want engineers at heart flying my plane and shipping our software.

Most basic software engineering tasks now take five minutes.

That is the part people still underestimate about AI.

Give a simple task to an AI agent. Something with clear requirements and a defined outcome. It can generate the code from a single prompt. It works for a few minutes behind the scenes and the result is usually usable right away.

So the engineer’s job changes.
They spend less time writing code and far more time evaluating it, testing it, and making sure it actually solves the problem.

And this is where teams fall behind.

If engineers finish work in minutes but your process only gives them new tasks once a day in standup, you create a bottleneck. The work moves at the speed of AI, but your coordination still moves at the speed of meetings.

The answer is not more tasks.
It is a different level of work.

Engineers need a deeper understanding of the product. They need context that helps them make decisions without waiting for the next assignment. They need the big picture so they can guide where the solution should go instead of simply completing the next item in the queue.

AI accelerates execution.
It does not accelerate understanding.

The engineers who thrive will be the ones who think like product owners. Not because it sounds good, but because it is the only way to keep pace when the code itself takes five minutes.

When a company raises $25M in a Series A, my first thought is always WTF for?!?!

Do they plan to lose $5M a year for the next 5 years? $8M for 3 years?

As someone who bootstrapped a company to $35M in annual revenue, I will never understand this.

What do they spend all this money on?!?

AI doesn’t make software engineers go 10x faster.

Vision, focus, and clarity of the work do.

How can you go 10x faster if you don’t even know what you’re building or why?
You can’t navigate uncertainty 10x faster with AI alone.

That’s what nobody understands.

I could write code 10x faster across my career because I knew what needed to be built, why, and how to build it.
There was no organizational friction. No endless consensus.

Vision, focus, and clarity will always be the limiting factor.

Your team needs ownership of their work and the direction of it to truly go 10x faster, with or without AI.

The average time-to-hire for a senior developer is 90 days.

That’s three months of interviews, background checks, and onboarding… before a single line of code gets written.

So if you start hiring in January, your new devs don’t start shipping until April.

That’s *one quarter of your year gone* before your roadmap even moves.

We see it every year at Full Scale.

Some CTOs start planning in November or December.

Others wait until “after the holidays.”

The difference isn’t subtle.

The early planners are reviewing candidates before Christmas.

Their new developers are sprinting by the first week of January.

By February, they’re shipping features while everyone else is still waiting for résumés.

That’s the real ROI of early capacity planning — you buy time that can’t be recovered later.

Last week at a funding conference I kept hearing the same thing.
VCs want seven or eight months of revenue before they even care.

Most founders get stuck right there.
Too early for institutional funding and not enough traction to get it.

I lived that gap.
I worked full-time during the day and built my startup every night and weekend until we had enough revenue to stand on our own.
It took eighteen months before I could quit my job.

And here’s the truth.
We never raised a dollar from VCs.
We didn’t need to because of those eighteen months of grind.

If you’re in that same gap today, keep going.
Traction will open the doors that funding won’t.

I just vibe-coded myself straight into the exact mess every engineer tries to avoid… but absolutely can’t.

I’ve been building internal tools with Claude Code at breakneck speed.

It’s insane how fast you can move.

But as I keep iterating, tweaking, regenerating, and “just trying one more thing,” the codebase keeps expanding.

And now?

It’s a disaster.

⚡ Disorganized files
⚡ Duplicate logic
⚡ Dead code everywhere
⚡ Functions doing whatever they want
⚡ Full spaghetti-mode

I’m an engineer. I should know better, right?

But when you’re flying, you’re not thinking architecture. You’re just shipping and stacking the mess higher and higher.

I cooked this spaghetti… and now I’m cooked. 🍝🔥

The only real way to avoid this? Clean as you cook.
Otherwise you end up with spaghetti code and no fork big enough to untangle it.

"Don't hire a software engineer, use AI instead!" is terrible advice.

Non-technical people usually aren’t good at explaining what they really need.

They are experts in their craft. They just want help solving real business problems.

What they actually need is someone who can read between the lines.

Someone who understands users, constraints, architecture, systems, tradeoffs, and risk.

Someone who can turn vague ideas into real products.

Handing them AI and saying “figure it out” is like telling a CEO to replace their CMO or CFO with AI.

Sure, AI can help. Sure, it can generate a prototype.
But expertise still matters. A lot.

A CEO can make a basic financial model in Excel.
A founder can sketch a marketing plan in a Google Doc.

But no one confuses that with the depth of real professionals.

AI is the same.
It’s a tool.

What people actually want is someone with experience that they can collaborate with.

They don’t want more work. They want real help.

There is only one kind of person who believes Vibe Coding is the future.

It’s the person who hasn’t built an app yet with 10,000 lines of code... and now has to figure out WTF the code actually does.

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