My first exposure to coding was when I was only 11, I was invited to take a course at a local university. I learned Logo, a scripting language that might date me a bit, but it was the first time I saw how you could control a machine with logic. That early experience stuck with me, though I didn’t have much exposure to computers again until high school when I took computer science classes and learned Pascal.

What really drew me in was how natural it felt—it never seemed like work, just fun. Looking back, I think my early love of Lego played a big part in that. The way I approach software engineering is similar: It’s about deconstructing things to understand how they work, and then using those pieces to build something new and interesting. That fundamental connection between logical thinking and creative building led me straight into a computing degree after high school.

Throughout my career, I’ve always gravitated toward smaller companies where there’s more opportunity to take ownership, wear multiple hats, and really make a difference. But while I had worked for smaller businesses, I’d never experienced a true technology startup environment with the opportunity for rapid growth and potential for major impact. Hook offered exactly what I was looking for—a chance to be part of that accelerated journey.

Two things specifically stood out about Hook. First, reading about their mission to solve complex customer engagement challenges, I immediately saw the massive potential. There was nothing on the market like this. The ability to have a real impact on a company’s annual recurring revenue isn’t just a promise at Hook—it’s something we’re actually achieving. Second, and equally important, was the culture. During the interview process, I discovered that Hook’s advertised culture wasn’t just marketing—it was deeply embedded in the company’s DNA. Meeting various team members confirmed this was a place where ambition meets collaboration, with talented people working together toward common goals.

From an engineering perspective, we take in all the data we can from our customers—product usage data, CRM data, and various other sources that might point us in the right direction. We feed it through a robust pipeline to get the data into a standardized format, which enables our data science team to build custom models for every customer. These models predict revenue churn, upsell potential, and various other key metrics.

What makes this especially powerful and exciting is how quickly we can see the impact of our work. There’s an immediate feedback loop where those in touch with customers let us know straight away how people respond to new product developments. This visibility is reinforced through our weekly full team updates every Friday, where we can see the direct impact of our work and celebrate wins while staying informed about what everyone else is working on. It really makes you feel like everyone is on the same team when you have that kind of insight into what everyone’s doing.

The most interesting challenge is also a big positive, which is the sheer dynamism of our environment—no two days are the same. We’re constantly moving from one intricate problem to the next, which can be demanding but also incredibly engaging. The real challenge isn’t any specific technical issue, but rather maintaining clarity and focus amid this rapid pace of change.

I’ve found that the key is keeping a calm, clear head about things, so that you can think about the next step rather than trying to imagine the whole problem in your head at once.

Our approach to AI might not be as glamorous as some might imagine, but it’s incredibly practical and impactful. A significant part of our work focuses on productionizing AI models in a scalable way. This means developing robust data pipelines that can handle rapid customer growth while maintaining data quality—even when we don’t control the source data.

Right now Hook is focused on quantitative data to build predictions, but we’ve recognized the value of qualitative data as well. This represents a whole new pipeline of data that we need to figure out how to productionize and feed into LLMs to get deeper insights into how customers are doing.

We’re often actively involved in the sales process, advising during technical check-ins with potential customers to ensure they have the kind of data that Hook can actually use. We also collaborate very closely with the customer team, especially during onboarding, because the engineering team is involved in setting up data pipelines for customers. This involves a lot of interaction with the customer team and, through them, with the customers themselves.

We also work quite closely with the data science team. While data science and engineering are seen as one team within Hook, there’s definitely clear ownership—data scientists work on building models, and we help them figure out issues with the code infrastructure around their models, as well as helping to productionize them.

The first word is ambitious. I’ve mentioned this a few times already, but it does permeate the culture of Hook. Everyone is ambitious, and as a company, the goals we’re trying to achieve are lofty themselves. We wouldn’t be making headway if everyone didn’t embrace that.

The second word is collaborative. It speaks for itself, but there is a sense that everyone is on the same team and trying to collaborate for all of us to be successful.

The third word took me a while to pinpoint. I had this idea that we do things to a very high level of execution, and the word “rigorous” came to mind, but it didn’t quite fit. The word that eventually felt right was “caring.” This covers several aspects of what it’s like at Hook. Everyone cares about what they’re doing, and that’s evident in our high level of execution. We care about each other too—Hook is a very warm place, and I really like everyone I work with, which isn’t always a given.

I think the key thing is to maintain a growth mindset. Things move so quickly and there are often new challenges that just push you outside of your comfort zone. If you don’t have a growth mindset, it’s going to be like a soul-destroying experience, but if you embrace it as an opportunity to learn and grow, there’s just so much you can do at a startup and so much potential to grow.

Startups are also the kind of place where you can’t really just stay in your lane. There are going to be some gaps in processes and roles within the company, and if that’s something that you identify, you kind of have to lean into that and fill some of those yourself. That, for me, has always been the appeal of places like this.

There are several features coming down the pipeline that are game-changers. One of them is the rules engine, which is basically a way to construct a set of logic to trigger certain actions out of Hook. Hook is a great place for centrally storing and displaying metrics that a lot of our customers just don’t have access to anywhere else in one place. Combining that with our predictive scoring to trigger automation outside of Hook is something we already do, but it’s currently a very manual process where we build it for the customer. This new engine would be a place where customers can build any set of rules they like and trigger automated actions outside of Hook.

Another exciting feature is measuring when and how Hook makes suggested actions for our customers. If we can start granularly pinning why those suggested actions took place, if they did take place, and how effective they were, I think that would enrich what Hook offers as a product.

I mentioned it before, but incorporating LLMs to look at more qualitative data is also really exciting. Hook is really figuring out how we can use AI and LLMs to put real value in our customers’ hands.

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To learn more about Hook and explore career opportunities, visit their website and check out their careers page.