Twenty-five years in software and business

I'm not looking for a job. I'm looking for something worth my next ten years.

Twenty-five years in software and marketing technology, and two years I didn't see coming. This is the honest version of both, and what I'm looking for next.

James Mills smiling at the camera with his son Hudson sitting on his shoulders, on Yarm high street. — Hudson and me, Yarm

Based in Yarm, North East England

What happened

2013–2021

I moved to Dubai with Clicksco and stayed eleven years in the city. I arrived as a senior developer and worked my way up to Head of Technology and then CTO, building the lead generation platforms the business ran on and running the teams that built them.

2021

I left to co-found Successful Media as its CTO, building the technology side of the business from nothing. I'm still its CTO today.

May 2024

Our son Hudson was diagnosed with liver cancer at eighteen months old. We were back in the UK within days. There was no plan, no handover, no gradual wind-down — we packed up eleven years and left.

The two years since

Hospital treatment, surgery, and two house moves, while trying to keep earning. I set up my consultancy, took on client work and delivered it, but I was doing it in the gaps between appointments and on very little sleep.

I'm saying this plainly because it explains the shape of my last two years better than any CV would, and because I'd rather you hear it from me.

Now

Hudson is in remission. Scans and follow-ups continue, and they will for a long time yet — this isn't a thing that finishes, it's a thing you learn to carry.

But I can think past the next appointment now. I'm sleeping, running again, and I've got the appetite back for building something properly rather than just keeping the lights on. That's why this page exists.

What I've built

Twenty-five years of it. I taught myself PHP as a teenager and have been shipping ever since — no computer science degree, just a very long run of building things and finding out what breaks. Almost all of it has been inside businesses rather than at arm's length from them, so I've learned how a company actually runs as well as how to build for one.

Successful Media

CTO and co-founder 2021 to now

An ad tech and lead tracking platform that handles every part of the relationship between publishers and advertisers, with integrations across multiple pixels and ad platforms. The technology is entirely in-house and I've built all of it. We run deliberately slim — two of us, plus a handful of trusted contractors I bring in from my network when a job needs a skill I haven't got. Five years of that has taught me to care about the P&L as much as the codebase, and it changed how I build.

This is the work I'm proudest of. The volume of clicks and leads it moves, and the fraud management sitting underneath that — catching what's fake before it costs anybody money — is the hardest engineering I've done, and it runs every day without me watching it.

Zebby Digital

Founder and consultant 2024 to now

The consultancy my client work runs through. I help businesses work out where a process is costing them time or money, then bring technology in where it actually helps — websites, internal applications, integrations, automation, and architecture reviews for systems that have outgrown themselves. The deeper specialism underneath is advertising technology and performance marketing: campaign automation, server-side conversion tracking and click infrastructure. And increasingly, building AI into products in ways that earn their place rather than being bolted on.

Runway Ads

Built by me Invite only

Enterprise software for launching and managing Facebook campaigns, with AI doing the work that used to eat the day. I built it for myself and I run my own campaigns on it, which is the only real test of a tool like this — it's kept deliberately closed rather than opened up to anyone who signs up.

MediTrak

Built by me Free to use

When your child has been through what ours has, a temperature stops being just a temperature. I built MediTrak because I needed it: log doses and temperature readings in seconds, see a countdown to when the next dose is actually safe, get warned when two medicines share an active ingredient, and watch a fever trend rather than guess at it. Both parents and any carer see the same timeline in real time, with a record of who gave what and when — which matters at four in the morning when neither of you can remember.

This Is Yarm

Designed, built and run by me

This one started because I was looking for something positive to put my hands to, and a way to give something back to the town we'd landed in. It's a directory and community platform for the independent businesses on our high street — listings, a what's-on calendar, reviews and Apple Wallet loyalty cards, with an iOS app alongside it. I built it and I sell it door to door. It has done exactly what I hoped: independent businesses get found, and residents get one place to look. It's also the clearest evidence of how I work — find a real problem, put something live, then keep showing up for it.

Clinical software

Consultancy project through Zebby Digital

Healthcare directory and workflow infrastructure, including integrations with national health systems. Work where the details have consequences and "it mostly works" isn't an answer.

Conversion Hero

CTO and co-founder 2020–2022

Mobile HLR and email validation paired with real-time attribution for Facebook advertising, so advertisers could clean their data and see what was actually driving results. Built and run for around two years.

Clicksco

Senior developer to Head of Technology and CTO 2010–2021

Clicksco was a multi-million dollar marketing services group, founded in 2009 and grown every year I was there — more than two hundred people across fourteen countries, covering digital marketing, web and mobile development, UX, strategy and analysis. I spent eleven years there and moved through most of it: senior developer, then Head of Technology, then a spell as CTO.

Everything we did was lead generation, and I built a lot of what it ran on — high-volume lead platforms, attribution and tracking infrastructure, and the internal tooling the commercial teams used every day. Running lead gen across financial services and a long list of other industries is where a lot of my range comes from: every vertical has its own flow, its own steps, its own definition of a good lead, and none of them transfer cleanly.

Running teams there is also where I found something I didn't expect to care about as much as I do: developing the people in them. It's stayed a genuine interest, and it's part of what I'm looking for in whatever comes next.

I'm a generalist who specialises in everything online. The code is only half of it.

Mostly Laravel these days, with all the supporting technology around it — infrastructure, deploys, integrations, CI, the boring parts nobody volunteers for. Twenty-five years in, I've worked at every layer of the stack, and there isn't much of the online world I haven't built, hosted, integrated or fixed.

The other half is the business itself. I'm at my best sitting with a company, working out how it actually runs rather than how it's meant to, and finding where a process quietly costs time or money — then bringing technology in at the point it helps, or saying so when it won't. Lead generation is where most of that was learned, across financial services, healthcare, retail and a long list besides, but the method travels. Every business has processes, and most of them leak somewhere.

I ship whole products rather than one layer of them, and I'm happiest close enough to the users to hear what's wrong.

Every layer of the build

Brochure sites Web applications iOS apps APIs Third-party integrations AI integration Server-side tracking Attribution and analytics Ad platforms Fraud prevention Databases and queues Infrastructure Hosting DNS and domains Deploys and CI

And how the business runs

Process mapping Workflow design Process automation Operational efficiency Requirements gathering Internal tooling Reporting and analysis Lead generation Sales and conversion Media buying P&L ownership Pricing and margin Client consultation Leading teams Hiring and mentoring

How I work

I'm dyslexic, and it's an advantage here

I don't read a system line by line. I take the whole shape of it in at once — how the parts move, where the pressure is, which bit is actually broken versus which bit is just the loudest. That's how I've always thought, and in this line of work it's turned out to be a strength rather than something to manage around.

It means I'm good at the messy stage: sitting with a business, gathering what's really happening inside a process, and coming back with something that solves the problem underneath rather than the one they described. It also means I know exactly where I'm weaker, and I build around that instead of pretending otherwise.

On AI

The ground has moved further in the last year than in the ten before it, and I've made a point of being in it rather than watching it. I use it daily in how I build — and more usefully, I've been rebuilding other people's processes around it, working out where it genuinely removes work and where it just adds a layer nobody asked for.

Twenty-five years in, that's the part I find most interesting: not the tools themselves, but knowing which problems they're actually the answer to.

My approach

Client-focused consultation

I start by understanding the business and where it actually hurts, before anything gets built. What I deliver is shaped around your objectives rather than my habits.

No-nonsense problem solving

I dig into every part of a project to find the real answer quickly, and I weigh the cost of getting there as I go. Twenty-five years in, I've usually met the failure before.

Transparency and integrity

You'll hear what's working, what isn't and what it will cost, without the padding. You'll always know exactly where a project stands.

A network of trusted partners

Design, ad buying, front end, back end, hosting: if it isn't something I should be doing myself, I know someone good who can. The whole job gets covered either way.

What I'm looking for

Something to get properly stuck into — where I'm close enough to the work to change its direction, and where the thing being built helps somebody.

Building This Is Yarm reminded me how much I like making things that people in a real place actually use, and I want that in whatever comes next. I also want it to be financially serious. I'd rather say up front that it needs to be both than find out six months in that it's only one.

Being straight with you

I'm based in the North East of England. I've spent most of my career working remotely with teams spread across the world, so distance has never been the problem.

My availability is flexible — a single day of consultancy, a few days a week on contract, or a full-time role. Tell me what you need and we'll shape it.

I'm interested in a founding or early role, equity alongside pay, or consultancy that could grow into something. Tell me what you have.

The last two years took a lot, but they didn't take the thing I'm good at — I've kept building the whole way through, and I've come out of it knowing exactly what's worth my time.

Get in touch

If any of this sounds like someone you need, I'd like to hear about it.

hello@jamesmills.co.uk

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