About Present Thread

I'm Duanne O'Brien. I’ve spent the last couple of decades as a CTO building SaaS platforms at scale, leading listed companies and technology teams through hypergrowth, footprint expansion, and everything in between. I’ve designed, built, run platforms used by hundreds of millions of people, working globally with brands like McDonald’s and Booking.com, and sat at the table where product, technology, and boardroom decisions collide.

But this isn’t about a résumé.

What’s stayed with me, what continues to shape how I think isn’t just the platforms. It’s also about they evolved and we evolved, how I evolved. It’s how people, myself included respond to pressure and demand as a scale-up platforms CTO. How leadership bends without breaking. How systems, technical and human reveal their truth under load.

Present Thread is where I explore and share what’s on my mind, through the lens of what I’ve seen, and what I think is coming. Of all those threads I've got going, what's the present one.

Present Thread however is not a framework. It’s not a playbook. It’s what I’ve seen work, what I’ve felt break, and how that feeds into the future. And while I’ll always be OK that I might not be right, I am saying this is what’s true from where I stand, what I saw and what I think will be.

I share it in case it’s useful to others pulling on similar threads.

You’ll find field notes, technical reflections, leadership perspectives, and open thinking here, sometimes sharp, sometimes soft, but always honest. And like I commit to my staff in every role in every organisation, you can ask me anything and I answer it as honestly and best I can.

If any of these threads resonate, I’m glad you’re here.