Andrew Sheehy
My name is Andrew Sheehy, and I’ve been in the tech space for over 30 years.
I started my career in 1987 when a mid-size British company called Marconi Instruments offered me a job as an RF Design Engineer. Marconi Instruments was later acquired by Anritsu Corporation.
My job at that time involved designing amplifiers, filters and other electronic components that were used in microwave test instruments like power meters, network analysers, signal generators and frequency counters spanning the 10kHz to 40GHz band.
Although I started in hardware, for the last 20 years I’ve been primarily involved in software and today, I’m pretty much exclusively focused on software product development, although I retain a home electronics lab where I renovate vintage hi-fi amplifiers and build Raspberry Pi projects with my son.
I’m a Member of the Institute of Engineering and Technology (MIET) and am committed to doing what I can, where I can to pass on what I’ve learnt to the new generation who will carry engineering and product development into the future.
I also have experience with entrepreneurship and closed an investment round to fund a company which I ran successfully for 12 years.
Although I have extensive experience spanning engineering, product management, entrepreneurship and pretty much all aspects of product development I’m also committed to life-long learning and personal development and, even today, am painfully aware how much I still do not know.
I feel a sense of urgency to acquire as much knowledge as I can and share that with others.
I’ve worked in team sizes ranging from one person sitting in an office with a phone and a desk (that was me when I started my own business), three people sitting around a single desk (I’ve done that a few times) and scale-ups with 100-150 people (also done that a few times). I have also worked in large 100,000+ employee corporate giants (Nortel Networks, Telstra and EY).
On hyper-growth, I was part of the original 4-person team at Nortel Networks that worked on the original bid for Ionica – a UK fixed wireless access company that received funding of £700m. This tiny team grew into a 1000+ person global business over the next three years. That was for sure a pretty crazy time, but I have many happy memories and the extreme hard work done during those years laid down a base like no other could.
Later, I joined a 7-person start-up (PipingHot Networks – Carlyle Capital/Kennett Capital) which grew to 120+ staff in less than 12 months. After a pivot, this company was acquired by Motorola and is now Cambium Networks, a successful global business that employs over 700 staff.
Compared with the more measured ‘hypergrowth’ we see today, these situations were truly exceptional.
Over the years, I’ve developed an ability to how to build great products in all these environments. I know how to fix broken projects and I know how to re-energise projects that have become stuck.
Fortunately, I’ve had the privilege of working with some completely outstanding people along the way and I was lucky enough to be mentored by one such person for many years. A very modest person, consummate gentleman. He has an extraordinary intellect, was always a straight-shooter, and had stellar people-management skills. He was just an all-round good bloke. In some ways he was the father I never had.
Battle scars? Yes, I have a few: I lived through the dot-com bust (2000), the telecoms bust (2001) and the financial crisis of 2007. That’s two investment winters and one recession. I’ve seen friends make many millions, and others loose everything. I myself know what it means to be ‘invested’ in a business…after losing everything after the failure my own business
For the next and final phase of my career- the coming 20 years – I’ll be focussing on developing Divergent Product into boutique training and coaching business where the goal will be to raise standards in software product development and to equip the next generation with the knowledge and insights they will need to take software product development to the next level.