Res·Cog

Clarity on building thinking things,
by Gareth Price, CTO @ CorralData.

About

3 min read · Updated

10+ commits
  1. b0a633a +10 −9 Update personal description in about.md to reflect current location and enhance clarity of professional roles. Refine previous experience details for improved accuracy and add context to achievements, including recognition for COVID coverage work while being accurate about involvement of tech component in what was a company-wide award
  2. deef83b +1 −1 Refine previous experience description in about.md for clarity and accuracy, emphasizing the infrastructure built for the Times' COVID coverage and its recognition.
  3. 9d1dc39 +1 −1 Update about.md to include a link to the Times’ COVID coverage, enhancing context and accessibility of past achievements.
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  5. 815e0f3 +6 −1 Add a new section to about.md explaining the blog's purpose and its philosophical context regarding AI and thought. Include references to Descartes and the nature of thinking systems.
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  10. 1ff11a0 +13 −14 Revise 'About' section to enhance clarity and detail on professional experience, focusing on AI and engineering leadership, and update formatting for improved readability.

Full history →

I’m a CTO and engineer with deep hands-on experience building systems and teams. I hold a BSc (Hons) in Artificial Intelligence from the University of Manchester. I live and work in upstate New York.

I work at the intersection of engineering, product, and growth, with a focus on building AI-enabled systems that ship, scale, and remain understandable to the people responsible for them. I’m particularly interested in how human judgment and emerging machine intelligence collaborate in practice - where that partnership works, and where it breaks.

Currently

CTO at CorralData, building an AI platform that enables non-experts to effortlessly harness the vast potential of their data, where I lead product and engineering from early experimentation through production.

Previously: Senior Engineering Manager at The New York Times, where I led web conversion growth teams that helped double the digital subscriber base (5.25M → 10.98M), contributing over $500M in ARR. I was a founding member of the internal generative AI working group and helped train an internal LLM over the Times archive. My Storylines team built the data infrastructure and dashboards behind the Times’ COVID coverage, which were exhibited at the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum1 and contributed to the work recognized with the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service2.

Before that, I managed product teams at Codecademy, contributing to doubling monthly recurring revenue growth prior to its eventual $525M exit3, and built and led engineering at Ready Set Rocket as it scaled from a small NYC agency to a 50-person organization. I have spoken at SXSW Interactive4, with media coverage in AdWeek, TechCrunch, Mashable, and PSFK.

This site is a place to think in public about AI in practice, engineering leadership, growth systems, and the evolving role of the CTO — including experiments in writing alongside machine intelligence.

Why Res·Cog

Res cogitans — the thinking thing. Descartes drew a line between mind and matter, the thing that thinks and the thing that extends in space (Res extensa)5. Three and a half centuries later, that line is less clear. We build systems that reason, generate, and occasionally surprise us, then spend our time arguing over whether they actually think or will do someday. This blog sits on that line. It is written by a thinking thing, about thinking things, and increasingly, with them.

Get in Touch

I’m always open to conversations about AI, engineering leadership, and building great teams. Find me on LinkedIn.

References

  1. Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum & MASS Design Group. (2021). Design and healing: Creative responses to epidemics [Exhibition]. Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York, NY. December 10, 2021–March 19, 2023. https://www.cooperhewitt.org/channel/design-and-healing/ ↩

  2. The Pulitzer Prizes. (2021). 2021 Pulitzer Prize winners & finalists. https://www.pulitzer.org/prize-winners-by-year/2021 ↩

  3. Mascarenhas, N. (2021, December 23). Codecademy sends it with Skillsoft in a $525M deal. TechCrunch. https://techcrunch.com/2021/12/23/codecademy-sends-it-with-skillsoft-in-a-525m-deal/ ↩

  4. Young, F., & Price, G. (2015, March 14). Wearables and the happiness quotient [Conference session]. SXSW 2015, Austin, TX, United States. https://schedule.sxsw.com/2015/events/event_IAP40939 ↩

  5. Descartes, R. (1641). Meditationes de Prima Philosophia [Meditations on First Philosophy]. Project Gutenberg edition. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/59. ↩