Hi, I'm James
I shape software experiences and dabble with hardware. You can see some of the stuff I'm building below.
Get in touchWhat I do
Product Management
- Empathise with customers. Understand their pain points. Challenge the status quo. Imagine a better future.
- Know your market and competitors. Make deliberate product decisions to ensure product market fit.
- Tell your story. Design beautiful solutions. Test, learn and refine.
Engineering
- Bring your story to life.
- Run at pace. Test ideas. Fail fast. Pivot. Launch products that thrive.
- Scale your solution seamlessly as you grow.
- Monitor application health and key performance indicators. Turn insights into action.
Projects
A code editor for the terminal, inspired by VS Code.
Writing
From the blog
October 2026
Vault 84 ergo keyboard with character
An 84 key ergo keyboard from a nuclear post-apocalyptic wasteland
May 2026
Why your terminal still thinks it's a typewriter
A 150 year tour from stock tickers and Telex machines, through to Kitty - and why Ctrl + G goes `bing!`.
March 2026
Designing an OS agnostic keyboard layout
Designing a 34 key layout that will work on any operating system
Say hello
Let's build something great together.
Need help planning or building out your next great idea? Let me know and we can catch up for a chat.
FAQ
Where is Mental Desk based?+
Auckland, New Zealand… city of sails! The timezone is practical for working with people anywhere from US West Coast to South East Asia.
Who's behind Mental Desk?+
Just me, James Crosswell. There are no other employees. My core competencies are product management, software engineering and building/managing teams — so I can fill gaps in any of those spaces to complement an existing team.
I'm a generalist who can lead product inception, strategy, design, creation and early marketing — well enough to bootstrap an idea, test and refine it until you know you're onto a winner. I don't carry the overhead of hiring and managing a team of specialists, so I can move at pace and leverage AI to fill the gaps.
I have also hired, formed and managed 20+ cross-functional teams over the last decade, including senior managers. So once the initial idea has been validated, I can help you build a rockstar team and an enduring business around it.