Patient Wisdom: building the team alongside the software

I joined Patient Wisdom as lead developer, reporting to Nate Perry-Thistle, then my boss and CTO. I joined when the team was two junior developers fresh out of a coding bootcamp. In about two months, we took the prototype to market-ready.

I think of the work as being as much about the team as the software:

“So it was both building the high-quality software that we could take to the market, as well as building the team and developing all the processes and investing in the people so that they became really excellent software engineers who practice clear thinking and excellent software disciplines.”

— Chris Dwan, interview, 2026-08-07

That claim carries a piece of corroboration: it isn’t only my own assessment. Alumni of that team who have since moved to other companies “lament how bad the experience in their new companies is compared to how great it was working at Patient Wisdom, where we collaborated very effectively, executed quickly, and created a great culture.” That’s third-party sentiment relayed by me, not an independent survey — but it’s a different kind of evidence than self-report alone.

The clearest proof of the outcome, though, is structural rather than a number: I worked for Nate at Patient Wisdom, and years later the two of us are partners, building a company together. The relationship is the evidence.

A note on scope: this entry omits a mentoring anecdote from the same interview answer, about a contractor who Chris says went on to a senior or possibly staff engineering role at a named company. That person did not consent to being named or described here, the title itself was hedged rather than confirmed by Chris, and the anecdote is not necessary to support this entry’s claim — the Nate/Patient Wisdom partnership carries it on its own.