A note from Adam Smith, founder of RightOnQ — on where this came from and what it’s trying to be.
I’m not a programmer.
That’s probably the first thing worth saying.
I’ve spent most of my working life running practical businesses — managing people, solving real-world problems, making things work under pressure. Technology has always been something I used, not something I built.
Then life threw a curveball.
A waiting room observation
In 2023 I went through cancer treatment, and in 2026, salvage radiotherapy. Like anyone who has been through that system, you spend a lot of time in hospital waiting areas.
Appointments. Dates. Letters. Messages. People arriving looking uncertain about where they should be or what happens next.
What struck me wasn’t the treatment. The NHS staff were excellent — professional, dedicated, and genuinely kind.
It was the communication around the edges.
You’d see people arrive unsure if they were in the right place. Others wondering if their appointment time had changed. Family members trying to coordinate things for older parents who hadn’t quite caught a detail in a letter. A lot of small confusion — the kind that doesn’t feel significant until you’re sitting in a waiting room anxious about what comes next.
All of it could have been solved with very simple, very clear messages.
Not apps. Not patient portals. Not complicated systems that require a login and a tutorial.
Just messages.
That observation has stayed with me — particularly as I’ve been keeping my own health records with AI, simply asking for information and likely side effects when I need them.
The idea of RightOnQ
The idea that eventually became RightOnQ is almost embarrassingly simple.
Send the right message, to the right people, at the right time — and know it was received.
That’s it.
It sounds obvious. But once you start looking closely, a lot of messaging systems are surprisingly complicated. They’re built for marketing campaigns, analytics dashboards, and feature lists that most organisations never actually use. They’re designed to impress rather than to work.
What I’m trying to build is the opposite.
Something simple, reliable, and calm.
A system where an organisation can send a clear message to a group of people — and quickly see who has confirmed they received it. No noise. No complexity. Just clarity.
Starting with business
RightOnQ will launch as a B2B messaging platform.
A lot of organisations need to reach staff who aren’t sitting at desks. Drivers. Factory workers. Field engineers. Care teams. People whose working day doesn’t involve an inbox.
Email doesn’t work well in those environments. SMS and WhatsApp do.
So the first step is straightforward: reliable scheduled messaging, delivery confirmation, and a clean dashboard so operators can see exactly what’s happening. A business tool that does one job well and doesn’t get in the way.
That becomes the foundation.
The longer-term vision
But the original spark came from something more personal.
Watching older people — and the families who love them — trying to keep track of appointments, reminders, and important messages. As we age, continuity becomes harder (I can testify to that being over 60). Dates blur. Messages get missed. Adult children often end up quietly managing the details of everyday life for their parents, trying to help without overstepping.
My longer-term goal is a platform that makes that easier.
Not monitoring. Not surveillance. Not a complicated app that takes an hour to set up.
Just a simple layer where trusted family members can help ensure the messages that matter actually land. Something a son or daughter could set up for a parent in five minutes, and then quietly forget about — because it just works.
Managing AI rather than writing code
Here’s the part that surprises most people when I mention it.
I’m building this without being a traditional software developer.
Instead of writing every line of code myself, I’m managing a small team of AI assistants. Different agents handle architecture, research, coding, and quality review. I set the direction. They help execute.
It’s a bit like running a workshop rather than being the person holding the tools all day.
What I’ve found is that the system I’m building — about clear, confirmed communication — requires exactly the same discipline when working with AI as it did organising an office with 50+ staff and over 100 field QA/QC people. Vague instructions produce vague results. Clear thinking produces clear work. The same principle applies whether you’re talking to a person or a language model.
In a way, building RightOnQ has been an education in communication itself.
Building something calm
There’s a lot of noise around technology at the moment.
AI everywhere. Automation everywhere. Platforms promising to do a hundred things at once.
RightOnQ is trying to do the opposite.
Make something small, calm, and dependable. A service that does one job well — making sure the right people get the message they need, when they need it, and that someone knows they got it.
Nothing more. Nothing fancy.
Just right on Q.
RightOnQ is currently in development. If you manage people who don’t always sit at a desk — I’d genuinely welcome a conversation.
Adam Smith | Founder, RightOnQ