Leaders & Founders: Insights from Technology Leaders
12 January 2026
At Gathered & Found, we work closely with organisations at critical points in their growth. These moments are often shaped by investment, regulatory scrutiny or rapid scale, where technology platforms are expected to support ambition while remaining stable, secure and defensible. In practice, this usually means working within complex legacy environments, managing technical debt and modernising systems without disrupting day to day operations.
Enterprise technology transformation rarely happens in ideal conditions. Platforms have histories, dependencies and operational realities that cannot simply be switched off. Senior leaders are required to make decisions that balance progress with continuity, often under pressure from investors, regulators and customers who expect results without increased risk.
Leaders & Founders was created to reflect these realities through in depth conversations with experienced Technology Leaders and Founders who have built, scaled and transformed organisations in demanding environments. The podcast focuses on practical leadership decisions rather than theoretical frameworks, exploring how senior leaders approach digital transformation, platform scale and innovation while remaining accountable for performance, risk and operational resilience.
Across episodes, guests speak openly about inheriting complex platforms, navigating legacy constraints and making judgement calls when systems were not originally designed for the level of scrutiny introduced by growth, regulation or private equity involvement. These are not abstract challenges. They are the day to day realities faced by enterprise technology leaders responsible for keeping organisations moving forward.
A recurring theme throughout Leaders & Founders is the importance of judgement in enterprise software development and technology strategy. Guests frequently describe the tension between moving quickly and maintaining stability, particularly when technical debt has accumulated over time and platforms are deeply embedded in business operations.
For many organisations, progress has to continue even when architecture is imperfect. Decisions around where to modernise, where to stabilise and where to defer change are rarely straightforward. These conversations highlight how experienced leaders assess risk, sequence transformation and maintain credibility with stakeholders who expect both innovation and reliability.
For organisations operating in private equity and regulated industries, the expectations around technology have shifted significantly. Increased focus on technical due diligence has changed how legacy modernisation, platform resilience and API maturity are assessed. Enterprise leaders are now expected to demonstrate that existing systems can scale securely, integrate effectively and support future growth without introducing unacceptable operational or compliance risk.
The insights shared on Leaders & Founders are particularly relevant in this context. Guests discuss how scrutiny intensifies as organisations grow, and how early decisions around architecture, data and governance can either support or hinder future investment, acquisition or expansion.
Interest in enterprise AI continues to accelerate, often driven by competitive pressure rather than organisational readiness. Many Leaders & Founders guests reflect on the reality that successful AI implementation requires strong architectural foundations, clear governance and a realistic understanding of data maturity.
In regulated environments, responsible AI adoption depends on control, explainability and integration with existing systems. Introducing AI capability without addressing underlying technology risk frequently leads to stalled initiatives, duplicated effort or increased exposure. These discussions reinforce the importance of sequencing change carefully and ensuring that AI is built on platforms capable of supporting it.
This perspective closely reflects how we work at Gathered & Found. As a London based digital transformation consultancy and software delivery partner, we support organisations that need to modernise legacy applications, prepare for technology due diligence or introduce new digital products while protecting operational continuity.
Rather than pursuing change for its own sake, successful organisations tend to sequence transformation deliberately, addressing constraints before layering on new capability. Leaders & Founders reinforces this approach by sharing real world experiences from leaders who have navigated these decisions in high pressure environments shaped by growth, regulation and investment timelines.
Leaders & Founders exists to provide practical insight for CTOs, CIOs, Chief Transformation Officers and senior decision makers responsible for enterprise technology platforms and long-term performance. By sharing honest stories of what has worked, what has failed and what leaders would approach differently, the podcast offers perspective grounded in experience rather than theory.
Testimonials
Gathered & Found were able to deliver a great, experienced, culturally right fit for what we were looking for at FreeMarketFX covering a whole range of Service Design, User Experience, Front and Back end Engineers. This enabled us to scale our team capability very quickly, something we would not have been able to do ourselves. The team supplied were heavily motivated and experienced within the Fintech space and have helped deliver some great outcomes. I would definitely recommend the G&F calibration.
Greg Sherwin
CIO & CTO FreeMarketFX
I’ve been partnering with Gathered & Found while working for several companies now and I have systematically been impressed by their responsiveness, flexibility, overall ease to work with, forward thinking and the consistent level of their engineers and consultants. It has been a real pleasure working with them over the last years.
Nicholas Goubert
CPTO, Ocean Technologies Group
Gathered & Found have completely changed how we approach delivering our most critical projects. We usually have to wait 6 weeks for skilled engineers and delivery managers, but with G&F that timeframe has been turned on its head. Not only do they provide incredible consultants that deliver great work, but they find great culture-fits and their team understand exactly what we need for each engagement.
Engineering Director
Global Insurance Firm
As Founders who have never built a mobile app before, Gathered & Found were incredible at taking us through the entire process and making it very understandable from the outset. They supported us with complete app design, user experience and app development, and delivered an incredible product that will completely change our loyalty and rewards capability. Their Engagement team were also brilliant at keeping us updated with all developments and we honestly couldn’t be happier with the final product. We highly recommend them to any F&B or Retail businesses that need a supportive and amazing tech partner.
Tom Stock
Founder, Burger & Beyond
We brought in Gathered & Found for a critical engagement that required highly talented engineers. Our previous consulting partners had done a decent job, but were struggling with the complexity of delivering the initiative at scale in a regulated environment. The G&F squad that we received was extremely high bar and allowed us to keep in-line with our roadmap and ultimately delivered a great piece of work ahead of schedule and under budget. We are very pleased to have them as part of our wider partner team
Investment Bank
CIO
Gathered & Found have consistently exceeded our expectations with regards to delivering talented consultants that genuinely understand our business and mission. Their consultants are very well versed in our way of doing things and hit the ground running straight away. They have enabled us to deliver a number of high priority projects over the past 3 years, largely due to their ability to rapidly deploy great consultants into our teams and projects extremely quickly
Global Insurance Firm
Transformation Director
