Name: Kieran Gutteridge
Role: CTO
Previous jobs/roles:
Before Cutover I was involved in early-stage companies and their transition to mobile and cloud computing through an agency I helped set up over ten years ago. I was fortunate to work with and be exposed to a wide variety of businesses from startups such as Bardowl, Lovestruck and Tribesports to large public enterprises such as Itochu, AT&T, BMW, BBC News and Tesco. I assisted them with their strategy and implementation to take advantage of modern platforms and the changing face of technology.
One of the main crunch points of doing this was always release, particularly when interfacing with legacy billing systems in telcos or dealing with third-party approval processes. This could be carrier certification, Java Verify or the Apple app store approval process.
How did you get involved with Cutover?
Marcus (Wildsmith, CPO) approached the agency I was working with. He needed a solution for the seemingly simple problem of making Microsoft project plans more readily visible to senior management on iPads. After this project, I worked with Ky (Nichol, CEO) and Marcus on the early prototypes for the initial tool to fill this gap in project delivery.
What are your main responsibilities as CTO?
I'm lucky enough to work with people that are smarter than myself and have been able to hand off considerable parts of the role since we started. Now I am focused on how we scale our technical team and the platform itself to address other parts of the development, release and human-and-machine-communication ecosystems.
What has been your biggest challenge at Cutover?
Keeping laser focus. Cutover could be used and developed for a variety of industry verticals. We always have more features or opportunities we could strive for. However, with a relatively small team, we need to remain focused on our core vision.
What are your main priorities going forward and what do you see in the future for Cutover?
My main priority is keeping the left-field innovation function going that has thus far served us well, and making sure we stay flexible as we grow.
For the future of Cutover, there is a lot of potential for us to provide a bridge from current manual tasks to the future of human and machine orchestration. Our aim is to enable businesses, people and machines to work together and adapt to a changing world of software and value realization.