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Simon Potter

Fractional CTO & Technology Consultant

Simon helps boards and founders decide what to build, what to buy, and whether the system they have can carry what they want to do next.

In technology since
2001
Fractional CTO
Over a decade, through Spottmedia — founded 2005 and running since
Sectors
E-commerce · EdTech · SaaS and lead generation · travel · publishing
Founder roles
Co-founder and CTO, then CEO, of Kwiziq (2012–2024) · co-founder and CTO of Style Sequel (2011–2014)
Earlier
E-commerce director at FrenchConnections · e-business consultant at Arval, a BNP Paribas subsidiary · software development manager at tmg
Recognised
BMW i UK EdTech Founder of the Year, 2018 · three-time CogX finalist, Best AI Product in Education, 2017–2019
Working in
Generative AI and large language models in production systems
Architecture
Monolith to API-based microservices · container deployment · cloud infrastructure and cost
Teams
Remote and hybrid delivery teams — twelve years running one across 8 countries and 5 time zones
Languages
English · French
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Experience

Simon has built and run production systems for twenty years. At Kwiziq, the AI language-learning company he co-founded and later led as CEO, he architected the platform behind more than a million dollars of annual recurring revenue and 400,000 monthly users — reached through organic search, and run by a small team rather than a platform organisation. He moved that architecture from a monolith to API-based services, and put generative models into production systems rather than into pilots.

He has sat on both sides of the table a board sees. He held board seats at Style Sequel and FrenchConnections, and works now as a fractional CTO: at SalesPond, re-architecting a sales engagement platform for container-based multi-client deployment and cutting what it cost to run; at academy+, on infrastructure, security and getting an existing team ready for AI. He built and ran an engineering team across eight countries and five time zones for twelve years.

The record is public. He was named BMW i UK EdTech Founder of the Year in 2018. At Style Sequel he built the e-commerce platform himself and took a £20,000 investment to break-even. At FrenchConnections he replaced a hand-coded static site with a content-managed one and saw it past a million visitors, and before that he ran e-business projects at Arval UK, a BNP Paribas subsidiary.

Writing