• Hello.
    I'm Rich.


    I’m a technology consultant, non-exec CTO and investment advisor in London, UK.
     
    I’m a maker, designer, builder and fixer of things. I've co-founded some tech companies and helped many more to design, refine and scale their processes and products.
     
    Via my partnership, Leckie-Kershaw I provide VC and PE due diligence, scaling and growth consulting and non-executive directorships.

    See my LinkedIn profile

    Email me now

    Find me on Mastodon

About Me

Who Am I?

Hi. I'm Rich Kershaw. I’m a technology consultant and product architect in London, UK.
I’m a maker, designer and builder of things.

Among other things, over the past 15 years, I've:

  • Led tech due diligence for vendors, clients and investors on many dozens of projects
  • Designed the UX and built the infrastructure for Transport for London's Cycle Hire mobile bike hire app
  • Prototyped and built immersive group gaming experiences for Electric Playbox (the Tough Mudder founder's next project), helping close seed funding from Index Ventures and Sweet Capital
  • Run UX development, architecture and project delivery for over 50 individual projects as CTO at Corethree
  • Worked with IBM, Deloitte, the Department for Transport, Capita, Serco and Transport for London on transformative projects like Santander Cycles
  • Led cloud architecture for Octopus Investments' in-house Octopus Labs team

These days, I consult with startups, SMEs and investors on technology and product strategy, scaling and due diligence.

I'm currently available for tech due diligence projects, interim and non-executive CTO positions and product strategy.

Get in touch by email    Hit me up on LinkedIn!
Services

What can I do for you?

Technology Due Diligence

With over 20 years' experience working with startups at seed and scale-up stages on both sides of the fundraising process, I provide VC houses, technology partners and angel investors with a concise due diligence package, working on dozens of successful investment rounds for VCs including Gresham House, Octopus Investments, Quona Capital and Maven Capital Partners.
This includes review and analysis of:

  • product delivery capability, culture and processes
  • product, implementation and data architecture
  • software development practises
  • feature roadmap
  • team health, tech debt and risk mitigation
The tech DD process will take you through to Heads of Terms ahead of later stages like codebase and IP review.

Non-executive Directorship

Having served as both executive and non-executive director in the technology industry for over 15 years, I can bring my practical, real-world experience of building and scaling B2B and B2C products to your board. Regardless of the stage your company is at right now, my enormous breadth of knowledge at the intersection of commercial and technology strategy can add an extra dimension to your planning and management.

Strategy Consultancy

If you've got a short-to-medium term need for strategic planning on technology, product roadmap, team growth and platform scaling, Leckie-Kershaw can give your team direction and to put in place a plan for growth. Whether you've got an idea and seed capital or you're heading towards a Series A or B round, we can provide non-executive, consulting CTO services to make sure you're on the right track and prepared for investors' and clients' due diligence, and long-term product stability.

Product, Roadmap and UX Architecture

With a wealth of experience as Product Owner, user interaction analyst and systems architect, I can give you valuable input and guidance to shape your product, end-user journey and systems architecture. Services include:

  • UI / UX analysis and usability consulting - increase engagement and conversions, reduce friction
  • Customer journey planning - smooth out interaction points and maximise positive user outcomes
  • Cloud architecture and platform scaling - 20+ years' experience designing digital platforms and mobile apps, including Android, iOS, web apps and cloud services with Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud
  • Roadmap planning - optimise your product development pipeline, with competitor analysis and best-in-market tailoring of your feature set

Clients

Selected work I've done

Since 2019, I've been providing due diligence reporting services for global VC and PE houses. The scope of each project varies, but broadly, I delivery a report based on thorough discovery with the target company's product and technology delivery teams to assess their team health, risks and roadmap delivery capability post-investment.

Recent reporting projects include:

  • eConsult for Gresham House - healhcare technology specialist adding efficiency to triage and remote assessments
  • Adimo for Maven Capital Partners - adtech provider specialising in retail shopping ad optimisation
  • Perfect Ward for Octopus Investments - improving clinical facility assessments for the NHS and other providers

After co-founding Corethree, I spent 8 years as Chief Technology officer alongside my two co-founders. I was responsible for engineering, product development and R&D, and had a hand in virtually every technical sales process and contract closed.

Identifying a market gap for a robust, UX-first rapid systems integration platform, I architected and built Core Engine, a bespoke microservices solution on AWS, MongoDB and Microsoft.NET. Core Engine has since driven the company's growth to the UK and Europe's leading mobile ticketing platform for transport providers.

  • Led scoping, technical sales, architecture and delivery for 50+ B2B and B2C projects
  • Sold in and delivered Transport for London's Santander Cycles mobile app and back-end platform
  • Developed and managed Corethree's market-leading M-Tickets transport ticketing platform, with millions of tickets sold since launch
  • Drove smart cities projects with partners including IBM, Keolis Global and the UK's Department for Transport

I was engaged by Octopus Labs, the group's IT and engineering Department, to conduct in-depth analysis of their estate of cloud computing assets. Over the course of 11 months, I put in place custom cost and resource reporting systems and worked with the Engineering team to begin the transition away from monolithic application hosting to containerised, Kubernetes-powered deployments.

I also worked with Octopus Ventures to provide due diligence analysis for technology startups in their investment pipeline.

  • Integrated Amazon AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure with Labs' CloudHealth cost reporting platform
  • Deployed a cloud asset lifecycle tracking solution to maintain detailed resource metadata for everything running in the cloud
  • Performed technology due diligence services, evaluating startup investment opportunities for Octopus Ventures

Hired as employee #2 at this new retail entertainment business from the co-founder of Tough Mudder, I focused on taking a simple idea to proof-of-concept and fundraising.

Over 4 months, I conducted R&D in the immersive games and escape room industry, building prototypes and running user testing before finalising an entirely original software/hardware platform for room-scale, team video gaming.

  • Reported to CEO, leading roadmap, product and delivery
  • Took the company from startup to post-seed fundraising and retail launch
  • Helped to close a £2.6m seed round with Index Ventures, Sweet Capital and JamJar as lead investors
  • Architecture and software development for back-office and infrastructure
  • Worked with games developers to tie the room tech into the Unity games engine

I sat on the Board of Trustees as technology strategy consultant for Sunday Assembly, a global community charity founded in London in 2013. The Board oversees strategic planning, financial management, due diligence and oversight of the London-based charity body responsible for supporting the community and the events it runs for its members.

  • Provided digital communications strategy to the Board and formalised much of their community engagement processes
  • Consolidated their infrastructure, migrating their web presence to a modern platform
  • Worked as part of the team formalising community engagement into a continuous feedback process
Get in Touch

Contact

I'm based in London, in the UK. You can get hold of me most reliably via email or LinkedIn.

me@richkershaw.com

LinkedIn profile

Mastodon profile