Merlin Gore is a CTO who’s passionate about people. He is an experienced leader with deep technical knowledge and a strong humanistic leadership style. He has led startups and people to deliver high-quality, sustainable and secure technology at a global scale.
With a focus on execution and a business-minded approach, Merlin has successfully coached and mentored teams to mature rapidly, delivering results for startups in Fintech and AI. He also works with VC and PE firms to make the right investment decisions through judicious due diligence. His engineering organisation playbook, which includes detailed frameworks for performance, structure, people management, security, risk management, and incident response, has been instrumental in growing startups from pre-seed to successful funding rounds, including an $80m Series B serving billion-dollar multinational clients. With a passion for developing high-functioning teams and a track record of driving results in fast-paced environments, he is confident in his ability to make a significant impact in any startup, whether as an Interim, or a Fractional CTO.
Seedcloud
2023 – Current
Seedcloud is a Technology Advisory bridging the gap between business, strategy, product and technology. I joined as an associate and have advised major VC and PE firms on their technology investments through deep technical reviews and engagement with all parties. Seedcloud’s approach to due diligence aligns perfectly with my own; rather than deploying checklists and formulaic approaches, we work as a team to get under the skin of the underlying business strategy; assessing the technology platform in the light of market trends, integrations, people, threats and opportunities. These engagements have often led to ongoing engagements where we provide mentoring and advice.
Unitary
2022 – 2023
Unitary is building AI to understand online content and make the internet safer. I joined on an interim basis to implement my Engineering Playbook, focusing mainly on execution, people management, mentoring, and compensation. I took on management and mentorship of the engineering team and implemented a detailed progression, compensation, and structural framework. I helped hire key leadership roles, including Head of Product, Engineering Management, and Tech leads.
Bud
2015–2022
Bud is a data intelligence platform that helps financial institutions and their customers make sense of their finances by deploying AI on top of transactional data. As the first hire at Bud, I built the first stack, including a unique encryption methodology, published in a white paper. I then matured and evolved the technology team from startup to scale-up, involved in growing the team to over 150, raising revenue by 12x, and taking Bud through 3 investment rounds with the likes of Goldman Sachs, HSBC, 9yards capital, and TDR ultimately raising an $80M Series B. Under my watch, we delivered machine-learning models capable of predicting transactional attributes with an accuracy of over 94% at a scale of 1bn users, deployed on multiple cross-region cloud environments globally with SLAs of 99.99% uptime and a clean record of 0 SLA breaches. I embedded an effective incident-drilled culture of resilience and risk mitigation.