Like many of the best founders, Jonathan lived the problem before he built for it.
He started his career in finance in London, and saw first-hand how much of the job was spent fighting clunky, legacy tools.
Light is his answer. It’s what he calls organic software. It’s not only sleek and intuitive to use, its AI layer means it learns from every correction, and adapts as a business grows into new markets and currencies. Even the name is the point: Light is the opposite of heavy.
Now more than 150 people strong, and available with KPMG in over 140 countries, we caught up with Jonathan to discuss leaving finance to build, and why ‘impossible’ can be a good reason to try.
Q
Can you pinpoint the single moment that made you want to found a company?
Can you pinpoint the single moment that made you want to found a company?
A
I knew early on. I had a finance job in London and quit it because I didn't want to spend the next 30 years doing the same thing. Before that, I'd worked at a startup as a student and found that environment - basically building something out of nothing - genuinely interesting. It wasn't a well-trodden path when I graduated, so I took some detours, ended up at a scale-up, and learned how the machinery of a startup actually works. I've been in that machinery for close to ten years now.
Q
What's the big problem Light is trying to solve?
What's the big problem Light is trying to solve?
A
In most companies, running your finances is extremely hard. Light simply runs your finances. It has a general ledger, it lets you process bills, manage spend and subscriptions, and connect to all your other systems through one-click installs in our App Store. On top of that, we have agents handling the last mile of value delivery. So Light records your business, adapts to your business, and operates your business.
Q
Was there a specific moment when you realised the scale of that problem, and knew you had to be the person to solve it?
A
I was at a customer site, and they were showing me their legacy ERP. I asked why the Wi-Fi was so bad, and they said, "It's not the Wi-Fi, it's the system." It took 20 seconds to load a page. Today you can stream a whole movie in 20 seconds. That's when I knew: this really needed to be replaced.
Q
Why is this the right time for Light?
A
There wasn't really a market force or trend beyond the fact that time had moved on since the '90s, when most of our competitors were built, so we knew we could build a much better product from the ground up. Companies like SAP and Oracle are now trying to compete in the AI era, but they essentially skipped the cloud generation and the mobile generation of software. We're skipping straight from on-prem systems to agents.
Q
Was there anything you specifically set out to do or build differently with Light?
A
We hired a lot of people we already knew who were great engineers. But the thing we did differently was build an advisory board of ex-CTOs and ex-chief architects from Workday, SAP, Oracle and Microsoft, and meet with them frequently during development. We went through our codebase line by line with them to see how they'd have built it. That gave us a lot of confidence we were avoiding the mistakes they'd made.
Q
Is there anything unusual about how you work, or your company culture?
Is there anything unusual about how you work, or your company culture?
A
We're more than 150 people now, and we have a very hands-on culture even at senior level. New technology means everyone can be both a manager and an individual contributor. Our Head of Product, our Chief Customer Officer, our VP of Marketing are all hands-on, helping shape the product, the landing page, the onboarding. You've got a 10x or 100x multiplier at your fingertips now that just wasn't there before. We're also a bit of a split company: go-to-market is based in our London office, we have a base in Copenhagen, and engineering is fairly distributed.
Q
Have there been any unexpected difficulties or challenges?
A
The market was much more receptive to the idea of a next-gen ERP than we expected. We got a lot of pushback early on from clients and investors about whether this was even feasible. But once we actually went to market, the reception was strong. If anything, we were a bit slow to lean into that and accelerate our go-to-market and onboarding.
Q
What's been the proudest moment you've had so far as a founder?
A
We get the whole company together twice a year, and every time, that's the proudest moment. Seeing everyone who's chosen to dedicate their career to Light and to our clients in one room. We have phenomenal talent here, and getting them all together to serve our clients is the best feeling there is.
Q
What's the best piece of advice you've gotten?
A
We were told this would be very hard and almost impossible to pull off. We took that as a clear signal it was worth doing. If it feels impossible, it’s worth doing.
Q
What advice would you give to an early-stage or aspiring founder?
A
You can probably be more ambitious than you think you can be, and the market will reward you for it.
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