About Us

We launched Founder + Lightning after our Founder and CEO, Matt, made a few costly mistakes with his first tech venture. At the time, there weren’t the right technical partners available who were trust-worthy, cared about the business, and that challenged and validated product ideas. After wasting lots of time and money, he realised he wasn’t the only one.He knew there was a gap that needed to be filled.

Startups and businesses everywhere were struggling to find a partner to not only build tech products, but build the right tech products.Either they were building their product with a development agency, who would build anything without validating the idea, or startups felt they had to rush to bring on a CTO and give away equity very early. So, Founder and Lightning was born and Co-Founders, Dan and Pawel, joined to bring their expertise onboard.

Since inception in 2015, Founder + Lightning has built over 40 companies and 100 tech products for startups and businesses. In 2023, we launched F+L Capital and invest in early stage start ups to work with us to validate, build and iterate an early stage B2B tech product. We see ourselves as a long-term partner and function as close to an in-house team as possible for our partner clients.

90% of startups fail, and it’s for the same reasons over and over. The last 8 years have been about uncovering every mistake that can be made, so that our Startup Founder Partners don’t have to.  We know the huge value that commercial-focused founders bring to the tech startup ecosystem– that’s our priority.

Having spent the last decade working with the most time and money-conscious businesses (startups), we bring these learnings to benefit businesses too. In this capacity, we help corporates build new tech, update their tech processes and work with in-house teams to help them achieve their tech goals. We help them improve their entrepreneurial thinking to get more stuff done, faster.