London VCs detail expectations for SaaS CTOs
Venture capitalists and industry leaders in London are emphasizing the need for CTOs who can link technical strategy to business outcomes. In recent discussions, Notion Capital's Stephen Millard noted the CTO must be a "bridge between product and the board," owning technical due diligence. VCs are looking for technical leaders who can articulate risk in business terms and build a robust engineering culture to attract London's deep talent pool.
- The modern CTO's role has evolved to that of a strategic business partner, responsible for aligning technology with broader company goals and communicating the business impact of technical decisions to the C-suite and board. During fundraising, a CTO must demonstrate to venture capitalists how the company's technology, architecture, and team can deliver a return on investment, a process that often involves rigorous technical due diligence. - In programmatic advertising, the deprecation of third-party cookies is a primary concern, pushing the industry towards privacy-centric models like Google's Privacy Sandbox. This shift creates significant challenges in attribution and measurement, with many marketers concerned about biased reporting from "walled garden" platforms and the difficulty of tracking the entire customer journey. - To combat inefficiencies in the programmatic supply chain, where up to 15% of ad spend can be lost, advertisers are increasingly adopting Supply Path Optimization (SPO) to create more direct and transparent routes to ad inventory. An ANA study in 2024 showed progress, with a 7.9% improvement in ad spend efficiency and a significant drop in spending on low-quality "Made-for-Advertising" (MFA) sites. - Enterprises are adopting AI agents and agentic workflows to automate complex, multi-step tasks. Unlike traditional automation that follows fixed scripts, these AI systems can reason, adapt to new information, and make independent decisions to achieve goals, often with multiple specialized agents collaborating. - The UK fintech sector saw a significant increase in investment in 2024, reaching $7.3 billion. Notable London-based funding rounds in the latter half of 2024 included a $500m raise by crypto e-commerce platform Boom Technologies and a £100M Series B for investment data platform FINBOURNE Technology. - In London local news, a measles outbreak has led to over 60 reported cases across seven schools and a nursery in Enfield. In crime news, a triple stabbing in Croydon resulted in one death and multiple arrests. - In Formula 1, drivers like Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton have expressed concerns over the complexity of the new 2026 regulations. The upcoming 24-race season will be the longest in the sport's history.
