Built, co-built and led
Transformation is a decision problem before it is a technology problem. These ten companies are that argument built into structure — one capability, one owner, and integration only where a client’s problem does not respect the boundaries.
Why I build
Why I started building rather than only advising
I co-founded Upward Technologies in 2018 and later Technify. The reason was specific rather than entrepreneurial: I had spent years on the client side of implementations that were sold competently and delivered badly, and I had concluded that the gap was not in the software but in the delivery organisation’s incentives. You cannot fix an incentive from outside it. You can only build a different one.
What followed was not a plan to accumulate companies. It was the same argument applied repeatedly: each time a capability turned out to be doing badly because it was somebody’s side responsibility, it was given its own owner.
The pattern
One capability, one owner — and the reason it is not tidiness
A capability inside a larger company is always the second priority of whoever holds it. It gets the budget left over, the people who were free, and the standard of the department that happens to house it. Separating it does one thing: it makes the capability answerable for itself.
The cost of that separation is coordination, and the cost is real. It is worth paying because the alternative fails quietly. A firm that only implements will always conclude that implementation is the answer. A firm that also owns the diagnosis has no way to say no to itself.
So the ecosystem below is not a holding structure and it is not a portfolio. It is one argument about specialisation, made ten times, and then integrated where a client’s problem does not respect the boundaries between them — which is most of the time.
The map
Four capabilities
Advisory
Diagnosis, kept separate from delivery: a firm that only implements will always conclude that implementation is the answer.
Business CompilerDigital transformation and IT consulting.
What it took
The diagnostic front of the ecosystem, and deliberately not the same company as the one that implements. A consultancy that owns the implementation revenue cannot be trusted to conclude that no implementation is needed.
Sidra HubBusiness, management, legal, financial and investment advisory.
What it took
The advisory that is not about technology. Most failed transformations are decided in the parts of a business a technology firm is not qualified to advise on, and pretending otherwise is how consultancies overreach.
Technology
Three layers usually sold as one and failing as one: applications, infrastructure, intelligence.
Upward TechnologiescurrentERP and enterprise applications — the systems a business actually runs on.
What it took
The practice I set out to build after years on the client side of implementations that were sold competently and delivered badly. Its first question to a client is which decision they are trying to improve, not which module they would like to buy. It is also the imprint under which the manuscripts are written.
TechnifycurrentInfrastructure, cloud, cybersecurity and managed services.
What it took
The layer underneath the applications, and the one that decides whether they stay up. It is separated because infrastructure work has a different rhythm from project work — it is continuous, and it is judged on what does not happen.
LOMYAI, data, digital engineering and intelligent automation.
What it took
The layer built on top, and the one most often built first. It is given its own owner so that it has to earn its place against a data foundation that exists, rather than being sold as a substitute for one.
People and growth
Capability and communication: the two places transformation is lost after the technology is right.
UECTraining, learning and capability development.
What it took
The answer to the most predictable failure in this work: a system goes live and nobody can operate it. Capability is treated as a deliverable rather than as a line item at the end of a project plan.
DigifyMarketing, creative, media and growth.
What it took
How a business explains itself. It sits beside capability rather than beside technology, because both are about whether people understand what has been built.
Industry and operations
Sectors specific enough that a general system does not survive contact with them.
GateUpConstruction, digital construction, facility management and operations.
What it took
The sector where the gap between a system diagram and a site is widest. A general system does not survive a bill of quantities, a variation order or a technician standing in front of an asset.
Five UpHealthcare technology and solutions.
What it took
A sector with its own regulation, its own data sensitivity and its own tolerance for downtime — which is to say, almost none.
FabrionIndustrial fabrication, manufacturing and precision engineering.
What it took
The one venture in the ecosystem that makes a physical thing. It keeps the rest of it honest about what an operating business is.
What it taught
What building taught me that advising did not
That a margin is made in the scoping conversation, not in delivery. That people leave over clarity more often than money. That governance is mostly the discipline of writing decisions down before they become disputes. And that an organisation acquires the habits of whoever set it up, which is a heavier responsibility than it first appears.
This is not the complete list. One or two further ventures are not shown, because their standing is not settled enough to state, and I would rather this page be accurate than exhaustive.