317. From Excel spreadsheet to AI company: the non-technical CEO's playbook

A non-technical CEO built a mobile network, then transformed a startup into an AI company. Here's exactly how he did it — and what he learned about investors.

Peter Scott has done things that most people would walk away from.

He was handed a business running on Power BI reports and a vision that was bigger than the technology could deliver. Two and a half years later, it's a fully AI-enabled platform. 

Before that, he built a mobile network from scratch — with no technical background — because the opportunity was too good to turn down.

This episode is his playbook.

Listen to learn:

• How to tell a good investor from a bad one — before you sign anything
• What it actually feels like to be a private equity CEO — the structured reporting, the pressure, and how to manage it
• How Broker Insights went from an Excel-based matchmaking tool to a fully AI-enabled data platform
• Why the data your company generates as a byproduct might be your most valuable asset
• How to lead a technical team when you have no technical background — and what Peter did when he sat in rooms he didn't understand

This episode is for you if:

• You are a founder thinking about raising money and want to know what you're getting into
• You are a non-technical leader running a tech company or AI initiative
• You are an investor who wants to understand what good partnership actually looks like from the CEO's side
• You want a real example of how a non-technical person builds fluency in a technical world

Peter Scott on LinkedIn.

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If you have been listening to this show, you already know you want to learn this stuff. A consulting session with Sophia is your chance to apply it to your specific situation — your idea, your company, your career.

[Book your session here — closes 1st September]

Timestamps:

• 00:24 – Welcome and free consulting session deadline
• 03:37 – What it's really like being a private equity CEO
• 08:30 – Cutthroat vs. collaborative PE firms
• 11:15 – How to spot good investors early on
• 14:55 – From retail to leading a mobile network
• 18:07 – Leading technical teams you don't fully understand
• 20:48 – From Excel spreadsheets to an AI-powered platform
• 25:14 – Becoming a product-led, data-led company
• 29:07 – Advice for leaders whose business depends on tech

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Transcript:

Host: Sophia Matveeva

Guest: Peter Scott

[00:00] Peter Scott: If they're fixated with numbers and Excel spreadsheets and that level of detail, then I think that's what you're going to get on the other side. If they're more interested in product, how you might go to market, what your customer base looks like — those kind of questions — then you might be getting more collaborative private equity support on the other side.

[00:24] Sophia Matveeva: Welcome to Tech for Non-Techies. This is a podcast for business leaders and non-technical founders building the future in the age of AI. Whether you've been in business for a hundred-plus years and you're looking to modernize, or whether you're building something new, this is the show for you. You'll learn how to come up with new ideas and make them come to life, no matter the size of your organization. I've taught tech and innovation at Oxford University, advise companies like Microsoft, and written for the Harvard Business Review. You're going to hear the frameworks and the thinking that I've built, tested, and taught at the highest level. And now it's your turn. Let's get started.

Hello, smart people, how are you today? Before we get into today's episode, I want to make sure you know that the deadline to get your free one-on-one consulting session with me is literally in less than two weeks. This is your opportunity to get my expert eyes on your specific situation and get my advice on how to reach your goal, whether that's building a new product, a tech venture, or anything you've heard about on this show. You can book your free session via the link in the show notes — remember, the link closes on the first of September. So if you've been thinking about it, stop thinking about it and book it.

Now let's talk about today's episode. Today's guest is Peter Scott. He's the CEO of Broker Insights, a company that helps insurance brokers spot opportunities and make better decisions about where to place their clients' risks. Peter's one of those rare people who has genuinely done it all — he's kind of a perfect non-technical leader in a tech business to learn from, because he began his career in retail, then he built a mobile network from scratch with no technical background, then he was brought in by a private equity firm to transform a business that was running on Power BI reports into a fully AI-enabled platform. And if you don't know what Power BI is — basically, he led a pretty radical AI transformation in a company on a really short timeline. Some of my listeners, I know you're tasked with doing similar things, so this one's definitely for you.

Peter has also navigated both the good kind of private equity and the kind that will make your life very difficult — yes, both sides exist. So in this episode, we talk about what it really feels like to be a private equity CEO, and how to tell the good investors from the ones that will cause you pain — and how to tell that before you sign anything. This is relevant to the investors in the audience, and to anybody who wants to raise funding. You'll also hear about how Broker Insights went from basic reporting tools to a fully AI-enabled platform, and what his advice is for any business leader running something that depends entirely on technology they basically can't build themselves. So if you're a founder, an investor, or a corporate leader trying to figure out how to lead in a tech-driven world, this one is definitely for you.

So let's learn from Peter. Peter, what's it like being a private equity CEO?

[03:37] Peter Scott: I guess private equity are like any other investor in some ways — they just have different needs. And I think any CEO needs to invest the right level of time in keeping their investors up to date and engaged. Specifically with private equity, there are all types in the market, and I think it's about understanding which particular type you're working with, what their requirements are, and then making sure the engagement and reporting you provide them supplies their needs. You have to recognize they also have investors, in a way, in their particular funds — so by keeping them up to date, they're able to better keep their investors up to date, keep the funds up to date, and make them successful too, which in turn helps you to be successful.

[04:35] Sophia Matveeva: I've always had this impression that being a CEO of a private equity–backed company is extra hard — but maybe that's because I've actually worked in a private equity firm myself, so I know what we used to do. I remember when I first started my career, working in a financial PR and lobbying firm in the City, we were working on an IPO of a Blackstone-owned company. I remember seeing the CEO, and he looked a bit blue, to be honest — this blue-green colour. I realized it was because the poor guy just hadn't slept for ages, he was working so much. I thought I was working a lot, but when I saw his workload, I thought, "Okay, well, he's going to deserve that money when he gets it." So — is it a fair assumption that being a CEO of a private equity–backed company is harder, or does it really depend on the investors?

[05:33] Peter Scott: I think it's harder from the point of view that it's more structured — the relationship tends to be more structured. Do you find that if you've got high-net-worth or individual investors in your business, that relationship tends to be more fluid, ongoing, and arguably a bit more casual?

Sophia Matveeva: Yeah, exactly.

Peter Scott: And I think private equity, probably reflecting their needs, does require a bit more structure. They expect reporting to be in a particular shape, they obviously expect board meetings to be in a particular format. I tend to find it comes in peaks and troughs — sometimes it's very full-on, and to your point about that CEO, sometimes it can involve burning the midnight oil, where it doesn't seem like you've got time to do anything other than meet the needs of the investor. But at other times it can be quite low-contact, providing you've got the right structure and process in place to deliver what they need.

[06:37] Sophia Matveeva: There's something I wanted to pick up on for our audience, because I know we've got founders and investors listening. I remember when I had investors in my first tech company who had basically been private equity investors, and they then invested in an early-stage company — the level of reporting they expected us to do was completely inappropriate for our stage. The kind of reporting they were used to was prepared by a bunch of analysts, almost like an investment banking department. We were a team of eight to ten people, and most of those were developers — so the person doing the reporting was essentially me. At first I was trying really hard, because I thought, "Okay, this is probably what I'm supposed to do." And then I remember thinking, "I'm spending so much of my time putting together these reports, which are frankly quite meaningless for a really early-stage company, but I don't have time to go out and speak to customers, speak to press, and deal with the product."

So just for our audience — if you're on the private equity side getting into early-stage investing, be aware you might make this mistake, and basically, don't. And if you're a founder finding yourself in a situation where the requests for data are becoming too much, have that conversation with your investors, because they might be making a mistake and be unaware of it.

Okay, so Peter, when we spoke earlier, you'd worked with PE houses that have been easier to work with, and some that have been more cutthroat. What's the difference? What does a cutthroat private equity owner look like versus a more friendly one — because I mean, it's all difficult — so what's really the difference?

[08:30] Peter Scott: I think for me, it's probably about, from a private equity perspective, how quickly they want to get value out of the business — that probably drives how they behave with that business. If I think about two private equity houses I've worked with, they'd fall into those camps you've just described. One clearly bought a business they anticipated getting value out of very, very quickly. The reality was, when I got involved with that business, there was an awful lot to do — a lot of operational things to change, a need to bring technology and digital awareness into the company — and all of those things take time. While you're doing that, from the private equity perspective, it was frustrating for them, because they felt the business could have moved faster. And the reality, from an operational perspective, was it couldn't. The consequence is they become more and more frustrated, the pressure grows, and that has a knock-on effect onto the management team and probably all the employees, as you're trying to deliver something that just isn't realistic.

On the flip side, we currently work with a private equity house that's very collaborative, who appreciate that things take time. It's not that they don't challenge in the same way or have expectations in the same way, but they give you time to set out how long something might take and what plans you're prepared to put in place to deliver them — and then they're prepared to be patient and let you do that. I think there's a sort of trust that has to happen too. Both the good and the bad, in my experience, need to understand they've dropped the CEO in for a reason, they've got a management team for a reason — and there needs to be a level of trust that neither side wants to take longer than required. But that's where trust comes in — they need to believe you'll actually deliver it for them in the end.

[10:45] Sophia Matveeva: So when you decided to work with this PE firm the second time, having already had that harder experience — how could you tell these were the good guys? Now you're working with them, you already have a track record, so you know. But in the early-stage discussions, how do you know you're about to get involved with someone whose approach you agree with, versus someone who's like, "Let's just get in there, load up with debt, and then flip"?

[11:15] Peter Scott: Yeah, I think it's actually quite early-stage. I'd encourage anybody taking investment into the business — whether an operational CEO or a founder — to take time to actually build a relationship before deciding which private equity house to go with. It's important to build that relationship, and I think you begin to get a sense of it during your early-stage engagement and investment presentations to those private equity houses — what kind of questions do they ask, how detailed do they want to be, what kind of information are they looking for. You can begin to tell where a private equity house might ultimately end up. If they're fixated with numbers and Excel spreadsheets and that level of detail, that's probably what you're going to get on the other side. If they're more interested in product, how you might go to market, what your customer base looks like — those kinds of questions — then you might be getting more collaborative support on the other side.

I think you just have to decide for yourself, through those early stages, what kind of relationship you're going to get, and who you want to work with — who's going to give you the best outcome, not just in terms of return, but in terms of supporting the management team, getting involved in the business collaboratively, being engaging — those are the things I prefer. But I think it all happens right at the very beginning, figuring out who you want to work with and who you don't. And one of the challenges is that quite often, at an early stage, you might only have one or two to choose from. So I'd encourage anybody in that situation, rather than going with the only one you've got, to take your time if you can, and try to get some others you could almost "interview," work with, and build a relationship with, so you can figure out who's going to give your business the best kind of relationship to get where you want to be.

[13:27] Sophia Matveeva: I was thinking of dating analogies as you were speaking — audience, I think some of you have definitely been in situations where you have this feeling that this probably isn't a good idea, but you really want it to work out, so you close your eyes to the things that are clearly red flags. You can do that with investors too — you're speaking to somebody who's really focused on the Excel spreadsheet, but you're like, "No, no, they're going to be collaborative, once we sign they'll really care about product innovation." And what Peter's saying is: don't lie to yourself, see them for what they are — even if you really want the money. I think that's the problem — when you need to raise a round and you've got maybe one really interested party but you're just not vibing with them, that's really difficult. It's usually solved by getting more interested parties, but that's easier said than done.

So, Peter, I'd love to get into your own journey as a non-technical leader, because you started working in retail and now you lead a tech company. You went from being in a pure retailer to leading a mobile network, basically overnight. Did you expect you'd be out of your depth, or was this a total surprise?

[14:55] Peter Scott: No, I think I knew I'd be out of my depth when it happened. I guess life's a series of opportunities, isn't it — you either take them or you stay in your safe territory, and those were the options for me. I had a brilliant opportunity when I was with Carphone Warehouse to develop a mobile network from the ground up — that mobile network, ten years later, still exists and still trades in the UK. I've always been the kind of person that, whatever opportunity comes along, you throw yourself at it, because life's too short — you need to go after everything, and some of it works out and some doesn't, but at least you've given it a go. I had absolutely no idea how to set up a mobile network, but I threw myself into it, and over twelve months we built it and launched it. That was really my pivot into the technology world, and I'll forever be grateful I did it, because technology is moving at such a pace and is so exciting today that you'd want to be part of it, rather than where I was before, in the retail world — which I dearly loved, but is quite one-dimensional.

[16:11] Sophia Matveeva: I'm curious — how did you get the job of CEO of a mobile network when you had no relevant experience?

[16:21] Peter Scott: It was an internal move, attached to the business I was already running as a CEO. We had an opportunity from a larger network — we were going to set up what's called a virtual network, which effectively sits on a major network's infrastructure. It was an opportunity that would have added significant value to the business I was already running, and it was too big an opportunity for us to turn down. So it was a case of throwing ourselves completely into it.

[16:57] Sophia Matveeva: I think this is actually a really good example of something I say to people who want to work in a tech company and transition into a senior leadership role — yes, you can go for a job at Amazon or Meta, the obvious ones, but you could also join a traditional business and go into its tech division, and build a career there. For example, you could join Nike — when I think of Nike, I think of shoes, athletic wear, Michael Jordan — but the Nike Run app is actually a really big deal. The digital transformation they've had there — that part of Nike is really like a B2C tech company. So you could totally work for a traditional business and build your tech career at the same time.

So Peter, when you sat in rooms with really technical people and didn't understand what was going on, how did you manage to lead them when they were doing something completely incomprehensible to you?

[18:07] Peter Scott: Yeah, I think the first thing is it was actually quite important for me personally to be in the rooms. It would have been very easy to bring on board a number of consultants, surround myself with experts, and just let them work away. But I really wanted to immerse myself in what was happening and understand it, because I think that was the best way I could both influence it to make sure the outcome was right for us, and also understand what we were building from the ground up. So you're right that it meant I was in rooms where some of what was being discussed I didn't understand. But I sat there and copiously took notes, and outside the room, asked the experts exactly what they were talking about, really deep-diving to understand it. So bizarrely, today I couldn't build a network — but I could describe it to you. I could describe exactly what you need to think about, how you go about it — and that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to immerse myself and get really stuck into it.

[19:19] Sophia Matveeva: It's really interesting to see how that happens. I remember hiring a developer a couple of years ago, and I said to him, "I'm a non-technical founder, just so you know who you're going to be working with." And he said, "Well, given the questions and the scope and the tasks, and given our discussion so far, I wouldn't really call you a non-technical founder." I was so surprised — I can't build anything, if you write code I'm not going to be able to say, "Yes, this is good" or "This is bad." But once you get to a level where you can actually describe things, speak the language, and collaborate with somebody, people don't even know you can't build anything — unless, obviously, you run a company called Tech for Non-Techies and tell everybody.

So I'm curious — you're now running a company that started off basically with Excel, and now it's really AI-powered. I'd love to understand the origin story, because we have a lot of non-technical founders listening who would want to understand: how does a company go from being built with a really simple tool that we all have, to becoming a tech company with private equity investors? What are the steps? Because I think many people want to do that, and if they see successful examples, that's both inspiring and useful.

[20:48] Peter Scott: Yeah, so — just to be clear, I'm not a founder, I'm the CEO who joined the business about two and a half years ago, but the business has actually existed for about eight years. The two founders who started it were both subject-matter experts in insurance, which is where our business sits — we provide data and analytics tools into the insurance industry. They spotted a gap in the market, came out of what they were doing, and started this business, initially with an angel investor that enabled them to get going. Then they used their network in the industry they'd spent their whole lives in to deploy the early-stage product, which was effectively a matchmaking product that allowed an insurance broker to find the right insurer to take on a particular risk on behalf of commercial customers. As a byproduct of that, they began to accumulate data — and it's really the data that's allowed the business to evolve into what it is today.

The early-stage momentum they managed to get in the industry meant they went for Series A relatively quickly, within about three years of starting, and that's where private equity investment came into the business. Today we've still got the same private equity investor, the same original angel investor, and a number of other high-net-worth individuals involved — that's where our financial investment has come from. But the data was really key to what we have today, because there was a point where the business realized it could begin to build other products, other reporting, based on all the data in its database — providing the insurance industry with new things to look at, better-quality information. That's brought us to the products and services we provide today.

I joined two and a half years ago because the founders got to a point where they needed technical leadership to scale up — they needed somebody to come on board who could help operationalize the vision they had for the business. That's the journey we've been on over the last two and a half years — taking the business from a Power BI–based product to now being a fully AI-enabled platform, servicing the industry and building on the foundations the founders originally put in place.

[23:40] Sophia Matveeva: I want to return to that data point, because it reminds me of a conversation I had with a corporate client recently — one of the biggest consumer companies in the US. They were saying, "Because we have so many transactions with our customers, we really know what people want, we have a lot of first-party data — and now we're wondering, what can we do with our first-party data? How can we use it to create a B2B product, essentially using this byproduct to make more money?" I think this is a really interesting thing for companies to do — you start off with one thing, you're selling it, understanding consumer or buyer behavior, and out of that you're generating a lot of data, out of which you can then make an even more profitable, scalable product — which sounds like exactly what you're doing.

So when you joined the company two and a half years ago, you said fifteen percent of the people were tech people, and now tech people are fifty percent of the workforce. That's a really big transformation of a team in a relatively short amount of time. How did that go — was it smooth? Were the non-technical people like, "Yeah, sure, come in, back-end engineer, I have no idea what you're doing, let's collaborate"? Or how did it go?

[25:14] Peter Scott: I think the good thing was that the board and founders recognized they had a vision for the direction the business needed to go in from a technology perspective — that was a good starting point for me, because it meant I didn't have to worry about taking people on a journey or convincing or persuading people this was the right direction. The business had already decided that's what it needed to do, although obviously we've had to take everybody on that change journey.

The fundamental thing that's changed is that what was happening was our sales and commercial team were meeting customers, customers were asking for particular products and reports, and the sales and commercial team would bring them back to the business, and the developers and tech teams would build them. There was no product team within the business at all at that point — it was all very reactionary, not really thinking about what they had in terms of a data asset and how it could be deployed differently.

The real change we've made over the last couple of years is that we've become product- and data-led. We now innovate and produce new things that we, via our sales and commercial team, take to our customers and deploy — rather than the other way around. And the consequence of that is we don't need as big a commercial team constantly meeting people and developing new things they bring back to base to be built. Instead, we have an emphasis on product, technology, and data people who produce amazing things, which our commercial and sales people then find easier to sell and deploy to our customers.

[27:09] Sophia Matveeva: It's so interesting you say that, because I've literally just been talking to a company that's at the start of that journey, and they're finding it so difficult. It's a company with a really, really good B2B sales team — the sales team go and get corporate contracts for their tech product, then come back and tell the engineering and product team, "This is what we need to build." As a result, this company has lots of different versions of the same product, each slightly different — a lot of cost, basically a mess, not a product-driven company at all. Now the founder is thinking, "Hang on, how did this happen — where we're essentially duplicating the product all the time with tiny changes for this corporate client and that one?"

So they're trying to change it into a product-focused company, but from what I'm seeing, it requires real bravery from the founder, because he's thinking, "Do I change my management team?" He's got a management team that's been really good, really loyal, with good B2B sales relationships — they win B2B awards and so on. So he's thinking, "If I go and turn this into a product-focused company, it's going to be a completely different thing with a different team." There's definitely some soul-searching going on, and I appreciate what you went through — it's a difficult journey, and even deciding to go on that journey is a hard decision to make.

So what's your advice, Peter, to business leaders who are leading tech companies, or leading AI and digital transformation — where the thing you're leading heavily depends on something you can't do yourself?

[29:07] Peter Scott: I think my advice would be, as I did back with that telco network, to immerse yourself in it. I don't think you can have it happening remotely from you while you're still trying to manage and lead the business without really understanding it. I think you've got to get into the meetings, get into the technical meetings — even if you're outsourcing — get involved in those bigger projects as much as you possibly can. Because you'll never be able to code or build a tech stack from scratch, but you will understand the fundamentals of it, and you'll understand — say you want to take a product to market — what might be involved in actually doing that, what kind of questions to ask, and what kind of checks and balances to put in place.

That would be my advice, because if you're a technology-based business — or honestly, any business these days, you used the example of Nike earlier — you can't ignore technology, and you can't ignore what's going on in the wider world. The faster you get involved, begin to learn about it, and understand how it might impact your business, the faster you're going to be able to make significant headway as an organization.

[30:30] Sophia Matveeva: Peter, you've just inadvertently advertised listening to the Tech for Non-Techies podcast, which now has more than three hundred episodes basically about this. Yes, there are interviews with leaders like Peter, but also lots of episodes where I'm teaching you a specific concept — so listen to this podcast. And Peter, you've also inadvertently advertised bringing Tech for Non-Techies into your organization, or just taking one of our courses, because this is literally what we specialize in — helping people who are non-technical succeed and thrive in an age changed by technology.

I'd love to leave it on that note. Thank you very much, Peter, for joining us and sharing your wisdom. And audience, have a wonderful day, and I shall be back in your delightful smart ears next week. Ciao.

Peter Scott: Thank you.