When Checkatrade handed Gorden Pretorius the opportunity to become its CTO, it was the culmination of a 20-year journey for the South African, who has explored so many technology roles across wildly different industry sectors.
Having worked as an engineering consultant in Johannesburg straight out of university, Pretorius took advantage of the special UK visa that gave South Africans the right to work and travel in the country for a full year. Understanding that the UK boasted a much broader ecosystem of tech companies, he jumped at the chance to join it.
He never looked back. During seven years at Cergis Software, ending up as its head of development, Pretorius oversaw cutting-edge agency work for some of the world’s biggest brands, including Fiat, Google, and Coca-Cola. Then, as head of engineering at Just Eat, he led large teams handling a huge volume of transactions.
From there, internet-based greetings card company Moonpig came calling to get his help with its rapid post-pandemic transformation. After re-platforming the company’s entire technology stack, Gorden then became CTO at Typeform, a SaaS company specialising in online form building and online surveys, before Checkatrade sought him out. Helming digital transformation at the UK’s leading forum connecting homeowners with approved local tradespeople, it’s a new challenge for the former South African engineering graduate – but, as he explains in the following interview edited for length and clarity, one he’s approaching with typical gusto.
From starting out in Johannesburg 20 years ago to becoming the new CTO of Checkatrade, you’ve had a multi-faceted career. What determined your choices of what role to take on next?
There is a real mix of sectors and types of business in my career because I was always following people rather than domains or sectors. When I interview for a job, I’m looking at whether someone is a great leader whom I can learn from. I’m asking what is interesting and unique about the opportunity, and what is the purpose and value of their work. I always navigate towards people.
How has that variety of experience helped you to prepare for your current role?
I came from a consulting background, which I enjoyed because every client brings a new problem to solve. When I graduated, I was thrown into the deep end of the business, which gave me broad exposure to the kinds of pain points that companies experienced. I learnt a lot at the very start of my engineering journey.
At Cergis, I had to learn and deliver quickly. What resonated with me was the move from being an individual contributor to being on the managerial track. It was the focus on improving efficiency that really hit home, so I gravitated towards running the development team. That team element has remained important ever since, so I focus on creating an environment that helps people become better engineers.
At Just Eat, the scale of the technology platform was significant, so the scale of the problems was different. There, I learnt great engineering. Then Moonpig’s CTO, Peter Donlon, approached me. I felt that I could learn a lot from him. The new CEO had dramatically changed the company, and I was brought on to re-platform the entire tech stack. It was a great way to apply my previous learning in a safe environment created by the CTO.
At Typeform, there was a very different approach to problem-solving, and SaaS was something I had not done before, so I saw it as a growth opportunity. I had to ask myself an important question: what does good look like as a CTO without the safety net of being VP of Engineering? I signed up with a 200-person organisation that aimed to grow their team rapidly to 400 engineers in six months. Over time, though, the changing economy shifted its emphasis to efficiency over growth. That kind of pivoting is becoming more important, as things change more rapidly than ever these days.
How do you define the CTO role? And have all the organisations you’ve worked for agreed with that definition?
The role of the CTO is to create a high-performance organisation, though the definition of that will differ between companies. Some focus more on talent, others on delivery. I believe that if the people are engaged and you have a great culture, you can do great things. Consequently, the CTO role should focus as much on people as it does on technology. I am not just looking at the number of releases from the tech team. I am looking for an investment in culture, delivery, and talent. The tech is the easy part with the right people.
What have been the biggest challenges you’ve faced so far at Checkatrade?
Challenges usually arise from the stage a company is at in its development and its size. There is a lot of commonality in terms of technology problems between sectors, though there are nuances. A tech problem sometimes comes from the technology, but may also come from the culture or the type of investments that are made, so those problems need to be solved first.
When I spoke to Checkatrade’s CEO, I was mesmerised by the opportunity to impact people’s livelihoods. There is a transformative journey here. We are building a marketplace to service a huge part of the UK economy. Firstly, we are becoming a tech-first company. I want to build its reputation as one of the UK’s leading tech-first companies. We need to find out how to advocate for what we are doing and attract the right talent. Secondly, we want to build a marketplace that transforms how the industry works.
What were your first steps towards achieving those goals?
When I first landed, it was about understanding what was going on in this space. I saw very quickly that we have good people with good intent, and there is ambition to do the right things for customers. The structure of the R&D department was what stood in the way, so we restructured that and adopted an agile collaboration framework similar to Scrum. Now, all the teams are working to the same cadence, so projects start and finish at the same time. We are in the second cycle now, and it has already changed how we deliver software.
People want to do great work, so rolling out the changes was simpler than I expected. Change always challenges the status quo, which is scary, so you have to take people with you on the journey. It does not have to be perfect at every stage. You can take your learning into the next cycle. Strive for perfection, yes – but let’s just see how it goes.
We want to transform this sector, so we need a platform that we can rapidly deliver and iterate quickly. We operate on principles that drive decisions as you approach the end state, but allow you to pivot en route. Decision-making is based on tenets and principles, not on absolutes. We are learning along the way with an agile mindset.
What are the key skills that a CTO needs today, and how do you think that skill set has changed over time?
That has evolved a lot. Today, you need things like comfort with ambiguity, risk tolerance, and the ability to navigate through change. Ten years ago, the tech ecosystem was smaller and fewer tools were being adopted. Now, there are many more tools, and AI is creating a rapidly evolving landscape. That changes the kinds of problems we face. The ability to iterate rapidly is crucial, and so is the ability to define a good culture and a growth mindset.
What forces are shaping the future of Checkatrade, and how do they influence the company’s technology strategy?
New regulations from the CMA will help build trust in the sector, but they have come in very suddenly, and we have had to adapt quickly. We are also looking at diversifying our revenue stream, which could involve AI-based drone surveys of properties and other types of innovation.
AI puts people in two extreme camps. There is the doomsday group who believes there will be no engineers within a year and 90% of code will be written by AI. Then you people who see AI as a tool to enable people to do their best work, collaborate better, and solve customer problems faster. I say, focus on the opportunity, not the doomsday scenario and equip ourselves to navigate this upcoming transformation. The more you use AI, the more you find the uses for it. It is one of the few technologies where you don’t need to find a use case first – just use it and see what it can do.
Over the next few years, what do you hope to achieve as Checkatrade’s CTO? What are your criteria for success?
It all comes back to positioning ourselves as a tech-first company because there is an incredible story to tell. There is such a huge impact that we can drive in terms of people’s homes and livelihoods, so we need to understand how technology can drive that story. When people think of us, they think of the market through which home improvement is done, but I also want them to see us as a tech company. That will be what success looks like for me.
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