Then and now: Dan Thomson

In a new feature for Bdaily, Dan Thomson, founder and chief executive of tech firm Sensay, reflects on his career, from his first role to the present day, highlighting the lessons he has learned from his personal and professional evolution. 

You’re the founder and chief executive of Sensay. What does your role entail?

My headline focus is to ensure we’re always scaling and innovating, given we’re a firm in a highly competitive and fast-growing industry.

So, I spend a lot of my time meeting with investors and enterprises who would benefit from deploying our digital replica technology.

But I also spend as much time as possible with our fantastic team, brainstorming new initiatives and products, and ensuring we’re maintaining a collaborative and innovation-first culture as we grow.

Culture is a particularly important focus for me, as we have a team based all over the world – so I’m often pulling together our next meet-up, whether that’s in Thailand or Morocco.

Did you always want to work in tech? Or did you have other ambitions when you were growing up?

I don’t remember always wanting to work in tech, but I’ve always been fascinated by building things, and I think that’s rubbed off to become a fascination in building software and technology platforms.

My first entrepreneurial gig was actually as a party organiser while I was at school.

I would arrange everything, including the (non-alcoholic) beverages, and play the host in my parents’ garage, much to their annoyance.

So, I’ve always been an entrepreneur at heart.

But that actually became my real job when I founded a series of food and beverage businesses after I left school, the most successful being Supernatural.

It started out as a small series of pop-ups and market stalls, and within a couple of years we were an international chain of restaurants and bars across Europe, and were selling out of top-end stores like Fortnum & Mason and Selfridges. 

It was around this time the idea for Sensay first came about, after an accident left me without my memories for a few days.

It was a stark reminder of the importance of memories and the retention of knowledge, so I set out to find a way to preserve those things indefinitely.

That’s what Sensay’s digital replicas of humans were first built for – and still are built for.

But we also realised this technology was hugely commercialisable across different sectors and uses, so we’ve expanded our offering to include more enterprise-suitable employee replicas that can automate tasks and share knowledge more effectively.

What was your first job – and did you enjoy it?

I left home when I was 17 and jumped straight into the hospitality world, working as a mixologist at a series of trendy bars in Shoreditch.

I turned out to be pretty good at it and won several awards, working my way up to the best London bars. 

I loved it, and it was far better for me than working a dead-end corporate job, but I knew I had to start my own thing and work for myself, which is when I started my own series of food and beverage businesses.

Some were successful, others less so.

But they gave me the skills and experience I still apply to Sensay every day.

Were there any mentors or individuals that helped shape your career? And are you still applying lessons you learned then to your workforce of today?

The support and advice I received from colleagues and business mentors during the early days of my entrepreneurial journey have stayed with me throughout every step of my career. 

Everything I learned from them helped to lay the foundations for Sensay, from how to build and support a team to how to handle setbacks and failure. 

It’s prepared me for any curveballs that come our way and helped me to foster a really positive working environment, which is something I place a lot of emphasis on. 

You’ve seen many changes to the employment world across your career – how do you see the workplace evolving in years to come?

Artificial intelligence will undoubtedly shape the future of the workplace, and for the better, I hope. 

It has the potential to hand time and freedom back to employees.

It can balance the scales and make sure work and life are on equal terms, giving time back to people for them to invest in their hobbies, relationships and personal development.

But it can also free up time for more value-adding work that involves creativity and innovation, instead of repetitive box-ticking.

The future of work is one where artificial intelligence and humans work side by side as colleagues and collaborators, uplifting each other’s unique skills and abilities.

I don’t think artificial intelligence is a replacement for human talent – it’s a way of maximising it. 

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