Cecily Motley is the co-founder and chief executive of Harriet, an AI-powered self-service agent for HR and ops teams. Launched in 2023, Harriet raised £1.2m in a funding round in December that year.
In this week’s Founder in Five Q&A, Motley discusses operating in uncertainty, the success of Shopify and the failure of NFTs.
Which company’s growth story are you most impressed with? (can’t be your own)
I think Shopify is just a great product that solves an obvious and real problem. And best of all it enables other businesses to grow. I would imagine they are currently feeling pretty exposed in the consumer crunch, but I think they will weather the storm because Shopify adds such obvious value to so many different businesses and ideas.
What advice would you give to a first-time founder?
Learn to operate in uncertainty. You’ve got to embrace it. If you don’t, building something from nothing is going to be a miserable process.
Who’s a leader you admire in your industry?
I’m a big fan of Bill McDermott, the CEO of ServiceNow (and it’s not just because he wears 80s rockstar leather jackets). He is one of the only enterprise leaders I have seen that consistently nails brand and effortlessly communicates value and simplicity, especially considering that it’s for what is actually quite an amorphous product.
What’s a fact about yourself that people might find surprising?
I’ve taken up Thai Chi. With swords.
Which hyped-up technology do you think is doomed to fail?
It’s already kind of failed but NFTs…remember them? It was trying to solve a real problem around creative IP and ownership that is only getting much worse with GenAI. But if you struggle to explain your idea to the vast majority of people, I can’t see how it can possibly be the next big thing.
Founder in Five – a UKTN Q&A series with the entrepreneurs behind the UK’s innovative tech startups, scaleups and unicorns – is published every Friday.
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