Sport and business are fired by the drive to succeed, guest blog by Legado Founder and CEO Josif Grace

Like everyone else, I’ve found myself glued to the TV watching some of the incredible sports this summer has had to offer. Alcaraz winning Wimbledon for the second successive year, a decisive Spanish victory in the Euro’s, Hamilton clinching his ninth Silverstone F1 win, Ireland claiming victory over South Africa in the rugby, and Bob McIntyre’s win at the Scottish Open. 

When we see these accomplishments it’s easy to take them at face value, but the level of grit, determination, adaptability, and teamwork needed to deliver these results cannot be underestimated. 

When I look at the work that underpinned the continued progress of Legado into one of Scotland’s fastest growing technology companies, I gain an ever-greater level of appreciation for what these top-level athletes give in order to compete. There are a lot of parallels between the relentless path to competing at the highest level of sports, and growing a small business into a scaling technology company.

The past six years have seen our team navigate innumerable challenges as we’ve gone from an initial idea that sparked during my time in Silicon Valley, to powering the interactions between some of the UK’s largest institutions and their millions of customers. That said, with global ambitions, even these achievements mean that we’re only just getting through the group stages right now (maybe next time for Scotland’s football team).

When I look back at those challenges, I wonder how Lewis Hamilton must feel as he’s racing around Silverstone. Anything can go wrong, at any moment, from any direction, and you won’t know what it is until it happens.  Rationalising our experience, I think how lucky we are to have such a talent-dense, diverse, and passionate team to navigate those challenges. It would be a mistake to think that Scotland doesn’t have the human capital to build world-class companies. I work with these people every day.

You see that talent manifest in how we've spent the last couple of years evolving our proposition, originally envisioned as a ‘digital vault’ for life planning back when I was working in Silicon Valley. Through new features, and the introduction of an interactive hub, we now help businesses to digitally optimise interactions and communications with customers in a truly modern and intuitive way.

It’s taken a lot of hard work to go through that evolution, but we’re fortunate to now get to lift some trophies as a result, with UK and global corporates making use of our tech. Continuously cheering us on from the stands have been major financial institutions and investors like FNZ and Souter Investments. Their support and strategic insights have been instrumental in enabling us to scale our operations and bring our product to market with some of the biggest financial services brands in the UK. That kind of hands-on investment and guidance is something that Scotland needs more of.

I’m excited about the future and the opportunities it holds for Scotland’s tech ecosystem, in which we are a constituent. We’ve got several more big brand names set to join our roster later this year, and a team that is constantly expanding with new talent, new perspectives, and new innovations. In the meantime, I’ll be cheering on Team GB in Paris, full of appreciation for their relentless pursuit.