Nicolai Thomson: Commercially Grounded and Built for the AI Era
Nicolai Thomson: Commercially Grounded, Technically Ambitious, and Built for the AI Era
I’ve known Nicolai Thomson for almost 10 years, going back to our time at Workbooks. He was selling CRM while I was implementing it, and together we worked across the NHS, Metropolitan Police, charities, and SMEs in the UK — helping organisations structure their customer base and engage more effectively with the people they served.
Nicolai Thomson
Commercial Strategy
Founding & Scaling
Institutional Knowledge
What has always stood out about Nicolai is his ability to connect strategy, sales, product, and technology without losing sight of the underlying commercial problem. He doesn’t build for novelty; he builds for fit, traction, and scale.
Our Connection Goes Back to Workbooks
I first got to know Nicolai when we were both at Workbooks. He was on the commercial side selling CRM, while I was on the implementation side making sure those systems actually worked in practice.
We worked across serious, real-world environments — from the NHS and Metropolitan Police to charities and growing SMEs — helping teams organise their customer data, strengthen engagement, and create better operational visibility. That experience matters, because it meant the work was never theoretical. It was always about solving practical problems for organisations that needed structure, accountability, and outcomes.
Even then, Nicolai had the instinct to start with the customer problem first — and only then think about technology, positioning, and growth.
That same trait runs through everything he’s done since: a commercial mindset, strong founder energy, and a very clear sense that product has to serve reality, not just ambition.
A GTM-First Way of Building with AI
Nicolai’s current focus on AI feels like a natural extension of how he has always worked. He is commercially grounded and GTM-first, which means the problem and the ICP are understood before anything is designed or built. That is a disciplined way to approach AI, and it’s one of the reasons his perspective cuts through the noise.
He is particularly well suited to working with entrepreneurs who have already proven demand with an early “vibe-coded” product but now need to build properly, with systems that can scale, operate reliably, and support real growth.
“I think deeply about AI and the need to retain and extend institutional knowledge in business and life. I believe our experiences, emotions and values influence how we make decisions for the firm. AI doesn’t understand that.”
That point is more important than it first appears. Nicolai is not treating AI as a replacement for judgment. He is thinking about how AI can support businesses without stripping away the human context, memory, and decision-making logic that often sit underneath the best operators and teams.
Built Across AI, Fintech, Sports Tech, and Commercial Growth
Most recently, Nicolai co-founded Jenesys AI, an AI bookkeeping platform serving UK and US accounting practices. The company reduced month-end close from 30 days to 48 hours for firms with service revenue of roughly £2m to £50m, while raising £3m from angels and VCs across the UK and US.
At Jenesys, the team built Ark, a multi-modal LVLM with adaptable model weights, as part of a broader hybrid services-and-tech solution aimed at increasing revenue per employee inside larger and high-growth accounting practices.
Before that, he founded Jukes, a sports technology company whose headsets helped 3,000 athletes improve with real-time technical correction from coaches, up to 750m away, above or below water. The product was used in 15 countries and by two Olympians.
Today, Nicolai describes his work at BTR Digital as managing 32 AI agents to plan, design, build, and maintain software and AI memory systems – which says a great deal about how practically and deeply he is engaging with this space.
- ✓Co-founded Jenesys AI and helped reduce month-end close from 30 days to 48 hours
- ✓Raised £3m from UK and US angels and VCs
- ✓Built Jukes into a sports technology business used in 15 countries
- ✓Now operating at the frontier of practical AI systems and memory-driven software design
Why Nicolai Is Particularly Relevant Now
There are lots of people talking about AI right now. Far fewer understand how to connect problem definition, ICP clarity, commercial traction, product discipline, and execution in a way that actually holds together.
That is what makes Nicolai relevant. He has worked in sales, led commercial teams, built ventures, raised capital, and shipped products in markets where the work had to stand up in the real world. He understands how to go from demand signal to something operationally credible.
In practical terms, he brings together:
- ➤Commercial instinct and GTM discipline
- ➤Founder-level urgency and execution
- ➤A practical view of AI as systems design, not just tooling
- ➤An understanding that institutional knowledge is often a business’s hidden advantage
In short, Nicolai is one of those rare people who can move comfortably across strategy, sales, product, and AI — while keeping the work grounded in actual commercial reality.
Clear thinking matters more than AI hype
What I’ve always respected about Nicolai is that he combines commercial sharpness with real builder instinct. In a market full of noise, that balance is rare — and increasingly valuable.