A View from the Top with the Founder of Gospel Technology Ian Smith

The tech founder tells Andy Martin about his vision for the future of data and how to make the internet trustworthy again

Smith works with aerospace and pharmaceutical companies (Gospel Technology)

Sometimes failing your maths A-level can be the making of you. “I think I got an ‘N’ – for near-miss,” says Ian Smith, at his HQ off Oxford Street. Which has not stopped him founding Gospel Technology, mastering the mysteries of blockchain, and wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the word “DEUS”.

Now 40, the tech CEO was born in Cumbria, and retains the accent of the northwest, redolent of hills and dales. “All of my bloodline have been craftsmen,” he says – carpenters, metal workers, shaping “tangible” things. His father worked on oilrigs and at Sellafield. “I’m an engineer too,” he adds. “But I’ve gone more intangible. The trick is finding the tangibility in software.”

After studying geology at Sheffield University, Smith got a job working for the British Antarctic Survey on the Y2K issue. It was 1999 and everyone was panicking about a potential technology meltdown. “I found I quite liked tech,” he says. From there he went to HSBC to set up their internet banking platform. “No one had a mobile phone back then – we actually had to make physical connections.” He shakes his head with a kind of amazement.