hedgehog lab

As the co-founder and CEO of hedgehog lab, I grew the company from 3 people in a small corner of the North East of England in 2011 to around a 100+ people globally with major presence in the UK & US.

I'm responsible for 4 key things in my role,

- Culture. I believe that culture eats strategy for breakfast and I see myself as the custodian of culture ensuring we always have a north star in everything we do based on our culture framework of purpose, vision, mission & values. 

Key achievements include driving our employee experience programme that has resulted in a rating of 4.9 on Glassdoor and 100% CEO approval rating for me. I'm also a champion of DEI and wellbeing, starting and running key initiatives like our mental health support programs, flexible working and wellbeing support.

- Strategy. Having a great culture by and itself does not drive business performance, so I spend a significant amount of time defining and executing strategy in collaboration with my brilliant management team.

Key achievements include pivoting to mobile specialism to capture the demand & establishing,  growing a US presence now accounting for 40% of our revenue, and raising £2m+ in funding from Private Equity Investors.

- Growth. I have led the commercial and growth teams at hedgehog lab since inception including directly owning the Head of Sales role ensuring hedgehog lab posted CAGR of nearly 60% in our scale up journey. I've also been the de facto CMO of the company setting and driving the marketing vision. Currently lead the Growth teams consisting of Sales, Marketing & Client Engagement.

Key achievements include achieving a #1 global ranking for mobile app development with analysts Clutch, being named in the Financial Times Top 1000 Fastest Growing European companies 2 years in a row and raising Private Equity funding to drive scale up growth.

- Governance. As the CEO and the majority individual shareholder on the Board of Directors, I work with other Directors and investors.

Chief Executive Officer

Subject Matter Expert for Financial Services at hedgehog lab due to my expertise advising and supporting banks, insurance, wealth management and fintech customers like Aviva, AJ Bell, Atom Bank, Coventry Building Society, Cynergy Bank, Davidson Kempner, Tesco Bank, and many others.

My expertise in helping craft and work through critical digital transformation, CX initiatives and technology programmes helps me be the "voice" of FS in the business.

I believe that the biggest problem facing transformation in FS isn't a technological but a human one of culture change, mindset, skills and building high-performance teams.

I'm also one of those people that is excited at reading the FCA's annual priorities on a weekend than a magazine

Financial Services Lead

Co-founded hedgehog lab to create a place that empowers talented people to do the best work of their lives. Constantly working hard to live up to our purpose as a culture custodian.

Co-Founder

equiwatt

Supporting this exciting start-up with strategic advice on go to market strategy, marketing approach and growth plans. A great chance to combine by passion of the sustainability/EV market with digital product.

Advisor

PNE is a North East based business support organisation that enables positive social and economic change by supporting businesses to start, grow and thrive in an ethical and sustainable way. I am delighted to join the Board as a Non-exec bringing my experience of sales, marketing and scaling high growth business to help PNE set ambitious growth targets and facilitate a wider impact for businesses in the region.

Non Executive Director

BIMA (British Interactive Media Association)

Providing mentorship and advice to agency leaders & CEOs who are going through their scale-up journey using my experience and battle-tested frameworks.

Mentor

Netsells

Acquired Netsells to accelerate our Phase 2 journey to become the most respected tech consultancy in the world, backed by UK’s best growth investors, BGF.

New College Durham

New College Durham is one of the largest FE and HE colleges in the North East named by OFSTED as an Outstanding performer and with a reputation for being financially well managed and putting students first. I am a Governor on the Board of Governors helping guide the College in strategy, digital-first focus, employability for students and overseeing general governance. It's great to bring my diverse background and experience to help support the talent of tomorrow.

Governor

Mentor on the BT Ethnically Diverse Mentorship Programme helping mentor the next generation of leaders from minority backgrounds, while giving mentees a unique opportunity to develop their personal brand and receive support in furthering their careers. A chance for me to drive the DEI agenda and develop future diverse leaders.

Cheer.One

Advising a HR SaaS product start-up on Product Strategy, Culture & Growth.

Strategic Advisor

TH_NK

Experienced in leading projects and delivering enterprise solutions in the financial services sector with a focus on Microsoft based solutions.

Role on projects:
- Defining overall system architecture and design
- Defining development standards and naming conventions
- Working with Project Leads and Project Managers to plan and create specifications.
- Define interfaces
- Define system integration points
- Work with team on requirements analysis and early systems analysis and design stages.

Technical Consultant

Was responsible for overseeing the internal planning, detailed design and delivery of quality code. This included working collaboratively with key project stakeholders within the company, third-party suppliers and the client. 

Responsibilities

Worked with key stakeholders to define internal schedule, technical deliverables and resource requirements.
Lead the team to develop quality design and code for the project.
Participated in hands-on development as part of the team effort.
Contributed to the ongoing architectural evolution in an architectural role.
Took ownership of all technical deliverables.
Optimised workload by assigning tasks to developers based on strengths and interests.
Worked with Project Management and Account Director to ensure project delivery is of high quality.
Worked with third party suppliers and manage technical channels of communication.
Attended technical reviews and meetings with client and third party suppliers.

Lead Analyst / Developer

Spark Response

Involved in building internal web-based apps for the logistics and operational departments of the company.

Web Consultant

I am a passionate and experienced entrepreneur in the digital and software industry, with over 16 years of leading and growing hedgehog lab, a human-centred global tech consultancy. I co-founded hedgehog lab in 2007 and transformed it from a small web development agency to a multi-million-pound company with over 100 employees and offices in the UK, US, and Bulgaria. As the CEO, I am responsible for setting the company’s vision, strategy, and culture and overseeing operations, finances, and business development.

In April 2023, I acquired Netsells, another UK-based tech consultancy, to accelerate our mission to become the most respected tech consultancy in the world. Together, we offer custom app development and digital transformation services to our partners, including AJ Bell, Deliveroo, Kodak Alaris, and Tesco Bank. We leverage our UXR, UI/UX, engineering, AI, cloud, and data science expertise to deliver human-centred solutions that drive real business impact.

I am also an active advisor, mentor, and non-executive director for several organisations, where I share my insights and knowledge on digital innovation, leadership, and entrepreneurship.

Important : Views shared on my LinkedIn are personal and do not reflect the views of hedgehog lab.

I have been saying for a while that AI is closer to an industrial revolution for knowledge work than a new software rollout. This new BCG piece, “As AI Changes Work, CEOs Must Change How Work Happens”, finally puts some structure and data around that intuition.
 
What really jumps out at me is the gap between tool use and work design. BCG’s AI at Work 2025 survey suggests that nearly three in four employees are already using AI regularly, yet only around a third feel they have had proper training, and only about 36 percent are satisfied with it. We have quietly pushed AI into the flow of work, but we have not done the harder thinking about what jobs are actually for in this new context.
 
Most corporate AI programmes are framed as “implementation”. Stand up a few copilots, run some training sessions, publish a policy, tick the board paper. The uncomfortable truth is that if AI takes on a meaningful chunk of the task load, the real work is to rethink roles, skills, org design and performance. Our current job architecture was not written for a world where every employee has a capable machine partner sitting beside them.
 
You can see this clearly in software teams. If AI can write large parts of the code, what is the human developer now optimising for? Things like quality control, judgment, problem framing, system design, cross functional collaboration and coaching models. That is a very different job description to “produce X lines of code” and it demands different hiring, training and performance conversations.
 
BCG also talks about the talent pyramid starting to bend. Fewer pure entry level roles. More specialists at the top. A middle layer that shifts from traditional people management to coaching and integrating AI into the work. At the same time, digital skills are spreading across sales, marketing and operations, while the supply of experienced people still lags. That forces a very practical question for CEOs: where in your organisation do you want scarce human expertise, and what do you want it doing alongside AI, hour by hour.
 
If we take the industrial revolution analogy seriously, the big prize is not “using AI in every function”. It is redesigning the factory floor of knowledge work itself. For each critical role, leaders will need to keep asking:
 
❓ What can safely move to AI, and under what guardrails?
❓ What higher value work do we expect humans to do with the time that is freed?
❓ How will we recruit, train and reward people for that new shape of work, not the old one?
 
I am convinced we will look back on this period as the biggest shift in how work happens since computers first arrived on desks. The organisations that move first will not be the ones with the most AI tools. They will be the ones that treat AI as a reason to redesign work from first principles, with their people, not just their tech stack, at the centre.
 
 More:

Sarat Pediredla 

CEO & Founder w/ PE experience | NED & Chair | Scaling digital companies through culture, growth, turnarounds & transformation | 🏆 AI 100 UK | 🏆 BIMA 100

Open article: As AI Changes Work, CEOs Must Change How Work Happens by bcg.com

As AI Changes Work, CEOs Must Change How Work Happens

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