Peter Horadan, CEO of Vouched, joins Aleksandra Lemanyska on the Leman Tech Leadership Podcast to discuss his 30-year journey automating essential business processes—from writing Microsoft's first online banking software in the 90s to leading engineering at Concur and serving as CTO at Avalara. The conversation explores how focusing on universal business problems, maintaining customer-centricity, and building high-performing teams creates sustainable value and drives success.
Key Takeaways
- Essential business automation creates massive value: Peter emphasizes identifying and automating processes every business must perform. At Concur, replacing paper expense reports with automated workflows saved companies significant time and money. At Avalara, automating complex sales tax calculations across 11,000 jurisdictions streamlined a previously manual burden. These universal solutions led to billion-dollar exits because they delivered real ROI.
- Customer value trumps technical elegance: An early experience at Microsoft taught Peter that beautiful code without customer value is meaningless. Before launching Lockstep, he conducted 50 customer interviews to deeply understand accounting teams' pain points. The principle is clear: talk to customers before building, and focus relentlessly on delivering value to them.
- Self-organizing teams drive success: Peter advocates for empowered teams with clear goals, open communication, and accountability. Team members should feel confident avoiding unproductive meetings and focusing on tasks that contribute directly to delivering customer value. High cohesion, high trust, and shared commitment to the mission are essential.
- Validate first, scale later: Don't over-invest in building for thousands of customers before securing your first one. Early feedback is crucial for identifying and fixing issues. Get initial customers using the software, gather their insights, and iterate before scaling the product broadly.
- Team cohesion requires intentional effort: Peter shares a pivotal moment when he received feedback that his focus on being right damaged team relationships. Creating a culture where people feel safe to speak up, share feedback, and support each other is fundamental to long-term success.
- Adopt a CEO mindset at every level: Leaders should think like CEOs—focused on accomplishing goals no matter what it takes, removing constraints, and helping everyone perform better. This mindset helps identify opportunities and drive meaningful results across the organization.
- Learn from others' struggles: Peter recommends "Founders at Work" for its honest accounts of early startup struggles and pivots. Understanding that the challenges you face aren't unique—and that others have overcome similar obstacles—provides strength and perspective during difficult times.
Speakers
Aleksandra Lemanyska — Host, Leman Tech Leadership Podcast
Aleksandra explores the strategies and stories of successful tech leaders, examining how they build companies, scale teams, and create value in competitive markets.
Peter Horadan — CEO, Vouched
Peter brings three decades of experience automating essential B2B services, having led teams at Microsoft, Concur, and Avalara. At Vouched, he's pioneering the future of digital identity verification for both humans and AI agents, addressing the critical need for trusted identification in an increasingly automated world.