Most CTOs chase value creation. Jaco Vermeulen says the real job is preserving it first.

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Boards across the mid-market are running AI pilots that return nothing, and revenue is being booked long before it's ever realised. The gap between the story a business tells about itself and what's happening underneath has rarely been wider or more expensive.

My guest is Jaco Vermeulen, an interim CTO, CIO, and M&A specialist who has worked through more than 50 transactions and spent 25 years finding what's hidden in that gap.

Jaco doesn't want to talk about technology. He wants to talk about what the technology is meant to do for the business, and why most leaders get that order wrong. His stories from carve-outs, acquisitions, and portfolio integrations show how much value gets destroyed by assumptions nobody bothered to check.

If you're an engineering or science leader who has never sat close to a transaction, this one will change how you read your own company. And if you have, you'll recognise the patterns immediately. Preserve value first. Create value second. Everything else follows from there.

You'll Learn:

[0:00] Introduction

[4:02] CTO, CIO, CAIO: titles that mean the same thing to most businesses

[9:10] A box of CDs and a $2 billion company still running on paper

[15:00] The real reason AI pilots keep returning nothing

[20:11] The hidden gaps in M&A due diligence that most tech leaders never look for

[23:33] A company that paid £1 million a year to license data it already owned

[26:34] ARR reporting and the disconnect between booked revenue and reality

[29:55] A transaction's success is decided after the deal closes, not at signing

[35:12] A £5 million pricing plan projected to return just £200,000 a year

[38:21] The four steps every technology leader should take to be transaction-ready

[45:44] The incentive hiding behind every KPI you're set

Find more from Jaco Vermeulen on LinkedIn.

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