About

Builder first.

I've been building things since 1988. Companies, teams, systems, strength: the material changes, the discipline doesn't.

I'm CTO at Kwalee, the games publisher behind more than a billion mobile downloads and a growing PC and console catalogue, with teams in Leamington and Bangalore. I joined as CIO in 2025; the CTO role came in June 2026, recognition that we're putting technology at the centre of how the company understands, builds and publishes games.

Before Kwalee I founded Applicita in 2012 and ran it until 2025: ten years as CTO, then CEO. Along the way I co-founded 4R Digital and spent five years on its board. I look at decisions from more angles than most, business value first: hard benefits like cost and revenue weighed alongside the softer ones. And when a technical symptom has an organisational cause, I find it.

One route, many sectors: schools software, employee assessment, farm subsidies in Nigeria, pay-as-you-go energy in East Africa, courier logistics, and live games played by half a million people at once.

John Kattenhorn portrait
NORTHAMPTON, ENGLAND · @johnjkattenhorn
CAREER

The route so far.

HOVER OR TAP A WAYPOINT
1985 1988 1993 1996 2004 2008 2010 2012 2014 2017 2021 2022 2025
1985 · ORIC ATMOS
The first computer. Dad took months of flak from Mum for buying it; worth every bit.
8 BITS · THE APPROACH PATH
1988 · THE OPEN UNIVERSITY
Two weeks of school work experience loading punch cards for transfer to tape. Loved every minute.
AGE 16 · WHERE THE ROUTE STARTS
~1993 · PARAGON VINTNERS · IT SUPPORT
IT support plus the wine management system in Progress 4GL.
THE FIRST SOFTWARE ROLE
1996 · PHOENIX · DEVELOPER
The firm's only IT person, and its youngest employee, developing the MXP system in Progress.
30 PEOPLE · ONE IN IT
2004 · PHOENIX IT GROUP · LSE FLOAT
Eleven years from sole IT person to Director of Development of a listed group.
£127M REVENUE BY 2007
2008 – 2010 · COGNISCO · CTO
Assessment analytics warehoused in SQL Server, self-serve in SharePoint. Microsoft wrote the case study.
10,000 APPRAISALS: 22 HOURS → 6 MINUTES
2010 – 11 · CAPITA SIMS · DEV MANAGER
Every software discipline across the UK and India, on the country's dominant schools product.
70 PEOPLE · FIRST SPLIT-SHORE TEAM
2012 · APPLICITA · FOUNDED
Incorporated after a year freelancing; fully remote from day one, staffed through Upwork.
INCORPORATED 18 MAY 2012
2014 · TAP · DFID NIGERIA
Offline-first e-voucher platform for farm subsidies: Orleans, peer-to-peer sync, NFC in the field.
500,000+ FARMERS IN FOUR MONTHS
2017 – 2018 · M-KOPA · INTERIM CTO
Rebuilt the platform and the team; proved the pay-as-you-go phone with a £20K proof of concept.
£20K POC → 6.4M PHONES SOLD
2021 – 22 · LTG · CHIEF ARCHITECT
Live Tech Games: real-time play at World Cup scale on Orleans and SignalR. Microsoft filmed it, twice.
500,000 CONCURRENT PLAYERS
2022 – 25 · APPLICITA · CEO
Took the top seat to build the pipeline that word of mouth had always covered.
WOUND UP IN 2025
2025 – NOW · KWALEE · CIO → CTO
Technology at the centre of how a games company understands, builds and publishes.
THE CURRENT CLIMB
FIG 01 Career elevation, 1985 to now. Real waypoints; the dips are real too.

Away from the desk I lift four mornings a week and put in miles on the bike. Stronger at 52 than I was at 32; the gym is my earth-strap, the thing that holds steady whatever else is moving. The homelab is where I learn, experiment and stay current. All of it runs on the same loop as the work: plan, execute, read the feedback, learn, go again.

ABOUT THIS WRITING

Everything here is written in a personal capacity, not on behalf of any employer. Nothing is about current colleagues. Examples are drawn from across a career and anonymised or composited where needed.