About Me
Hi! 👋 I'm
Francesc Pla Prats.
Dad of three, husband, everyday geek, music fan, basketball lover, and a motorbike rider low on time, not fuel. I spend my days as CTO at SeQura, solving problems with software and leading the people who build it.
Professional
I've spent over 25 years building software teams. Here's what I believe matters:
Teams that take full ownership of what they create: not just code, but operations, metrics, outcomes. No silos, no handoffs, no "that's not my problem."
High agency above process. When you see a problem, you fix it. You don't wait for approval or perfect information. You ship and learn.
Simplicity over cleverness. The best solution is the one that works, not the one that impresses other engineers.
And outcomes over output. Value: conversion, retention, cost, experience, not features shipped or story points closed.
Random facts about my career
1998 - 2003
1998 - 2003
The Dial-Up Days
I started working in 1998 at an Internet Service Provider, yes, those giving access via dial-up modems, email, and web infrastructure. I wrote code to "fix" the Y2K problem and support the Euro currency transition.
2003
2003
Open Source
I helped build LifeType an open-source blogging platform with support for multiple blogs and users in a single installation. It reached more than a million downloads.
2004 - 2013
2004 - 2013
The Founder Era
I founded two now-defunct companies. qDevel, in 2004, a development boutique specialized in web apps built on top of the LAMP stack. And VESNE in 2007, a startup building vertical social networks on top of Rails stack. In 2007 we built moterus, the largest social network in Spain for motorbike riders. Owning the whole stack, from code to customers, taught me what actually creates value.
2012 - 2016
2012 - 2016
The Unicorn
I was an Engineering Manager at Jobandtalent. One of the Spanish unicorns. We grew the team to ~100 people and scaled the platform to handle 10 million users in just a few years. Scaled by trusting engineers to make decisions, not by adding process.
2017 - Present
2017 - Present
Current Adventure: The Fintech Platform Era
I'm currently the CTO responsible for technology, people, and culture/processes at SeQura. The payment platform helps people buy the things they love, paying instantly, flexibly, and fairly. We've grown the tech team (engineering and product) from 7 to 120+ people and contributed to the company's growth, making over 2M users happy with our products, scaling to €125M+ in revenue while being profitable. We evolved into a product platform, enabling us to build products across verticals and markets. Platform approach means new products take weeks, not years. Revenue grows, costs don't.
Personal
I live in Badalona with my wife and our three kids, two girls and a boy. They're the reason the motorbike is gathering dust, and also why my prioritisation skills finally make sense.
Outside work, I move between music (Primavera or Sonar ... every five years counts as "going"), books that sit somewhere between sci-fi and biographies, and Penya basketball (cor verd i negre). I'm always looking for a good flat white near the office, and I won't say no to an Islay Scotch. The GS Adventure is still there, patient as ever. One day.
Available For
Advisory, board roles, consulting, mentoring, talks & podcasts
My bandwidth is limited, but I'm open when I can add real value.
I've built from zero as a founder and scaled existing organizations as CTO. Bootstrapped and VC-funded. That gives me a specific perspective on the messy middle, when what got you here stops working and nobody has a playbook for what comes next.
Where I tend to be most useful: teams growing past the point where everyone fits in one room, engineering orgs that need to evolve, and founders navigating the shift from building things themselves to building the team that builds things.
On the technical side: evolving into product platforms, moving fast without breaking compliance, and adopting AI without the hype.
I also write about these topics and do the occasional talk or podcast appearance, not to build a personal brand, just to think out loud and share what's worked.
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