Meet the Scalers: Jack Perschke, CEO, Great Wave AI

In this interview, Co-founder and CEO of Great Wave AI and member of techUK’s Scale-up Council Jack Perschke discusses the rapid growth of his GenAI agent orchestration platform, the excitement of starting a business from scratch and the importance of public sector buyers backing the start-up and scale-up community. 

techUK: How did your company start and what sets you apart? 

Jack Perschke: Great Wave AI is the UK's sovereign gen AI agent orchestration platform.  What does that mean? We're a piece of technology, a piece of software that makes generative AI, large language model technology usable and makes it work in high trust environments, so we really focus on government and regulated entities. We created Great Wave right from the beginning to be a crucible for adoption in those difficult and complex environments. 

techUK: Tell us about the value of what you do both in terms of economic contribution but also the social value that you add to your community? 
  

JP: One of the things I always say is government loves to talk about how much it should and could be doing for small businesses, which is great, but I always spin it around. Let's think about the ways in which small businesses are transforming government. 
 
So our clients typically are not the HMRCs or the DWPs with enormous pots of money. They're very cash constrained environments that still have all the regulatory obligations and still have to be as straight down the line as anyone else in government, but they're still searching for these efficiency savings and benefits of generative AI. So we're really proud of what we do for our client community. 
 
And then of course there's the communities that we live and work in. Our business is split in two halves. Our technical development happens in Litchfield in the Midlands, and there we're incredibly proud to employ an amazingly diverse workforce. I think over half of them have come out of government skills boot camps. We don't have any PhDs in our business. We have very few Russell Group University graduates. We're really about finding aptitude and attitude and then giving those people the skills that they need to thrive in what I think is going to be the great UK superpower over the next 20 years, which is this AI environment that we're all the right in the frontier of. 
 
I think one of the really exciting things about creating a business, you start at nothing. You start at literally zero, an idea on a piece of paper, and that's where we were. 

And you fast forward to today, two, three years later, depending on quite where you do the start line for our business, and we're doing a million ARR. We employ 15 staff across two different offices. Start counting up the tax take on that, what we're paying in corporation tax, what we're paying in national insurance tax, what our staff are paying in income tax, and you start to realize the massive value of what we're doing, and you start to realise why backing UK businesses is so incredibly powerful and how, as an engine of growth, we can really transform the economy. 

techUK: What has enabled you to grow and scale so far? 
 
JP: I think the first thing to say is the UK is a fantastic place to build a business. The access to talent is brilliant. I know we've had a few years of economic turbulence or political turbulence, but it remains a safe and steady and sensible place to build for the long term, which is what we're in for. There's great access to capital, talent is phenomenal here, the institutions are good, the infrastructure is great. It's a really, really good place for us to be building and growing our business.  

It is also our expectation that it will become our launchpad into Europe and into being an international business. The great thing about the UK is it's a big enough market on its own that you can build a really substantial business here. You don't have to use the UK as a bit of a test case and then go off and launch internationally. So we're very happy starting ourselves out here and we've got global ambitions from here as well. 

techUK: When you were scaling, did you rely on any public funding? 
 
JP: So in terms of public funding, we haven't taken anything yet. But we have, of course, our key market is the public sector. We have been very dependent on public sector buyers being willing to take a bet, take a risk controversially on a smaller UK business over much more recognised global brands. Not everyone has been brilliant at it, but enough people have been brilliant at it for us to build the business that we're building.  

If I was thinking about public policy, the thing that I really care about isn't the few £100 million that might be allocated via grants or loans. What I'm really interested in is the £26 billion that is spent via public procurement of taxpayers' money on technology in the UK.  

Now, if you can direct that more effectively to the kinds of businesses that are going to grow, that are going to hire in the UK, they're going to pay their taxes here, that can deliver innovation, that can drive productivity, then that is the real lever. Much, much more in my view than a few tens of millions, a few hundreds of millions even, in grants and loans. 

techUK: What policy changes might help you continue to grow and scale?   

JP: I'm pretty unusual in the kind of startup community. I think the policy landscape is pretty good. I think the Procurement Act of 2023 solved a ton of the issues. I think a lot of the latest investment thresholds and all the rest of it that changed recently are good. I think the EIS environment is good for UK investment. I'm pretty happy with a lot of those landscapes. 

What I think needs doing now is that the intent behind those policies needs seeing through. So a little example I always talk about in the Procurement Act 2023, it gives the provision for sub-threshold procurement. It says that below certain thresholds, some procurements are not public procurements, and therefore they can be allocated by direct award; they can be reserved for UK SMEs, they can reserve for UK businesses. 

And those thresholds are quite high. They're kind of 140 grand in central gov, 400 grand in defence, that kind of stuff. So you can do some decent awards, but I am willing to bet, and I keep meaning to do an FOI request on this, but I reckon the take up on sub-threshold procurements is almost zero. 

And so if I had a message or an ask of government, so you've done the hard work, you've got the legislation through, you've got the policy, you had the idea, you've made it happen, now keep chasing. Ask the departments, give me returns, monthly returns. How many sub-threshold procurements are you doing? How many of those are reserved for UK businesses?  

If none, why none? Do you have no innovation requirements? Do you not need new ideas? Do you not support UK businesses? It's that leadership piece, it's that pushing through the intent behind the policies right down to the lowest levels that is, I think, the missing piece in the jigsaw at the moment. 

techUK: What is the value of techUK membership to you and your company? 
 
JP: Although our business feels like the biggest and most important thing in the world when we're, you know, making the difficult decisions, ultimately we're tiny. We're a spec and we're nothing in the great scheme of things, and it's only by coming together in organisations like techUK that we can have our voices heard. 
 
It's only because we're members of techUK that I get to speak on forums, that I'm in this video, that I get to meet other entrepreneurs, that I get to meet public sector leaders. It is a real force multiplier for a small business, and in fact, for larger businesses as well. 

But for us, it's a real lifeline. It's access to our peers, It's access to our customers and it's awareness of our competition and the market more broadly. And if techUK didn't exist, someone would need to invent it because it's exactly the kind of collective organization that we need.