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 solving problems with software and leading the tech team at SeQura as CTO.

Professional

I've spent 25 years building software teams. Here's what I believe matters:

Teams that take full ownership of what they create, not just the code, but the operations, the metrics, the 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 created, conversion, retention, cost, not features shipped or story points closed.

You can see my full CV and career journey on LinkedIn.

Random facts about my career

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 did code to "fix" the Y2K problem and support the Euro currency transition.

2003

Open Source

I helped to 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

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 start-up focused on developing technology for 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

The Unicorn

I was an Engineering Manager at Jobandtalent. One of the Spanish unicorns. We've grown 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

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 in an instant, transparent, flexible, and fair way. We've grown the tech team (engineering and product) from 7 to over +100 people and contributed to the company's growth, making over 2M users happy with our products while being profitable. We have also put in place a strategy to become a product platform, enabling us to create different products for various verticals in different geographies within the flexible payment space. 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 Joventut 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.

Advisory & Collaboration

I help founders and tech leaders scale teams and build platforms. My bandwidth is limited, but I'm open to board roles, consulting, or mentoring when I can add real value.

I also do talks or podcasts from time to time, as long as I feel I can add something useful.