The Founder Spotlight

Laura Gemmell

Founder and CEO of Taught by Humans

In your own words – what do you do?

We help make companies’ training better. Specifically, our platform is learning infrastructure for regulated industries – the kind of companies where staff training isn’t one-off or optional.

We take messy company knowledge and documents and turn them into useful learning built around each person, all delivered by Dotly, our AI learning companion. We’ve also created what we think is a genuinely new way to evidence people’s confidence in their skills – the Confidence Architecture, which everything on our platform is built around.

I’m a data person by background – I’ve worked at PwC, Worldpay, Monzo, and a bunch of startups – I like patterns and charts. But I’ve always been obsessed with learning, whether picking up new things myself or teaching others. I’ve bounced around data, tech, and teaching roles my whole career.

I became a founder by accident: I quit a really stressful job around the time ChatGPT was taking off, so Taught by Humans started life doing AI and data training. We built the platform to make that more personalised and wider-reaching. Then a pilot with the Ministry of Justice showed us the tech had far wider – and more interesting – applications. And here we are.

What’s the most exciting thing about what you’re building?

It’s genuinely exciting to see the platform have an impact across such different contexts – construction workers learning about AI, probation officer onboarding, graduate induction, mandatory training. We hear stories about how much it’s helped people learn, and that never gets old. It’s also something else to watch an idea that lived only in my head – evidencing real confidence through subtle interactions – become something real that’s making people’s working lives better.

What are you most proud of so far?

Launching a 200-person pilot into government when I was essentially a one-person team, in six weeks, because I wasn’t sure they were actually going to sign the contract. That meant ingesting 1.2 million words of content – learning materials, policies, systems – building three chatbot workflows including one that roleplayed probation scenarios, and implementing specialist guardrails for responsible AI use alongside serious security, data privacy, and testing requirements. All of it in six weeks.

It worked. Nothing since has felt quite that hard – partly because it’s not just me anymore. The pilot went well and we’re hoping it becomes a long-term relationship.

What’s been your biggest challenge, and how did you overcome it?

Firing my first permanent employee. I’m not sure I’ve ever agonised over something so much.

In hindsight, I’d hired in a rush – because I thought a grant required it, which turned out not to be true. I also hadn’t fully understood that startups require a specific tolerance for ambiguity and chaos that not everyone thrives in, and that’s not a flaw in the person.

I’ve completely lucked out since. Amy and Nicole are amazing and make tbh a genuinely great place to work. But if I’m honest, I’m still holding back on the next hire because of it.

I know the startup mantra is hire fast, fire fast – and I understand why. I’m just going to do everything I can to get the hiring right so I don’t need the second part.

What’s your advice for other founders?

Don’t do it. Joking. Sort of.

Make sure you have a good support system – friends, advisors, people who are honest with you. A co-founder if you can find the right one, because it gets lonely. Having a team around me has been one of the best parts of this – it helps to have other people invested in the thing you’re building.

But most importantly, look after yourself. When you’re obsessed with your business it’s easy to drop exercise, sleep, meals, hobbies, friends. Don’t. They’re what keeps you human – and that actually makes the business better too.

The South West has quietly become one of the UK’s most interesting tech cities – what’s your experience of building here versus what people assume it’s like?

I don’t know if Bristol is objectively the best place to grow a business, but I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else in the UK.

The thing people forget is that London is 1 hour 40 minutes on the train. It’s not that big a deal to go up for something. But most days I can walk to my meetings, which I love.

The ecosystem is small enough that you see the same people a lot, which means you actually get to know them. Two weeks ago I was working from Engine Shed and got a last-minute invite to an investor dinner just because I happened to be there. That kind of thing happens here.

We also work a lot with Tramshed Tech in Cardiff – only an hour away – which is a whole other network worth having.

The honest caveat: Bristol skews heavily towards deeptech and engineering, so the support isn’t always a perfect fit for a SaaS company. But I still love it here. Cheaper trains to London would be helpful though!

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Connect with Laura and follow her journey here