I build systems that have to work.
I am Jonathan Gill, founder of Squared Lemons. I have spent more than 30 years writing, deploying and leading business-critical technology, from early VB and DOS-era systems through Watchfinder's scale journey, cloud architecture, automation, and now practical software, automation and AI work for UK SMEs.
Not a theorist. Not a reseller. A builder.
I started teaching myself to code at 17 in Barnsley. I did not come through a polished graduate scheme or a big consultancy. I came through small business reality: someone needed a system, the system did not exist, so I had to build it.
That shaped how I still work. I care less about technology theatre and more about the boring, important questions: does the process actually run, does the data make sense, who owns the handover, and what breaks when the pressure arrives?
Squared Lemons exists for businesses that are tired of technology theatre and want implementation that survives contact with the real organisation. Sometimes that means AI. Sometimes it means software, data, integration, automation or a simpler process. No endless strategy deck. No junior team hidden behind a senior sales pitch. No tool recommendation because a vendor has a better margin.
The reference point was not a prototype.
It was a commercial business under real pressure, with systems that had to sell, buy, price, manage, report, and scale.
I worked with Watchfinder from the early days: first as a contractor from 2000, then full-time from 2004. Over the years I built and led the technology that sat behind the business: ecommerce, back office operations, data infrastructure, integrations, stock acquisition workflows, pricing tools, reporting, and the systems needed to run a high-value online retailer at scale.
Watchfinder became the UK's largest pre-owned watch retailer, appeared in the Sunday Times Fast Track 100 three years running, and was acquired by Richemont in 2018. Along the way I was recognised in Computing's Top 250 UK IT Leaders, named a WatchPro Hot 100 Trailblazer, spoke on data and IoT security, and worked with Microsoft's machine learning team in Seattle on photo-based watch recognition.
The useful lesson was simple: technology only matters when it is connected to the commercial engine of the business. Otherwise it is just expensive decoration.
Systems thinking outside ecommerce.
After the Watchfinder sale, life became less neat. My family went through a serious illness, and I became a solo parent to my daughter. Time, support, and useful systems stopped being abstract ideas and became daily reality. I stayed on to support the Richemont transition, then Covid put me in ICU in 2020. I spent four weeks in a coma and months learning how to use my body properly again.
I do not put that on this page for sympathy. I put it here because it explains the five-year gap, and because it changed my tolerance for theatre. Time matters. Useful work matters. Systems that reduce unnecessary effort matter.
Later, I helped build Widowed AF, a podcast about grief. The host does the deeply human work: interviews, trust, editorial judgment. I built the production system around it. The show won Gold at the British Podcast Awards 2025 for Best Interview Podcast.
To make that possible without a production company, I built the workflow behind it: transcript processing, content generation, publishing workflows, AI-assisted search across the archive, and the operational plumbing that keeps the work moving. I am now building that system out as PodMule, a product for turning long-form audio and video into useful publishing workflows.
Different sector. Same pattern. Find the repetitive work. Protect the human judgment. Build the system so the useful work can scale.
Why this matters for sensible technology.
Most SME technology projects do not fail because the tool is bad. They fail because the business buys or builds something before it understands the structure around the work.
01
Start with the business problem.
Not the tool. Not the demo. The problem. Where does time disappear? Where does the data break? Where does one person hold the whole process in their head?
02
Build around the people doing the work.
Technology only sticks when it fits the real workflow. The unofficial handovers, the spreadsheets, the awkward edge cases, the Monday morning pressure. That is where implementation either works or dies.
03
Make the system visible enough to trust.
Good automation is not a black box. It has ownership, review points, error handling, measurement, and a clear answer to: what happens when this gets something wrong?
04
Leave the business stronger than you found it.
The aim is not dependency. The aim is a working system, a team that understands it, and a business that can make better technology decisions next time.
Directly, practically, and deliberately small.
Squared Lemons works with a small number of clients at any one time. That is deliberate. If I am helping you decide where technology belongs in your business, I need to understand how the business actually runs. That does not happen at arm's length.
You work with me, not a handover chain.
The same person helping define the strategy is close enough to the implementation to see where the assumptions are wrong.
The output is not a pile of recommendations. It is a clearer process, a working system, and a business that knows how to use it.