The Team
A founding team that combines deep technical capability, operational rigour, enterprise delivery experience, and financial discipline - built through years of working together, not assembled for a fundraise.
Guy Powell | Founder & CTO
Role at Brunelly: Architect and builder of the entire Brunelly platform and Maitento AI operating system. Leads all technical strategy, product development, and infrastructure decisions. Every line of code in both codebases was written by Guy.
Background
Guy has been writing software since he was seven years old and was paid commercially for his work by the time he was fourteen. He holds a BSc in Software Engineering (First Class Honours) and an MSc in Robotics and Artificial Intelligence (Distinction) from the University of Bristol and Bristol Robotics Lab. His career spans the full spectrum of enterprise technology: Microsoft, Symantec, Capgemini, HP (where he was responsible for running a product quality enterprise storage lab), Interoute (where he served as Head of Software Development for a telecommunications company), and ADP (enterprise payroll at global scale). He has been writing distributed computing applications since the 1990s - long before "microservices" had a name.
Guy's entrepreneurial track record is equally deep. He started his first business in 2002, running an ISP and providing network connectivity and data centre hosting. He was an early internet adopter, involved with internet startups in the late 1990s, and went on to launch successful companies across retail, financial services, and IT consulting. In 2018 he founded Pina Vida, growing it into a seven-figure revenue consultancy that sold and delivered multi-year enterprise contracts for clients across multiple industries. His technical expertise is genuinely end-to-end - from transistors and hardware architecture through operating systems, compilers, networking, and distributed systems, all the way to modern cloud infrastructure and AI orchestration.
Building Brunelly and Maitento as a solo technical founder is not a story about scrappiness - it is a demonstration of rare capability. Maitento includes a proprietary programming language with a full compilation pipeline, a virtual machine, an AI memory system, and multi-agent orchestration. Brunelly covers the entire software development lifecycle with AI native at every stage. The fact that one person built both systems - to production quality, with enterprise-grade architecture - says more about technical depth than any CV line item could. He has also, in a previous life, put on sold-out music festivals, built a mushroom farm in Costa Rica, and ran an online music magazine in the early 2000s that reached 250,000 monthly unique visitors with a volunteer staff of fifty - because the ability to build things extends well beyond code.
Why Guy: He has already built the product that most founding CTOs would need a team of twenty and two years to deliver. The question is not whether he can build it - it is already built.
Dhilushi Perusinghe | Chief Executive Officer
Role at Brunelly: Manages all non-technical operations including business development, partnerships, client relationships, team coordination, and commercial strategy. Everything that is not code runs through Dhilushi.
Background
Dhilushi trained as an engineer, graduating in materials engineering before beginning her career in the oil and gas industry, where she worked on major infrastructure projects. She moved into construction and oversaw parts of the London Underground Elizabeth Line (Crossrail) station construction - one of the most complex engineering projects in European history. These are environments where execution matters, tolerances are tight, and failure has real consequences. That background shaped her approach to operations: detail-oriented, process-driven, and relentless on follow-through.
Her career shift to technology came when she joined Pina Vida as Guy's first full-time employee. Over six years, she progressed from Scrum Master to Operational Manager to Chief Operating Officer - earning each role through demonstrated capability, not title inflation. During her time at Pina Vida, she supported the company's growth into a seven-figure revenue consultancy, introduced the operational processes that enabled consistent enterprise delivery, oversaw the launch of a South African subsidiary for offshore development resourcing, and established the Sri Lankan subsidiary. When Brunelly was formed as a separate entity, Dhilushi stepped into the CEO role - a natural progression from the operational leadership she had already been providing. She is a perfectionist with exceptional attention to detail, and the six-year working partnership with Guy means there is no communication overhead, no trust deficit, and no learning curve.
Why Dhilushi: She has spent six years converting Guy's technical output into commercial results - and that partnership is the engine that makes Brunelly viable as a business, not just a technology.
Trishna Dhand | Chief Financial Officer & Co-founder
Role at Brunelly: Financial strategy, budgeting, cost management, and fiscal discipline. Currently on maternity leave but remains an active co-founder and shareholder.
Background
Trishna joined Pina Vida in 2023 on a temporary CFO contract. Her impact was so immediate and so significant that the temporary arrangement became permanent. A financial turnaround specialist, she navigated the consultancy through volatile market conditions, trimming over 40% of operating costs in her first year through a combination of disciplined budget management and creative financial problem-solving. She is the first person to put herself up for redundancy if that is what the business needs - a quality that is rare in any executive and invaluable in a startup environment where every dollar matters.
Before joining the team, Trishna built her career in corporate finance across demanding sectors. She assisted in IPOs at large companies, worked in the luxury goods sector at Louis Vuitton, and held finance roles in major retail at Sainsbury's. She brings a level of financial rigour that most seed-stage companies do not have access to. Her long-standing personal and professional relationship with Dhilushi pre-dates Pina Vida, which means the leadership team operates with a foundation of trust and candour that cannot be manufactured.
Why Trishna: A financial turnaround specialist with IPO experience, she navigated the consultancy through volatile market conditions and instilled the financial discipline that is why $1.5M provides 3+ years of runway.
Jonathan Kendall | Executive Chairman
Role at Brunelly: Strategic guidance, investor relations, and board-level governance. Serves in an unpaid capacity, compensated through the employee stock option pool.
Background
Jonathan brings decades of senior executive experience, including a VP role at Unilever and senior leadership at De Beers Group. He has known Guy since 2012, and their relationship provides a foundation of mutual respect and honest counsel. Now in his sixties, Jonathan is an active angel investor in startups and brings the kind of corporate gravitas, investor network, and boardroom presence that a seed-stage company rarely has access to. His De Beers connection also provides a direct link to an existing enterprise relationship in Brunelly's pipeline.
Why Jonathan: He provides the board-level experience and investor credibility that bridges the gap between a technical founding team and the enterprise and investor communities they are selling to.
Why This Team
This is not a team assembled from LinkedIn profiles and co-founder matching events. These are people who have worked together, solved real problems together, and kept a business alive together.
A technical founder who has already proven it. Guy did not just design the architecture and hire a team to build it. He wrote the entire platform - two codebases, a proprietary programming language, and an AI operating system - to production quality. The product risk that kills most seed-stage startups does not exist here.
An operational CEO with a six-year track record. Dhilushi and Guy have worked together long enough that the partnership is proven, not theoretical. She has managed enterprise client relationships, launched international subsidiaries, and run the operational side of a seven-figure consultancy.
A financially disciplined CFO who has kept the company alive. Trishna's cost discipline is the reason the company is raising from a position of strength rather than desperation. She trimmed over 40% of operating costs in her first year and navigated the consultancy through volatile market conditions - the kind of financial toughness that turns $1.5M into 3+ years of runway.
A chairman with corporate gravitas and an investor network. Jonathan brings the enterprise credibility and board experience that a technical founding team needs to close large deals and navigate investor relationships.
A diverse founding team. Two of three co-founders are women. The team spans Sri Lankan, Indian, and British backgrounds. This is not a diversity statement - it is a reflection of a team built on capability, not on who went to the same university.
Enterprise DNA from day one. Pina Vida has sold and delivered multi-year enterprise contracts with renewals. This team does not need to learn how to sell to enterprises - they have been doing it for years.
Team Expansion Plan
The seed round enables targeted hiring that extends the team's capacity without compromising the capital efficiency that defines the company:
Product Owner: A dedicated hire to manage the product roadmap, customer feedback loop, and feature prioritisation - freeing Guy to focus on architecture and engineering.
5-10 Developers (Sri Lanka): Senior developers at approximately $500/month fully loaded. Dhilushi's experience establishing Pina Vida's South African subsidiary provides a proven playbook for building and managing offshore engineering teams.
1-2 Business Development (UAE): Front-office presence in the UAE to drive enterprise outreach, conference engagement, and partnership development in the Middle East market.
Back Office Support (Sri Lanka): Research, data management, and administrative support to scale operations without inflating the cost base.
This hiring plan reflects the same capital discipline that has characterised the company from the start: invest where the leverage is highest, keep the cost base lean, and extend runway as far as possible.