From GuideSmiths to Orbitant: Building the Next Generation of Software Consultancy
Three companies. Seven years of learning. One conviction that never changed: great software is built by engineers who are trusted, autonomous, and close to decisions.
This is not a marketing pitch. It’s the story of how we built, sold, experimented, learned, and why all of that led us to start Orbitant. It’s about understanding that value doesn’t come from writing code: it comes from solving valuable business problems with whatever tools make sense, including AI.
The foundations: GuideSmiths (2014–2021)
In 2014, Glenn O’Grady and I founded GuideSmiths in London with a developer-first philosophy. Engineers weren’t “delivery capacity”: they owned testing, technical quality, product trade-offs, architectural decisions, and long-term maintainability. They spoke directly with clients. They were responsible for the outcome.
This wasn’t ideology. It was pragmatism. We saw that strong fundamentals beat clever shortcuts every single time.
Scaling without compromising
We delivered complex systems to demanding clients, including Daily Mail, Telefonica, Pepephone, British Gas, and Marsh. Mission-critical platforms. Large-scale digital transformations. The work was hard, but the principle remained constant: ownership and accountability were explicit, not implied.
By 2021, GuideSmiths had grown to €9M+ annual revenue, 120+ engineers and professionals, and teams operating across the UK, Spain, and Hungary. That year, we were acquired by a London-based private equity firm. The team later grew to around 350 people.
The exit validated our thesis. But more importantly, it taught us lessons we’d carry forward, and it allowed many team members to develop their careers in a multinational environment.
The role of strategic partnership
During those years, Afianza became a long-term strategic partner. Not a transactional provider, but part of the ecosystem that let us grow without compromising quality. They understood what we were building and why it mattered. That relationship would prove essential later on.
Productizing financial management: the Sherpa journey (2024–2025)
After the acquisition, I stepped back to observe a pattern: founders make critical operational decisions without financial systems designed for speed, clarity, or accountability. The question became obvious: what if financial management could be productized for SMBs?
In 2024, three of the most reliable former GuideSmiths team members and I founded Sherpa Platform: a digital CFO for SMEs, embedded directly into daily operations, powered by real integrations, focused on actionable signals instead of static reports.
Product-partner fit over product-market fit
The goal wasn’t building dashboards. It enabled better decisions faster. Afianza joined as a strategic partner again, investing in the project. They trusted the team, understood the problem space, and aligned with our long-term vision.
What we learned was critical: not every product finds perfect Product-Market Fit. But some find something equally valuable—Product-Partner Fit. In 2025, Sherpa was acquired by Afianza. The product continued, the team stayed intact, and the learning compounded.
The synthesis: creating a next-generation software consultancy
Orbitant was born from that synthesis. Our team became a company within the Afianza group, with a specific mandate: build a next-generation software consultancy. Not larger. Not cheaper. Better.
Afianza has been the constant throughout this journey: from supporting GuideSmiths’ growth, to investing in Sherpa’s vision, to providing the infrastructure that makes Orbitant possible. This isn’t just financial backing. It’s a partnership built on trust, shared values, and a decade of collaboration that allows us to think long-term and take calculated risks.
Afianza has been more than a financial partner: they’ve been the strategic backbone that allowed us to build without compromise.
FELIPE POLO
CEO at Orbitant
What makes Orbitant different
Orbitant combines three critical elements that rarely exist together:
- GuideSmiths’ engineering culture: ownership, rigorous standards, delivery excellence
- Sherpa’s product and business insight: metrics, decision systems, operational clarity
- Afianza’s scale, capital, and real enterprise context: the resources and stability to think long-term
This combination isn’t accidental: it’s designed. What we offer to the market happens by intention, not by chance.
Why this model matters now
We’re entering a world where code trends toward commoditization, AI accelerates output (not judgment), and poor engineering scales faster than ever before.
AI is an amplifier. It amplifies good systems. It also amplifies bad decisions. It punishes shallow thinking. In this context, value shifts from writing code to knowing why, where, and how to apply it.
Companies no longer need vendors. They need engineering partners—partners who understand business constraints, design for impact, and build systems that survive change.
What we offer: engineering excellence meets business understanding
Orbitant exists to integrate three things that are usually separate: excellent engineering, deep business understanding, and a bias towards innovation and long-term thinking.
We build software. But more importantly, we build decision clarity, technical leverage, and organizations that can evolve.
Our roots inform our approach
Our brand even reflects this synthesis: our color palette draws inspiration from Afianza, GuideSmiths, and Sherpa Platform. It’s a reminder that we’re built on proven foundations, not starting from scratch.
This is what a next-generation software consultancy looks like: technical excellence grounded in business reality, powered by the lessons learned from building, scaling, and successfully exiting two different companies.
Moving forward
The story of Orbitant isn’t about reinventing software consulting. It’s about applying everything we’ve learned to make it significantly better, combining the best practices from a decade of engineering leadership with the strategic clarity that comes from building products and the resources to execute at scale.
But there’s something else that defines us: we’re an AI-first company. Not because we talk about AI, but because it’s embedded in how our engineers develop and how we build our internal processes and methodology. AI isn’t a service we offer: it’s part of our DNA, shaping how we solve problems and deliver value.
That’s the difference. That’s why Orbitant exists.
