Cien Solon, CEO and Founder, LaunchLemonade

Today we're meeting Cien, CEO and Founder at LaunchLemonade. They specialise in no-code AI platforms that allow users to build, deploy and monetise intelligent workflow and decision-making AI agents.

Over to you Cien - my questions are in bold:

Who are you and what's your background?

I'm Cien Solon, co-founder and CEO of LaunchLemonade and an AI Transformation strategist focused on access, agency and automation. I grew up in the Philippines, and studied Communications, Philosophy and Literature. I moved to the UK 11 years ago, and have spent my career sitting at the intersection of technology, behaviour and growth. I was first in digital and product roles, then in high-growth start-ups and unicorn-stage companies.

I came into FinTech through digital transformation and product work with financial services organisations that were trying to modernise customer journeys without breaking trust or regulation. Over time, I shifted my focus to AI and how it changes the economics of operations, risk, and customer experience, and crucially, who gets to participate in that new value. Today, my work centres on helping non-technical teams and founders build AI agents and new transaction flows without writing code, so they can plug into the AI economy instead of watching it pass them by.

What is your job title and what are your general responsibilities?

I'm the Co-founder and CEO of LaunchLemonade. On a daily basis, my work sits at the intersection of product, customers and company building. I lead our product and AI strategy, deciding what we build next, how our agents handle workflows and transactions, and how we adapt the platform for financial services teams. I spend a lot of time with customers and partners, listening to their use cases, pressure-testing ideas and helping non-technical teams design and deploy agents safely.

Alongside that, I'm responsible for the health of the business itself: fundraising, hiring, setting priorities and putting the right governance and commercial models in place so we can scale responsibly. Most days you'll find me moving between strategy calls, customer sessions and product reviews, translating everything I'm hearing into clear decisions for the team.

Can you give us an overview of your business?

LaunchLemonade is a no-code platform that helps non-technical teams build and deploy intelligent AI agents that don't just chat but they also transact. Our agents can read context, make decisions, and then push actions into existing systems. We sit at the intersection of democratisation and the AI economy.

Instead of waiting for a central tech team or a big vendor rollout, operations, product and customer teams can design their own agents, choose from multiple leading LLMs, plug into APIs, and wrap everything in guardrails that fit their risk and compliance needs. Our model combines SaaS subscriptions with usage-based pricing for heavier workloads, alongside training and strategic support.

Tell us how you are funded?

We bootstrapped LaunchLemonade for the first 18 months, funding product development and early customer work from revenue and my own savings. That period was all about finding real use cases, proving that non-technical teams would actually build and use AI agents if we made it simple enough. Off the back of that traction, we've now almost closed our pre-seed round with a mix of angel syndicates and operators.

Our lead investors include Spring Syndicate and Ventures Together, alongside a group of experienced exited founders and operators who are coming in not just as investors, but as hands-on partners for distribution, product, and go-to-market. This mix was intentional. I wanted investors who understood the pain of building in early markets, cared about AI literacy and access, and could actively help us shape the category rather than purely optimise for short-term metrics.

What's the origin story? Why did you start the company? To solve what problems?

I didn't start with a "big idea", I started with the same painful pattern on repeat. In my roles across corporates, scale-ups and as a fractional AI lead, every team wanted the same thing… "I know AI is important, but I don't know where to start, who to hire, or how not to waste money."

We kept building one-off copilots and chatbots from scratch that included great demos, slow roll-outs, expensive to maintain, and totally inaccessible to the non-technical people who actually owned the work. The AI literacy gap was getting wider, not smaller.

I started LaunchLemonade to fix two problems: Access: AI felt locked behind jargon, agencies and engineering roadmaps. Agency: Non-technical teams had to ask someone else every time they wanted to experiment. LaunchLemonade gives them a "Canva for AI agents" which is a no-code platform where they can plug in any major LLM, add their own data, design role-specific agents, and deploy them across their tools without getting their dev team involved. For customers, that means faster experiments, cheaper automation, and a practical path to upskilling their teams so they're not left behind in the AI economy.

Who are your target customers? What's your revenue model?

Our target customers are non-technical teams who need AI to support real work. That includes marketing and creative agencies, SMEs and scale-ups, and training providers who want practical AI assistants without having to hire engineers.

Our revenue model combines SaaS subscriptions (for individuals, businesses and teams) with training and implementation programmes for organisations that want more hands-on support. We're also building an agent marketplace where creators can monetise the agents they build on LaunchLemonade, with a revenue share going back to them.

In practice, that looks like using LaunchLemonade to train staff and build drafting agents that cut work from days to hours, or an agency using a stack of agents for research, copy and reporting, so the boring work gets done in the background and the team can focus on ideas.

If you had a magic wand, what one thing would you change in the banking and/or FinTech sector?

If I had a magic wand, I'd make the financial system "agent-ready". Right now, payments, KYC and compliance are still designed for humans pressing buttons, not for trusted AI agents acting on behalf of businesses. That's a huge brake on innovation. Businesses are excited about agents, but terrified to let them touch money.

I'd love to see secure, programmable rails where banks provide the trusted identity, limits and audit trails, and builders can safely let agents transact by handling subscriptions, revenue share, micro-payments, invoicing and payouts across borders.

Clear permissions, real-time visibility, and standardised APIs would let an entire marketplace of agents plug into the system without each startup rebuilding the plumbing. If we get that right, SMEs with their trusted agents will actually be able to move money, enforce rules, and operate on secure rails the banks provide.

What is your message for the larger players in the Financial Services marketplace?

I'd say that your biggest competitive advantage is trust, distribution and regulatory licence, so use them to unlock innovation. If you want to win the next decade, make your rails genuinely open and programmable for the rest of the ecosystem with cleaner APIs, better sandboxes, clearer data access for SMEs and fintechs who build on top of you. Second, treat AI as a literacy problem. Your customers, especially small businesses, are terrified of being left behind. Help them experiment safely with AI for cashflow, forecasting, compliance and everyday operations, instead of leaving that education to whoever shouts loudest on the internet. The banks that lead will be the ones that act less like fortresses and more like platforms who are responsible, well-governed, but genuinely collaborative with the builders at the edges.

Where do you get your Financial Services/FinTech industry news from?

Finimize, Financial Times and CNBC.

Can you list 3 people you rate from the FinTech and/or Financial Services sector that we should be following on LinkedIn?

• Nicole Caspeson - Founder of Fintech is Femme.
• Tori Dunlap - Her First 100k.
• Philip Belamant - CEO of Zilch.

What FinTech services (and/or apps) do you personally use?

PensionBee, Finimize, Revolut, Spreadex, IBKR and Etoro.

What's the best new FinTech product or service you've seen recently?

Uome - one stop shop for accounting and banking for SMEs.

Finally, let's talk predictions. What trends do you think are going to define the next few years in the FinTech sector?

Over the next few years, AI in finance will gradually move from tools that simply report on money to agents that can safely move it. These transacting agents will send invoices, chase late payments, split revenue, rebalance accounts and execute pre-agreed rules with human oversight and approvals. Three trends will shape this transition. Banks and fintechs will expose much more granular permissions, identity and spending limits so an agent can act inside clear guardrails.

A new wave of agent marketplaces will emerge where businesses assemble specialised agents for collections, payouts, forecasting and compliance on shared rails. Regulators and standards bodies will focus heavily on identity, audit trails and accountability so everyone understands responsibility when an agent executes a transaction. The fintech players that thrive will design infrastructure and products with agents as first-class customers from day one, creating rails where a trusted human and a capable agent manage money together in real time.

Thank you Cien!

Connect with Cien on LinkedIn and read more about LaunchLemonade at their website.