I Wish I Knew Series with Hadleigh Ford, SwipedOn

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With Hadleigh Ford from SwipedOn

Building a company isn’t a single event – it’s a long game. One with messy middles, unexpected pivots, and the odd “what now?” at 2am.

Join us for a series of raw and real conversations with successful Kiwi founders who’ve taken the hits, made the calls, and kept showing up. This is about the stuff they wish they knew earlier – the kind of lessons that only come from doing the work (and a few things going sideways).

This event is for founders, early-stage teams and leaders who are serious about growing. We screen all registrations to make sure appropriate criteria is met.

More on our speaker:

SwipedOn is a workplace sign-in system turned global SaaS success story, built in Tauranga and scaled to thousands of businesses worldwide.

From Gut Feel to Data Driven - And Back Again. Hadleigh Ford didn’t set out to build a SaaS company - and definitely not one that would be sold twice. He started in the maritime industry, far from term sheets and cap tables. But SwipedOn scaled globally, was acquired by a public company, and later by private equity.

It’s been a ride.

Early on, decisions came from instinct. No dashboards, no analysts - just a sense of what customers wanted and the drive to move fast. As the business grew, so did the data. A/B tests, funnel performance, SaaS metrics - all of it sharpened decision making and helped the team scale with confidence. But Hadleigh says the biggest shift came later: learning to act even without perfect information. “You rarely get absolute certainty. You just make the best call you can and keep moving. Momentum matters.”Life inside a listed company brought its own lessons - public reporting, shifting priorities, and investor pressure. It taught him to let go of perfect timing and to move with clarity, not consensus. These days, Hadleigh leads with experience, instinct and a bias for action. He still values the data - but knows when to trust the pattern, not the spreadsheet.

“No regrets,” he says. “You learn far more from the rough patches than the smooth sailing.”