Operator first.
Everything else after.
Founder of Rope Digital. Operator across four ventures. MBA, UWE Bristol. CIM Level 7. Born in Colombo. Building for the businesses building everything else.
The operator instinct came before the operator title.
[Placeholder copy — copywriter to expand.]I grew up in Colombo, in a country whose economy runs on physical things — tea, garments, tourism, the port. That shaped a bias that never left: the businesses that actually carry an economy aren’t the ones the tech press covers. They’re the ones with inventory, with people, with vehicles, with locations.
I started building early. The first thing I sold was something physical, in a market I didn’t fully understand, to customers I learned to listen to one at a time. The pattern stuck.
The instinct goes back further than me. My great-grandfather ran N. Porolis Fernando— a company that started in Pettah, Colombo, decades ago. Four generations later, I’m still building from the same city.
The three lessons that almost cost me the company.
[Placeholder — to be expanded with two or three pivotal stories from building Rope and the side ventures. Specific failures, named.]
Most founder problems are distribution problems wearing other clothes. I’ve made every version of the mistake. Now I recognise it in 20 minutes.
AI-first tech, marketing, and the people to make it run.
Rope Digital is the flagship — AI-first technology, marketing and augmentation, shipping across 40+ countries. The bet inside it: the next decade of agency value belongs to AI-native operators willing to serve the physical-economy 90%, not just SaaS. Around it sit a handful of other ventures that exist as proof of operator range, not a service menu — see the portfolio →
If you’ve read this far, you probably know whether we’d work well together. Five ways to start a conversation →