TEES TECH AWARDS 2026

SPONSORED BY VISTECH

FINALISTS

GLORIAMUNDO

Saigo founder and CEO Tim Johnson, right, with Paul Heeran, operations director at category sponsor Vistech.

WINNER

Its name is inspired by The Last Samurai – and Saigo developer Tim Johnson hopes his AI-powered sales tool will be a master of its art.

Saigo – catchline“ Master AI. Stay Human.” – is a suite of AI tools designed to make AI“ accessible, actionable and transformative” for sales and marketing professionals.

And after picking up the Newcomer of the Year title, Saigo founder and CEO Tim explained the background to his project.

He said:“ I’ ve been in sales and marketing for 20 years and when I got into AI, I realised salespeople were poor at adopting it. They’ d either tried it and it didn’ t work, or they weren’ t likely to embrace new technology.

“ I built Saigo as a bridge so that if you don’ t know how to use AI properly, you can go onto the site, point and click and it creates complex prompts to give you what you need it to.

“ The idea is to bridge that gap between AI and sales. Salespeople rarely even read a book on sales, let alone use technology, but this is something that can allow all businesses to grow.”

With a background in sales, marketing and tech, Tim has been keenly following the development of AI.

He added:“ I wanted to build some tech that allowed sales and marketing pros just to be better at their jobs without needing to be developers or be technical.

“ So, if you’ re a business and you need a website, it will use AI to create prompts that will build you a website. Or if you get an objection in a sales capacity, tell it what the objection is and it will tell you technically how to get around that objection.

“ It’ s a suite of lots of tools that sales people can use daily to get round the common blockers that prevent businesses from winning new clients.”

Initial reaction has been encouraging. Tim said:“ I’ ve got a waiting list so, touch wood, it’ s been really successful to the point where we need to start scaling the team.”

And as for the name, Saigo? Tim explained:“ Have you seen the film The Last Samurai? Saigo( Takamori) was the last true Samurai – so it’ s all about precision and being a master of your art, and that’ s what we aim to be.”

SPONSOR’ S MESSAGE

Operations director Paul Heeran, Vistech Services, said:“ As a fast‐growing security services company, built on continuous improvement and forward‐thinking solutions, we believe innovation is essential to strengthening both our industry and our community.

“ Sponsoring the Digital Newcomer Award allows us to recognise the bold ideas, emerging talent and transformative technologies shaping the Tees Valley’ s future. We’ re inspired by the ambition of this year’ s finalists and delighted to celebrate the creativity and progress driving our region’ s thriving tech sector.”

Built in Hartlepool, GloriaMundo is an AI workflow automation platform that tackles the trust problem at the heart of AI adoption.

Users describe what they want to automate in plain English and receive a complete, multistep workflow – then preview exactly what will happen, with live data and cost estimates, before anything executes.

Built by a solo technical founder using AI-assisted development, GloriaMundo demonstrates the same productivity thesis it sells to its users.

The platform – developed through The Stable at Tees Valley Labs and Platvix Build Studios – supports more than 800 app integrations, seven workflow step types and full operational tooling, including scheduling, webhook triggers and audit trails.

JAPAFLEX

Japaflex is a social media app that is transforming the ways newcomers to Teesside can quickly embed themselves into the local community.

Created by Teesside University graduate Ajibola Agbaje, based on his experience of isolation when coming to a new country, the Japaflex app helps diasporans – students, expats, migrants and refugees – find friends, discover community groups and events, explore job and business opportunities and access relevant local recommendations through the power of AI and geo-fencing technology set to a 20-mile radius.

By combining his tech skills and lived experience, Ajibola has developed an app which already has more than 5,000 users – a figure increasing month on month.

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