How Jonathan Prescott Is Turning Emotion into a Business KPI with Cavefish

How did you come up with the idea for Cavefish?

After years leading digital performance teams across the US and Europe, I kept running into the same challenge: we could measure clicks, conversions, and sales, but we could never truly measure why people made their decisions. The emotional drivers were invisible, and yet they were the most powerful part of the process. That gap stayed with me, and I began asking whether it was possible to build a company focused on turning emotion into measurable, actionable intelligence. That was the starting point for Cavefish.

What led you to develop EchoDepth as your first product?

Once we had the vision for Cavefish, the next step was to create a technology that could bring it to life. That’s how EchoDepth was born. It’s our emotional AI, designed to measure up to 52 emotions in real time and show how people really feel about what they’re seeing, hearing, or experiencing. EchoDepth is the engine behind Cavefish, the tool that transforms emotion into structured data that businesses can use to improve decisions, campaigns, and communications. Cavefish is the company, EchoDepth is the product — and together they represent our mission to make emotion as measurable as any other KPI.

Beyond marketing and leadership, where do you see emotional AI making the biggest impact? Could it, for example, change education, healthcare, or even politics?

I believe we’re only scratching the surface of what emotional AI can do. Every conversation opens up fresh possibilities — from supporting mental health and transforming training programs to applications in defence and security. Essentially, anywhere emotions matter at scale, this technology has the potential to make a real impact.

How do you conduct customer development?

I treat every meeting and demo as a focus group. You’ll often find that the dullest, most overlooked feature is the one that solves 90% of a customer’s pain. If you listen with an open mind, people will tell you exactly what’s working and what isn’t.

What valuable lesson has helped you grow as a founder?

Be humble. This is startup number five for me, and I’m still learning. I always keep an open mind and assume I’m wrong at least 10% of the time. That mindset keeps you flexible, keeps you listening, and stops you from getting locked into your own assumptions.

What advice would you give to founders just starting out?

Don’t waste energy chasing perfection. Get to an MVP as early as you can and test it in the market. Then iterate, again and again. That’s how you find true product–market fit without burning through cash too early.

What’s your long-term vision for Cavefish?

My vision is for Cavefish to become Wales’ first unicorn. As a small but proud nation of three million people, we’ve yet to see one. I want to build not just a business, but a platform that keeps talent in Wales, stops the brain drain, and inspires the next generation of big thinkers.

We’re building EchoDepth to become the emotional intelligence layer for business — and if we succeed, we won’t just create a unicorn, we’ll change how organizations measure what really matters: how people feel.

Are you planning to raise funds for Cavefish? What are your goals for the round?

Yes, we’re preparing to raise a seed round later this year. The focus will be on expanding our sales and marketing capabilities, shaping some of our product streams into vertical solutions, and building on the incredible momentum we’ve had so far — from valuable conversations with partners to the recognition we’ve received through multiple awards.