---
title: Jonas Templestein
description: CEO of Iterate; co-founder and former CTO of Monzo Bank
category: People
---

# Jonas Templestein

![Jonas Templestein](https://github.com/jonashuckestein.png)

**Jonas Templestein** is a German-British software engineer and entrepreneur. He is the **CEO and Founder of [Iterate](https://iterate.com)**, an AI agent platform, and the co-founder and former CTO of **Monzo Bank**, one of the UK's leading digital banks. He is active on X as [@jonas](https://x.com/jonas).

## Career

Templestein studied Management Consulting at Academy Consult München and at the University of California, Berkeley. He worked as Lead Engineer at Campfire Labs (acquired by Groupon), and as a Software Engineer at Starling Bank.

He founded **HipDial** in 2012, a communications startup.

### Monzo Bank (2015–2023)

In 2015, Templestein co-founded **Monzo** (originally Mondo) alongside Tom Blomfield and others. He served as **Co-founder and CTO** for nearly nine years, building one of the most important European fintech companies. Monzo grew to millions of customers and a valuation exceeding £4 billion. He left Monzo in December 2023 after almost nine years.

### Iterate (2024–present)

Templestein founded **Iterate** in 2024 — described as "the world's most hackable AI agent" — with a mission to enable "self-driving startups" where AI handles routine business operations. Iterate is backed by OpenAI, Index Ventures, Y Combinator president Garry Tan, Naval Ravikant, Amjad Masad (Replit CEO), and Aravind Srinivas (Perplexity CEO).

He has been vocal about a theory of "Level 0 through Level 5" AI-augmented startups, placing most organisations at Level 1 as of 2025.

## Connection to Jan

In May 2025, Jan did a trial week with Iterate. Jonas wanted Jan full-time, but Jan declined to continue because Jonas required full-time commitment rather than the part-time arrangement Jan was seeking.

## See Also

- [[Jan_Wilmake]]
- [[Iterate]]