From Town Planning to Tech Pioneer: How Jonny Britton is Digitizing Land Development
What do a brick-sized cell phone, early Twitter, and a derelict lot in East London have in common? For Jonny Britton, they were part of the catalyst that pushed him from an uninspired town planning career into founding LandTech—a platform redefining how developers find, assess, and act on land opportunities. In this conversation, Jonny shares how a tweet turned into a co-founder relationship, how LandTech is unlocking opaque land data, and why the future of real estate development lies in radical transparency and digital reinvention.
Guest Bio
Jonny Britton began his career as a town planner after earning a master’s degree in planning from Manchester University. Frustrated by the bureaucracy and inefficiencies of the traditional planning process, he taught himself to code and eventually co-founded LandTech. The platform is now used across the UK and North America to help developers of all sizes access hidden land data and streamline site acquisition.
Episode Highlights and Chapters
00:01 Jonny’s early career and the emergence of technology
03:15 Why the land market is so opaque—and how that hurts development
06:30 Realization of inefficiencies in town planning: Doncaster case study
08:00 Founding LandTech: from a tweet to a startup
10:00 Early funding struggles and the accelerator breakthrough
12:30 Why zoning laws are still stuck in the past
15:00 Vision for digitizing and reforming planning systems
17:00 LandTech’s practical tools for developers and site sourcing
20:00 Example: Using LandTech to filter vacant, multi-family zoned sites in Miami-Dade
22:00 Skip tracing and sending personalized outreach letters through the platform
24:00 Challenges of scaling from the UK to the US market
27:00 Real-world impact: 3-hour tasks reduced to 15 minutes
28:00 A costly data error and what it taught the team about transparency
30:00 Jonny’s cheat code for new developers: good site + good market = success
Contact Information
Learn more about Jonny Britton’s work and explore LandTech at: https://land.tech/
Connect with Jonny on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonnybritton/
To stay connected with host Eugene Gershman and explore more insights on real estate development, visit:
https://giscompanies.co/podcast/
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