My name is Chris. I'm a CTO with substantial experience across multiple industries. My first CTO role was in Munich at Ciao. I made my exit when Greenfield Online acquired Ciao for $154m in 2005. In 2008 Microsoft acquired Ciao for $486m to make it the shopping arm of the Bing search engine.
After moving to London in 2005, I was co-founder and CTO of social-shopping startup Crowdstorm. I now provide CTO services as a consultant, NED, or board advisor.
I've served as acting CTO, interim CTO, fractional CTO, or tech advisor to over a dozen companies, including Mangahigh, Soliland, Autodata, Smartpipe, The Smalls, Monica Vinader, Oxbow Partners, Munich Re Digital Partners, OrderYOYO, Takumi, Sparkademy, Omlet, and Life Ledger.
I've conducted more than 30 tech due diligence assessments, usually for PE, VC, and Corporate M&A. I often provide post-completion portfolio support to oversee the implementation of a 100-day plan, to mitigate risk, and to remove technical barriers to success. I occasionally do internal (sell-side) TDD as a 'health' check or in preparation for investment or a trade sale.
Clients engage me to lead technical vendor selection projects, both for system selection and staff augmentation / IT outsourcing vendors. I deliver these projects end-to-end, including requirements analysis, vendor research, RFI / RFP / RFQ, shortlisting, site visits, reference checks, contract execution, and onboarding.
As an angel investor, I have the opportunity to fund and work with exciting digital startups in London, including Yocuda, Trouva, DocComs, Green Man Gaming, and Brightlobe.
I also had the good fortune to be the lead author of the world's best-selling book on the PHP programming language, just as that language was emerging to become the dominant programming language of the web.
Drop me a line at scollo@scollo.com to find out what I can do for your business.