Chris Scollo

Chief Technology Officer

London, UK     •     +44 772 213 0213     •     scollo@scollo.com



I'm a CTO with substantial experience across multiple industries, including ecommerce, digital media, insurance, education, health, and travel. My first CTO role was in Munich at Ciao. I led the technical and content departments (~55 people) through our incredible transformation from a simple product review site into Europe's leading price comparison engine and shopping portal. In 2008 Microsoft acquired Ciao 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. For the past several years, I've done a mix of permanent and consulting CTO roles, as well as NED and advisory roles, usually with VC and private equity backed startups and scaleups. 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 a major programming language of the web.

Professional
Experience
Consulting CTO; Sep 2008 – present
  • Serve as an interim, fractional, or consulting CTO to lead a variety of organisations through technology transformations and team expansions. Some roles included:
    • Life Ledger 2023–present
    • Omlet 2022–present
    • Oxbow Partners 2016–present
    • Apoteka 2020–2021
    • OrderYOYO 2019–2020
    • Munich Re Digital Partners 2016–2017
    • Smartpipe Solutions 2015–2016
    • Autodata 2012–2014
    • Uttam Direct / Yumi 2011–2012
    • Mangahigh 2010–2012
  • Advise executive teams on technical matters; mentor less-experienced CTOs or tech team leaders.
  • Review staff and optimise team organisation, including recruitment, interviews, and training.
  • Lead distributed and remote teams. Select, onboard, and manage near-shore providers.
  • Set product development and technical strategies.
  • Create and manage budgets.
  • Procurement support, including running RfI / RfP / RfQ processes; vendor selection; vendor onboarding.
  • Help businesses prepare for funding rounds and exit opportunities.
  • Audit technical architecture, optimise database schemata, and advise on scalability.
  • Perform technical due diligence on software and digital media assets for investment and M&A.
  • Create internal structures, policies, and practices to bring companies into regulatory compliance.
  • Document processes and systems; produce risk mitigation strategies.

REAL USER TEST LLP; London, UK; Feb 2010 – Sep 2013
Co-founder
Lead investor and co-founder of Real User Test, a B2B usability testing service in the German-language market.

LITELOGIC LTD; London, UK; May 2007 – May 2008
CTO
  • Recruited and led the technical team of an advertising technology start-up in the UK and Ireland.
  • Analysed the emerging digital outdoor advertising industry and devised business and product strategies.
  • Ran network operations and established procedures for compliance with customer Service Level Agreements.
  • Performed technical sales support; demonstrated products to prospective customers.

CROWDSTORM LTD; London, UK; Jan 2006 – May 2007
Co-founder, CTO
  • Founded and operated a commercial social-networking startup.
  • Recruited and managed an off-shore team of developers.
  • Commissioned content creation.
  • Designed and developed recommendation engine and search engine.

CIAO AG; Munich, Germany; Jul 2001 – Apr 2005
CTO, Feb 2003 – Apr 2005
  • Managed the technical department of one of Europe's most successful web companies. Set the department's goals and direction.
  • Recruited staff. Expanded team from six to thirty-five members in three countries.
  • Coordinated external programmers with internal engineers, administrators, project managers and developers.
  • Established a software development life cycle to assure the quality of all programs and stored procedures.
  • Directed complete redesign of several major web sites.
    • Set deadlines and managed tasks of project team, including "dotted line" reports from the content department.
    • Identified critical path dependencies.
    • Developed launch scenarios and contingency planning.
  • Led Ciao's technical due diligence proceedings during the firm's successful acquisition (April 2005) by Greenfield Online Inc., an American market research firm. Audited, documented, and presented Ciao's technical procedures and systems.
Chief Architect, Nov 2002 – Apr 2005
  • Responsible for the hardware, software, and network architectures for major ecommerce web sites.
  • Reconciled the needs of a rapidly changing, technology-based company with its legacy architectures.
  • Achieved scalability and greater development agility by transforming the company's architectural model from a centralised single-database system to a distributed multi-database network with an n-tier application layer to seamlessly unify systems.
Chief Programmer, Jul 2001 – Feb 2003
  • Developed a large-scale data integration application.
  • Designed and developed a high-speed, fault-tolerant caching system.
SBX; Skillman, NJ, USA; Oct 1999 – Dec 2000
Lead Application Developer
  • Designed and developed a web-based, multi-tiered stock-trading system.
  • Designed and developed an object-oriented stock-feed parsing program to capture market data from a NASDAQ Level II quote feed using socket-layer programming.
  • Created objects for dynamically maintaining and enforcing user-level privileges and preferences within the system.
TAURIX; New Brunswick, NJ, USA; Sep 1998 – Mar 2000
Co-founder
  • Created and operated a small software corporation.
  • Designed and developed travel and airline reservation application for SME tour operators.
DATA ANALYSIS SYSTEMS; Piscataway, NJ, USA; Sep 1996 – May 1997
Programmer / Analyst
VAGABOND TOURS (now EDUCATION TRAVEL ADVENTURES); New Brunswick, NJ, USA; Oct 1994 – Jun 1996
Co-founder
Established and operated collegiate travel corporation.
Non-Executive Director
DOCCOMS; London, UK; Jun 2020 – present
Board director of a medtech startup providing a secure, NHS-approved communications system for healthcare staff.

SWISHD LTD; London, UK; Oct 2018 – present
Board director of a startup applying gig economy principles to the parcel delivery space.

BRIGHTLOBE LTD; London, UK; Sep 2017 – present
Board director of a startup that creates software to support doctors, teachers, and care-givers focused on child development.
Published Works Beginning PHP4 Databases, Wrox Press, 2002 (co-authored)
Professional PHP4, Wrox Press, 2002; Reprinted by Apress, 2003 (co-authored)
Professional PHP Programming, Wrox Press, 1999 (co-authored)
Other Relevant Experience Mentor - Laudato Si' Challenge, social impact startup accelerator created by the Vatican; 2017
Mentor - BBC Worldwide Labs startup accelerator programme; 2012 – 2013
Instructor - Princeton Adult School, Princeton, NJ, USA; 2000
  • Created and taught courses in XHTML and in web architecture and technologies.
Education Rutgers College, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA
B.A. in German, May 1994
Minor in Political Science - concentration in International Studies
Citizenship United Kingdom, Italy, and United States


Professional PHP Programming book cover