The UK’s fastest-growing employee engagement platform has significantly expanded its tech team, appointing a new Chief Technology Officer (CTO) in preparation for scaling both domestically and internationally.
A company noted for offering around 250 perks, including discounts and complimentary items to employees of subscribed businesses, has announced the appointment of Paul Schulz, a former head of mobile technology at Yahoo!, as its CTO. Paul Schulz brings more than 27 years of experience in the tech industry to the role.
Saurav Chopra, the co-founder and CEO, described Schulz as ‘the obvious choice given his track record and our focus on building mobile-first solutions’. Chopra added, ‘Paul and I first worked together 13 years ago at Yahoo! where Paul led the mobile engineering platform globally, building some of the most engaging mobile products touching hundreds of millions of users worldwide.’
Schulz himself expressed enthusiasm about the global ambitions of the company, aiming to serve 10 million employees by 2020 and 100 million by 2025. He remarked, ‘We expect to be a £100M+ run rate business in 2020 which would be on par with other $1bn+ valued companies.’
Having worked with global brands such as Nokia and Yahoo!, Schulz also created Open Video Ads, an industry-leading Open Source video advertising product acquired by JWPlayer. Most recently, he operated as CTO for very early-stage tech companies in London. Schulz commented, ‘Having worked at these global brands equips me with some great experiences to learn from. At Yahoo!, for example, while working to deliver mobile products and services such as mail, messenger, finance, and the FIFA World Cup site, I learnt to create and deliver online software products/services that automatically scale to support a large-scale global audience. I was schooled in believing that success comes from scale, where audience sizes are in the 10s to 100s of millions of users on a regular, retained basis.’
Schulz will now be responsible for the platform architecture, technology strategy, and global engineering roadmaps. He aims to complete the firm’s transformation into a mobile-first platform delivering exceptional user experiences for employees and HR teams. Schulz said, ‘When Saurav first discussed the company with me, I was impressed by how quickly it had scaled in the UK and how it had democratised employee engagement. I am confident that with the right technology infrastructure it has the potential to become the market leader globally. It’s a privilege to be part of this journey, joining a highly talented and experienced team to bring new energy and accelerate its growth.’
Over the last three months, the company has expanded its tech and engineering team from 32 to 65 employees.
With the appointment of Paul Schulz as CTO, the company is well-positioned to achieve its ambitious global expansion targets, leveraging Schulz’s extensive experience and expertise in scaling technology platforms.
