Hospitality tech firm Fourth hires former Personify CEO Scott Collison as new head honcho

Fourth, a specialist in AI powered restaurant workforce and inventory solutions, has announced the appointment of Scott Collison as Chief Executive Officer.

Most recently, he served as CEO of Personify. Earlier in his career, Collison held senior leadership roles at Salesforce and VMware and served as CEO ar Anaconda, a platform for Python data science.

He also co-founded Geeknet, the company behind SourceForge and Slashdot, and helped build Signio, whose payments technology was later acquired by VeriSign and ultimately became PayPal’s PayFlow Pro.

“I didn’t take this job because Fourth has potential. I took it because Fourth has proof - a brand and platform that operators genuinely love and a distinct ability to offer customers differentiated, value-additive, AI led products,” says Collison. “Restaurant margins are tighter than ever, and the operators who win will be the ones using AI to drive the labour and inventory actions which maximise profit at each location.”

“We couldn’t be more excited to welcome Scott to Fourth,” says Nathan Pingelton, a Managing Director at Marlin Equity Partners. “He has spent his career doing exactly what our customers need most - transforming innovative technology into outcomes that have real impact for restaurant operators.”

2026 RTIH Innovation Awards

AI will be a key focus area at the 2026 RTIH Innovation Awards.

The awards are now open for entries and celebrate global retail technology innovation in a fast moving omnichannel world.

Our winners will be revealed at the 2026 RTIH Innovation Awards Ceremony, taking place at The HAC in Central London on Wednesday, 4th November.

Check out our 2025 winners here.

Our 2025 hall of fame entrants were revealed during a sold out event which took place at The HAC on 16th October and consisted of a drinks reception, three course meal, and awards ceremony presided over by award winning comedian, actress and writer Tiff Stevenson.

In his welcome speech, Scott Thompson, Founder and Editor, RTIH, said: “This is the awards’ fifth year as a physical event. We started off with just 30 people at the South Place Hotel not far from here, then moved to London Bridge Hotel, then The Barbican, and last year RIBA’s HQ in the West End.”

“But I’m conscious of the fact that, to quote the legend that is Taylor Swift, You’re only as hot as your last hit, baby. So, this year we’ve moved to our biggest venue yet, and also pulled in our largest number of entries to date and broken attendance records.”

He added: “This year’s submissions have without doubt been our best yet. To quote one of the judges: The examples of innovative developments across both traditional and digital retail spaces were truly remarkable.”

Congratulations to our winners, and a big thank you to our sponsors, judging panel, the legend that is Tiff Stevenson, and all those who attended our 2025 gathering.