Your Technology Should Work as Hard as You Do

By Scott Collison|Mar 18, 2026|12:58 pm AEDT

Building Around How People Actually Work

Restaurant and hospitality operators are some of the hardest-working people in any industry. Hundreds of decisions a day around labor, purchasing, shift coverage, and what to do when their plan meets reality. Those decisions happen at the manager’s desk, on the phone between locations, during the rush that went sideways, in a quick huddle before doors open. The margins are thin. The pace is relentless.

The technology behind those decisions should match that pace. That’s the standard I’m here to hold.

I joined Fourth as CEO because I believe this company has an extraordinary foundation: 25+ years in the industry, 15,000+ customers, 100,000+ locations worldwide and a team with deep expertise in the problems restaurant operators face every day. The product has been getting better. The team has shipped multiple generations of Fourth iQ, which is helping operators make faster decisions about labor and demand. The pieces are here.

My job is to accelerate what’s working and correct what isn’t with the speed our customers deserve. You should see that show up in the product over the coming quarters, not the coming years.

I didn’t grow up in this industry. I’ve spent the past two decades building and scaling technology companies at Microsoft, Salesforce, VMware, and most recently as CEO of Personify. But every company I’ve led, I’ve led the same way: by starting with how people actually work.

I hold a PhD in Cultural Anthropology, and it taught me something most business education skips: the way people make decisions. Under pressure, with incomplete information, in the middle of competing demands is rarely the way any system assumes they do. The companies that build products people can’t live without are the ones that close that gap. That’s not a slow process. It’s actually the fastest way to build the right thing, because you don’t waste cycles building the wrong one.

At Personify, we studied how customers actually used the product and really understood where it fit their real workflow and where it created friction nobody had named. That led to a fundamentally different strategy, and the growth followed. Not in years. In quarters.

Here’s what’s happening right now.

I’m spending real time with our customers. Not to delay decisions, but to make sure we’re making the right ones fast. Some of what I’m hearing is that Fourth is essential to how operators run their businesses. Some of it is that we have work to do. Both are valuable, and I want more of both.

I’m investing in the team and the product. We’re focused on making the things that work, work better while addressing the things that don’t with urgency. When technology works, it’s invisible. It just makes the day run better. When it doesn’t, it’s one more thing on a list that was already too long. I take that personally.

I’m particularly focused on where AI can earn its place in an operator’s day. Scheduling smarter. Forecasting demand more precisely. Spotting problems before they become expensive. The best operators already have extraordinary instincts. The right technology sharpens those instincts rather than trying to replace them. The team has already started this work with Fourth iQ, and I’m investing to accelerate it.

Here’s my commitment.

Every quarter, I’ll report back on what we heard from our customers, what we built in response, and what we’re working on next. In order to continue to earn your trust, it should be because you can see progress, not because we asked you to take our word for it.

That’s the standard I’m setting for this company: quick to listen, fast to action, and eager to show our work.

I have a lot of restaurants to walk into. I’m looking forward to every one.