Chris Hennigfeld

My company for fractional CTO work. Since 2015 I've advised more than 20 startups and growth companies on their product, their developers, and their tech, with clients in North America, Europe, and Asia. What I do: AI enablement, product planning from an idea to a requirements document and a roadmap, launch and scale readiness reviews, health checks when developers or agencies aren't delivering, hiring developers and tech or product leaders, and ongoing support as a fractional CTO.

Fashion Genius was building an AI fashion advisor for online shops. As fractional CTO I worked with the founder on product and AI strategy, found and managed the development company, and led the build of a Shopify plugin: a chat assistant that looks at a customer's item, gives fashion advice, and recommends matching products from the shop's catalogue. I designed it as a structured AI workflow, which kept it controllable, fast, and affordable to run.

SiteOwl is a SaaS platform for designing, installing, and maintaining building security systems. I joined at the idea stage and led its technology as fractional CTO. The product grew to more than 3,000 B2B customers, such as college campuses and nationwide retail chains. I built and led the development team, up to 15 people with an agency in India, and the process behind it: about 25 releases a year, 99.95% availability, and a SOC 2 Type 2 report renewed every year. ASSA ABLOY acquired SiteOwl in 2025.

TVT prepares movies and TV series for major broadcasters and streaming services. Over eight years as their technology advisor in Singapore, I led the move from the spreadsheet that ran their network of linguist contractors to a platform. The network grew from 200 to 8,000 without adding coordinators. I moved their server room to the cloud, saving an estimated $300,000 a year, and led their first generative AI tools, which draft subtitles and flag scenes for compliance review.

VivaLing is an online language academy for children. Lessons ran on website plugins, Zoom links, and spreadsheets until I specified a mobile app that let students join a lesson with one tap. I led technology strategy, the vendor search and the contractor, and the development team, including the technical side of entering the Chinese market.

Payment21 let merchants accept Bitcoin in line with Swiss KYC/AML rules. As independent technical advisor to the director, I managed the project with the Austrian development contractor: requirements, workflow, and daily coordination. The project won the Constantinus Award 2016 in the category International Projects.

I founded LingoQuest, a blended-learning platform for language schools. I built the first prototype, met about a dozen language schools, and brought in co-founders for education and business development. A training provider became our investor and first customer. I led the product and a development team in Pakistan: web apps in Angular and Node.js and a game client in Unity. In 2016 our strategic investor, Training Vision Institute, acquired the company.

Rotimatic makes a fully automatic flatbread machine. When I worked with them in 2015, they were still before launch: pre-revenue, with a waitlist and the appliance not yet shipping. As technology advisor, I coordinated the agency building the website for the launch and designed the connected-appliance app planned for after it: architecture, UX, and a clickable prototype for remote control, telemetry, and remote diagnostics.

BellaDati is a business intelligence tool. In Singapore I built customer customizations (data connectors and visualizations) and the Android app, and met clients across Asia.

I built FriarTuck's development team in Singapore and led Workforce Optimizer, staff scheduling software for small businesses: a web front end and apps for shift workers on the existing Java back end.

Two years of travel through China, South Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand, mostly on my own. I took my Mandarin from classroom lessons to conversation and spent two winters on Hainan helping at a beach seafood restaurant in exchange for board, living in a tent and surfing. Travelling alone across Asia taught me to work things out with people whose language and habits differ from mine. That has helped ever since with teams and clients in other countries.

My first job after university. I led imbus's offshore development team in Shanghai and was the bridge between the team and the company in Germany. Back in Germany I worked on R&D with the CTO, including model-based testing.

Exchange semester in computer science