Mel Atwood
I lead marketing, vision, & I read code.
Twenty-five years building and running commercial software platforms. Founder, hands-on architect, and lately the person who designed and runs an autonomous AI agent organization on a live codebase.
Work hard, play hard.
- Raised in a work hard, play hard family. Balance is something we must always reach for.
- Married to Sherry. Kids, grandkids, and a house that is never quiet.
- I strive to lift the people around me. That's the job, whatever the title says.
The short version
- Founded a software platform company in 1999 and still run it.
- Built one platform across six major versions into a 26-subsystem, multi-tenant system on AWS. Its primary developer since 2014.
- 300+ implementations delivered. Hundreds of platform and data migrations, the largest over 250,000 records. Hundreds of third-party integrations. PCI and SOX compliant operations.
- Consulted to 350+ companies on business model, go-to-market, compliance and technology selection.
- Interim or fractional CTO to a dozen companies, from first build through scale.
- In 2026, designed and operate an autonomous AI agent organization on a production codebase, under formal governance.
Track record
- MyWorld, co-founder and chief product and technology officer (2024 to now). A multi-tenant platform, taken from concept to revenue as sole product and technology lead. 20,000+ products from 250+ brands through a self-serve import; 40,000+ users onboarded from two partners; revenue inside two quarters. This is where the AI agent organization runs.
- NUALO, CEO and chief product and technology officer (2022 to 2024). Concept to live operations. Forty partners, each with a branded storefront; a mobile app with single sign-on at 85%+ adoption; 20% fewer clicks before a sale after the first release.
- Envex, founder, CEO and head of product and technology (1999 to now). The platform company behind everything else on this list. Hundreds of client companies on one platform, across North America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Australia and South America. 300+ enterprise implementations, at a peak of three to five launches a month. Hundreds of platform and data migrations, the largest over 250,000 records. Hundreds of third-party integrations. Over two million end users and hundreds of millions of dollars in transactions handled, by a good-faith estimate. Took the business from licensed software to a hosted service, then to continuous delivery on AWS, with PCI and SOX compliant operations throughout. Teams of up to nineteen.
- International Markets Live, CTO (2022). A $400MM-a-year subscription company with 300,000+ users and a global development team. Built the migration roadmap for 3 million user records; put in a support escalation model that cut response from days to under 24 hours.
- Quality Staffing Network, fractional CTO (2022). A healthcare staffing platform. Took a stalled build to completion; owned the integration plan and the third-party technical relationships.
- KUL Holdings, interim CTO (2021). A consumer brand. Designed and delivered a loyalty rewards model through custom middleware; reorganized the technical staff. "Saving us a lot of money," in the CEO's words.
- Ekonomx, co-founder and CTO (2019 to 2020). A video and learning subscription start-up. Buy-versus-build strategy, the learning platform on a third-party CDN, and the merchant, payroll and CDN contracts.
- Asirvia, CTO (2018 to 2019). Architected and launched a subscription proximity-marketing service: 20,000+ users and $1.5MM+ in monthly recurring revenue within six months.
Before any of that
- VP of sales and marketing, and CTO, for a telecom that recruited, trained and managed a 2,000+ person sales force across the U.S.
- Chief operating officer of a fulfillment operation and a benefit-card program.
- Designed a marketing system that drew 50,000 users in 71 countries and $6MM a year.
The business side
- Lead seller and closer for twenty-five years. Every contract, every renewal, every partnership.
- Built and ran an inbound engine: 400 inquiries a month, 100 consulting calls, 3 to 6 enterprise contracts. Double-digit growth five years out of six. Pricing that doubled the average contract.
- Negotiated hundreds of $30K to $250K enterprise contracts across North America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Australia and South America.
Standing
- Founder and former vice president of a national industry association. Five service awards. Industry hall of fame.
- Keynote and conference speaker, columnist, radio panelist, and co-author of an accredited college course.
- Retained expert witness in five federal and arbitration matters.
- MIT Professional Education, Digital Transformation: AI, IoT, Cloud, Blockchain and Cybersecurity, 2022.
- 30+ recommendations on LinkedIn.
What people say
We contracted with Mel to be our Interim CTO. He led us to reorganize our internal technical staff, saving us a lot of money and increasing efficiency in the process. He researched quality external partners to meet our objectives and then coordinated with our internal and external technical teams to drive us forward. I know I can rely on Mel to make thoughtful and informed recommendations and decisions. I highly recommend Mel.
Mel's name came up the most frequently as the top expert to hire when mapping out your business model. Of even greater value was the brainstorming Mel is so adept at: taking an initial business idea and its related assumptions and making it far more valuable, and increasing the probability of success. In an industry noted for hype, Mel has proved to be all substance and expertise.
As a developer myself, I can attest to the fact that when you actually write software like Mel does, and not just use it, you understand business rules and possibilities in a deep way that a regular consultant or salesperson will never be able to. He's also a very honest guy, and incredibly realistic. That's a breath of fresh air in an industry where too many people over-promise and under-deliver.
Where most companies were giving us time frames of over 120 days to have a system up and running, Mel was able to get us up and running in half the time. I especially like that Mel is easy to work with and his response time is spot on.
We chose to work with Mel after reviewing more than 20 other providers, and we haven't been disappointed with our decision. Mel is an expert at what he does. He has delivered a great product, great service, and has gone above and beyond what he had to do to help us be successful.
Mel once said to me: "I'm doing this to make a client happy and to also make a profit. Yet, if the first is not there at the end of the project, the second one does not matter." He helped us get a better understanding of what we wanted, sharing from his vast experience. It presented absolutely no challenge for Mel and his team that we were a Romanian company.
Mel has the unique ability to see through the most complex issues and break them down so the ideas can be understood.
I told Mel, "I need your help and I need it yesterday." Mel and his staff hit the ground running and finished my job sooner than I needed it complete. We had time to test and retest before the deadline, and the final product was nothing short of perfection.
Thirty-plus more on LinkedIn.
