Christopher Allen
Founder, Alacrity Ventures
Christopher Allen is
an entrepreneur who has been a leader in the high-tech industry for
over thirty years. He possesses the vision to see the future of
computer technology; when he discovers new cutting-edge technologies
he has the ability to form teams to take advantage of them. As a
pioneer in e-commerce, Christopher helped to create an exciting and
evolving market. This position in the forefront of the e-commerce
industry was leveraged upon a solid knowledge of the security field
and years of active leadership in the computer industry. Over the
years, he's acted as the VP of Developer Relations
at Blackphone, a Founder of ReOrient Media, a lecturer
at Bainbridge Graduate Institute, the CEO of Skotos
Tech, the lead investor of Alacrity Ventures, the CTO
of Certicom Corp., and the founder of Consensus
Development, Associated Computer Consultants, and Dreams
of the Phoenix.
An E-Commerce Pioneer
E-commerce is a huge and growing industry. It exceeded $300 billion in
revenue in 2015 and should reach $500 billion by the end of the
decade. The majority of e-commerce depends upon a technology named the
Secure Sockets Layer (SSL). Christopher acted as a pioneer in
e-commerce through his work on SSL. In collaboration with Netscape, he
formed and led the SSL reference implementation team; later, he headed
the SSL Plus development team, creating the most widely deployed
commercial SSL toolkit. Numerous industry leaders, including Intuit,
Lucent, Oracle, Phillips, Sun, and Sybase, have used SSL Plus; it was
deployed in both Lotus Notes and Quicken. Christopher was also the
co-author of TLS, the next-generation SSL protocol. Through his work
on SSL, Christopher has helped to make it the industry standard,
beating out Microsoft's PCT, as well as the SET and SHTTP protocols.
A Security Expert
Christopher's e-commerce success was built upon years of experience as
a security expert at Consensus Development and Certicom Corp. Besides
working on SSL and TLS at Consensus, Christopher also led consultant
teams that offered advice on security architecture as well as security
screenings and reviews. Companies such as Apple, Digicash, Intuit, and
Oracle were among Consensus' clients. Under Christopher's leadership,
Consensus also promoted the reference version of RSA and helped RSA to
spin off the Verisign certificate company, a corporation now worth
$7.8 billion dollars. Today, Christopher continues to plan
to move
the security industry forward. Most recently, he worked with
Blackphone to create a privacy-focused mobile app store and
collaborated at Blockchain University
on Revoke
SSL. Christopher's security expertise extends to issues of
privacy, such as his definitive
article, "The
Four Kinds of Privacy".
A Technical Visionary
Christopher was able to achieve his position at the forefront of the
security industry due to his role as a technical visionary in the
computer field. Because of Christopher's technical vision — his
ability to understand technology and lead in its development —
he is well regarded by other experts in the field and is often sought
out for his expertise. He sat as the Chairman for the National
Automation Committee for the Independent Computer Consultants
Association. He has spoken at numerous conferences, including the RSA
Data Security Conference, MacWorld Expo, and GROUPWARE, often also
acting as moderator. He has been the author and editor of national
computer publications. He moderates the Hackathon Contest at
iOSDevCamp. He was on the Advisory Board of Areae, the developer of
Raph Koster's MetaPlace.
An Influential Teacher
Christopher's technological influence extends to the classroom. He
teaches Technology Leadership in the MBA for Sustainable Systems
program at Bainbridge Graduate Institute. There, he instructs courses
on "Using the Social Web for Social Change" and "Digital Influence"
and was part of the faculty team that designed a totally integrated
first-year sustainable business curriculum. He also acted as Director
of Collaborative Strategy where he helped establish standards for
digital content, ebooks, flipped classroom, and online teaching
platforms. Recently, Christopher has been writing books related to his
technological expertises. He coauthored iPhone in Action, one
of the first books on iPhone development, and is now working on a pair
of books focusing on cooperative gaming and cooperative play. He also
blogs about entrepreneurship, the social web, collaboration and other
topics at Life with
Alacrity.
Entrepreneurial Successes
Christopher's biggest entrepreneurial success to date was as the
Founder and President of Consensus Development. When Christopher
arranged for the merger of Consensus Development with Certicom Corp,
the deal was worth a total of $24.5 million dollars, $3 million of
that in cash. The last phase of investors in Consensus, who put out
money just two and a half years earlier, saw a compounded internal
rate of return in excess of 125%. Christopher's success with Consensus
also led to his time as CTO as Certicom Corp. where he was responsible
for the company's technical vision. He also coordinated overseas
development, oversaw patent strategy, and managed acquisitions.
Entrepreneurial Projects
As an entrepreur, Christopher continues to work on a variety of
creative projects. While on a hiatus from the security industry due
to a noncompete agreement,
he acted
as an angel investor, here at Alacrity Ventures. He's also
created two more companies of his own. Skotos Tech is an online
game company that focuses on the creation of online communities, while
ReOrient Media is a PDF software company that creates advanced
PDF-related tools, including InfitePDF — a platform for
non-linear media. Christopher has also produced several iOS games and
a few tabletop games. More personal projects include a few card and
board games of his own and the Touched comic book.
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