About Zolltor — Our Mission, Team & Values

Our Mission

Global trade rules are changing faster and more unpredictably than at any time in living memory. Tariffs and trade barriers have returned at a scale not seen in over a century, and the rules-based WTO system that companies relied on for decades is giving way to a shifting patchwork of bilateral and regional trade agreements.

Large multinationals have entire departments and seven-figure software budgets to manage this complexity. Mid-sized European companies — the backbone of the EU economy — do not. They need actionable intelligence, not raw data. They need plain-language guidance, not legal jargon. They need to understand business impact, not just technical changes.

Zolltor exists to give every European company the trade intelligence that was previously reserved for the Fortune 500.

How We’re Different

Enterprise trade tools were built for multinationals with big IT budgets and dedicated compliance teams. Zolltor was built for everyone else.

Self-Serve, Not Enterprise IT

No ERP integration, no lengthy implementation, no consulting teams required. Sign up, log in, and start monitoring your trade exposure immediately. Cloud-based delivery with intuitive design.

Intelligence, Not Just Data

Other platforms give you tariff tables and leave interpretation to you. Zolltor uses AI to deliver plain-language explanations of what each change means for your business — tailored to your role.

Built for European Mid-Market

Focused on EU trade rules, the export markets European companies care about most, and the specific challenges of mid-sized companies (€50–500M revenue) that are too big to ignore trade risk but too lean for enterprise solutions.

Affordable and Transparent

Priced at a fraction of enterprise trade management software, far less than the cost of even an entry-level employee, and far less than one unexpected tariff surprise.

Leadership

Decades of experience in software, strategy, and regulatory intelligence — now focused on solving one problem well.

Scott McPherson

Founder & CEO

From San Francisco Bay Area, CA · Relocated to Germany in 2017

Scott brings to Zolltor AI three threads that run through his career: software, strategy, and helping management teams make better decisions. Scott’s early career was spent building and scaling software products in Silicon Valley, where he founded a webmail startup (acquired in 2000) and led product management for an email server company. He later spent nearly a decade at Thomson Reuters, working with leaders of software and information businesses to define their growth strategies. Most recently, he led revenue-growth engagements at Blue Ridge Partners, a management consulting firm serving private equity portfolio companies across Europe and the US, where he also led the firm’s internal adoption of AI tools.

Scott holds an MBA with honors from the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business and undergraduate degrees in sociology and computer science.

Charlie Hornberger

CTO

From San Francisco Bay Area, CA · Relocated to Germany in 2011

Charlie brings more than 20 years of experience building and scaling software products across startups, enterprises, and high-growth ventures in the US and Europe. His career spans the full stack: from search infrastructure at YellowPages.com and AT&T Interactive, to payment gateway engineering at Skrill, to launching consumer products like Foodora and ShopWings as project CTO at Rocket Internet in Berlin. He has led engineering teams ranging from small squads to divisions of 70+ engineers, and most recently served as VP of Engineering at Utility Warehouse, a UK-based multi-service provider.

Charlie’s technical range — Ruby, Python, Java, cloud infrastructure, API design, and data engineering — is matched by deep experience working across product, QA, marketing, and senior management. He studied at UC Santa Barbara and earlier in his career developed experimental economics software at Caltech, including auction platforms built for FCC spectrum research.

Why Bremen

Zolltor AI is headquartered in Bremen, Germany — a leader in trade for 700 years.

Bremen Marktplatz with the historic Rathaus, St. Petri Dom, and the Bürgerschaft, viewed from above

The Bremen Marktplatz — heart of one of Europe’s oldest trading cities

Bremen’s identity as a leader in international trade dates back to 1358, when it joined the Hanseatic League — the powerful medieval network of merchant guilds and market towns that dominated commerce across Northern Europe from the Baltic to the North Sea. For centuries, Hanseatic merchants in Bremen traded wool, grain, timber, and fish along routes stretching from London to Novgorod, establishing the commercial infrastructure and trading culture that endure to this day.

That heritage never faded. Today, the city-state of Bremen and its deep-water port in Bremerhaven together form Germany’s second-largest maritime logistics hub, handling everything from container freight to automotive exports. Bremerhaven is one of Europe’s largest vehicle transshipment ports, and Bremen’s logistics cluster encompasses hundreds of freight forwarders, customs brokers, shipping lines, and third-party logistics providers. The region is also home to leading institutions like the Institute for Shipping Economics and Logistics (ISL), which has shaped maritime policy and research for more than 70 years.

This concentration of trade expertise, combined with a strong university system in computer science and artificial intelligence, makes Bremen a natural home for a company building the next generation of trade intelligence software. Zolltor is built where global trade actually happens — surrounded by the customers, domain experts, and technical talent needed to get it right.

1358

Joined the Hanseatic League

2nd

Largest maritime logistics hub in Germany

700+

Years of global trade heritage

About Zolltor AI