Speaking to The Herald, Matt says Gisborne is perfectly placed to join in on the new “gold rush”.
“The world’s changed. The national fibre rollout has set up the regions incredibly for what New Zealand’s biggest export should be, which is technology,” Matt says.
“We need to stop flogging dairy and forestry and go to far more sustainable exports, and far more value-added exports.”
Matt is by no means against New Zealand’s foundation industries, saying they have an important place in the economy, but he argues that as an isolated country, tech makes economic and ecological sense — “you don’t have to put software on a ship”.
New Zealand is the perfect place to take advantage of the boom, Matt says.
“We are English-speaking, have fast internet, are respected internationally and are in a time zone that works with major markets.
“Somebody can be sitting in Gizzy working for an Australian or a US-based massive tech company earning that money while still having the lifestyle that you live in Gisborne.
“It’s about making people aware of the opportunities that are out there, and getting the education in computer science to be able to do these roles.”
Projectworks sells its software to businesses around the world.
“We think of ourselves as the experts behind the experts in professional services — everything that sits between your accounting and your customer relationship management platform.”
Projectworks helps businesses organise timesheets, resource booking, invoicing, revenue forecasting and expense claims — the nuts and bolts required for a company to run.
“Most of the businesses that come on board have built success off being good at what they do.
“They haven’t necessarily had to be great business people,” Matt says.
“We take the business side of things off their hands so they can focus on being the experts in whatever they’re the experts in.”
Projectworks is worldwide, with 80 percent of its revenue from customers outside New Zealand.
With the new seed funding, Projectworks is backed by massive players — namely Punakaiki Fund and Bridgewest Group, the latter alone managing over a billion dollars in assets.
“We’ve got the money behind us, the expertise on our board and we’re still a founder-led company,” Matt says.
“We’ve still got that hungry start-up mentality, so I feel like we’ve got the raw materials in place to build something really big.”
Now they have multiple companies on board, selling their product is relatively easy. However, at the start, they had to offer clients “ludicrous stuff” in their terms and conditions.
“One of our contracts said that if our business went under the customer got our entire codebase.”
That is like Airbnb saying: “Can we rent your house out? And if we go broke you can own the entire Airbnb business and website.”
Because they sell a digital product, they can scale their business almost overnight — compared to the likes of a farm, which would need years to buy more land, breed animals and grow their market share.
To create software like Projectworks you need to be able to code.
Coding is essentially writing instructions for a computer to follow. Once programmers can write, they become builders, able to create their ideas in the digital world, turning a box of metal and silicon into something useful.
Matt had his first taste of tech at about age five when his family got a home computer.
“And I’ve been into computers ever since,” he says.
“I always liked pulling things apart and putting them back together, and figuring out how they worked.”
Both of Matt’s parents still live in Gisborne along with most of his family. He and his fiancé and an 11-month-old son get back whenever they can.
“The Wellington beaches don’t quite live up to what I’m used to.”
In high school, Matt dabbled in programming thanks to two local legends, late jazz musician and maths teacher John Mackill and Maurice Alford, who was Matt’s teacher at Lytton High.
John taught Matt and his friends how to write code (Matt was friends with John’s son, David) and Maurice supported them at school.
At Lytton, Matt says Maurice allowed them to grow.
“He took us under his wing a little bit and realised that maybe the normal school path wasn’t great for us, and fostered that talent and interest in computing.”
That said, Matt did not rush off to university to study computer science. Instead, he studied for a Bachelor of Commerce and Administration with a focus on information systems and eCommerce.
His career kicked off after a long stint at Provoke Solutions, a tech company in Wellington.
“I managed to get a job as a graduate software developer off the back of having some skills and got the company to take a bit of a punt on me. I basically learned on the job.”
Now the chief executive of his own business, his days are spent on sales and product design rather than building software. Before he was the builder; now he is the architect.
Matt puts his success down to his team.
“I’ve built a team of A-players. We’ve still got a small team, there’s only about 15 of us, but we’re taking on companies 10 times our size.”
