The people who scope the work are the people who build it.
Substrate is a Christchurch consultancy with three co-founders. There’s no account manager or project office between you and the people building your system.
Co-founder and CEO
Dr Matt Walley
Matt leads Substrate and is usually the first person clients talk to. He founded and runs the Inception group in Christchurch: Inception Nutrition, Inception Gym and Inception Academy of Martial Arts. He knows first-hand how much of an owner’s week goes on admin.
He brought the Signtech work to Substrate and built its first dashboard. He holds a PhD from the University of Canterbury.
Two technical co-founders
Our systems are designed, built and run by two engineers with about 35 years of combined experience. They aren’t named here for now, but you’ll work with them directly.
Co-founder
Engineering leadership
Runs engineering delivery at a US software company, where he’s responsible for delivery, people and budget. At Substrate he owns the infrastructure, hosting and security our systems run on.
Co-founder
AI engineering
Has delivered production software end to end since 2019. Leads an AI engineering team at a US software company, where he built the in-house platform several product teams use to plan, write and ship software with coordinated AI agents.
Through their own consultancy, they’ve also built bespoke systems for New Zealand clients, including data pipelines and IoT telemetry for a conservation trapping network.
How we split the work
Matt finds the problems worth solving and looks after the client relationship. The engineers scope the work, build it and keep it running. Your project won’t be handed to a junior team, because there isn’t one.