About me

After I graduated from Vic Uni in Wellington, I joined an entrepreneurship bootcamp the university ran. The plan was to get something "entrepreneurial" on my CV. I started an app called Hatcher. The best way to describe it: Tinder for food and drink deals. A classic student app.

Twelve weeks later, I knew doing my own thing was for me. Hatcher was not a money maker (I'm pretty sure we made $5k in two years). But it taught me a lot.

You might be wondering: how did you pay rent? Honestly, I wonder that too sometimes. I got lucky and landed a part-time job launching Uber in my hometown, Wellington. My job was to get taxi drivers to join this new app called Uber. It showed me how a real business works, end to end.

Eventually we shut Hatcher down. Living on ramen gets old. I was the marketing and sales guy on the team, so I became a Facebook freelancer for local businesses.

That led to Unicorn Factory. I didn't set out to build the New Zealand version of Upwork. I just wanted to find work for myself. Then more and more freelancers wanted in. Today it's the biggest freelancer site in New Zealand. I still oversee it, with help from a few freelancers in NZ.

Then I met my now wife, Marielle, who is Canadian, and we decided to move to Canada. Along the way we started and sold a small business called We Love Local. It paid for our wedding and our move.

Somewhere in there, during Covid, I started my YouTube channel. Why not? I mostly showed how I build directory and marketplace sites. It now has 19k+ subscribers.

YouTube led to MVMP Labs, my dev studio. At first we built marketplaces and directories. Now we help businesses adapt to the AI era.

My latest hobby project is The Running Directory. It lists races and run clubs across Canada, and I use it to test what AI can really do.

And this site? I learn best when I write things down in the simplest words I can. My blogis basically my notes. Some posts go deep on the tech, like use cases and security. Others are bigger questions, like what work will look like in five years, or what could go wrong.