About Matey
Built by tradies.
For tradies.
We spent years building wind farms across regional Australia: long shifts, big crews, ninety metres up. The work was hard. The paperwork was worse. Matey is the back office we wished every tradie on site had.
Jamie & Barry
Co-founders. Still on the tools.
Our story
Ninety metres up
We met on a wind farm build out past the Great Dividing Range. Two hundred people on site, sixty turbines going up, and a pre-start at 5am every morning in the red dirt.
Jamie was a sparky running high-voltage cable and terminations up the towers. Barry was a fitter on the install crew, torquing tower bolts and landing nacelles when the wind dropped long enough to lift. You learn a lot about someone ninety metres up.
The second shift
When the twelve-hour day finished, a second one started. In the dongas and the cabs of utes, the subbies on site, the sparkies, concreters, riggers and plant operators running their own small businesses, pulled out phones and notebooks.
Quotes for the next job. Invoices for the last one. Trying to work out, from memory, at 9pm, whether any of it had made money.
Two kinds of tools
The head contractor had project controls: cost codes, schedules and a team of engineers tracking every dollar. The one-person businesses doing the actual work had a shoebox of receipts and a spreadsheet they were scared to open.
We watched a good mate lose six grand on a job because nobody had told him what his hours really cost. We watched another wait seventy-four days to get paid. Same site. Same work. Completely different tools.
“The people doing the most skilled work on site had the worst tools in their business.”
Jamie & Barry, co-founders
Back at camp
So we started building. On our weeks off the roster, at the camp kitchen table, then in a spare room in Brisbane. One rule from day one: if it doesn't work in a ute at 6am, it doesn't ship.
Every feature got tested by tradies we'd worked beside before it went anywhere near the App Store. Most of the first versions got told, politely, where to go. The ones that survived became Matey.
Matey today
Matey is the AI back office tradies use to quote, invoice and get paid, with a coach that tells you which jobs make money and chases the ones that haven't paid.
We build it at Pivot Labs in Brisbane and Auckland. With Matey Labs, we're taking what we've learned on the tools to the builders, insurers and suppliers who power the trades.
For the crews who build everything else.
What the wind farm taught us
Site rules. Now business rules.
Nobody goes up alone.
On the towers you always climb with a buddy. Matey is the mate in your corner for the business side, so you're never doing the books on your own.
Measure twice, lift once.
A dropped bolt at ninety metres is a big deal. So is a wrong quote. Matey checks the numbers before anything goes to a client.
Every day starts with a pre-start.
Ten minutes, a clear plan, everyone knows the job. That's why Matey sends you a plain-English brief every Monday morning.
Get your nights back.
Try Matey free for 14 days. If you run a business that powers the trades, come and build with us at Matey Labs.