I'm Matthew Ryan, a founder and systems builder based in Buffalo, New York. Through Octavian Ideas, I help owners turn manual operations and ambitious product ideas into custom software, useful websites, and systems their teams can grow with. I can lead the technical work as a fractional CTO or take a defined build from the first conversation to delivery.
When the data lives in Excel and the same numbers get re-typed by hand, the team spends its day maintaining instead of scaling. I build custom dashboards designed around your exact use case, so the work that keeps you treading water runs on its own and your time goes back into growing.
Illustrative sample data
Tasks automated
0
Hours / week back
0
Manual entry
100%
down from 100
Throughput
+386%
By day
On autopilot
Ops running without manual touch
Activity
Apps, websites, dashboards, AI, and the automation underneath them. Most engagements use more than one.
Two inputs, one number. It will not be exact, but it is usually closer than people expect, and it is the number worth comparing a build against.
Add up everyone who touches it, not just one person.
Wage plus taxes, benefits, and overhead. Across US private industry, taxes and benefits alone add about 43% on top of wages (BLS, June 2026).
Annual cost of that process
$23,712
That is what the manual version costs every year before anything goes wrong. It is the number worth holding a build up against.
624 hrs
spent on it per year
$1,976
burned per month
16 weeks
of full-time work
Loaded hourly cost means salary plus taxes, benefits, and overhead. For most office roles it lands well above the hourly wage.
The math, a worked example, and what loaded cost meansEach one took a manual, error-prone process off the team and made it run itself. Open any card for the full case study.
Co-Founder · Current
One integration and automation layer that sits between a moving company's CRM and its entire customer lifecycle, so the growth work runs without a dedicated ops hire.
CTO · Current
Full back-end automation and operations infrastructure for a moving company that was running its books in Excel.
Technical Analyst · Current
Took a student storage business that ran on spreadsheets and rebuilt its operations as a self-running system.
Founder · Current
Founded and operate a nightlife vending company across Buffalo and Hamburg, and built the entire operations platform from scratch.
Technical Architect · Prior engagement
Embedded inside Nuvei before it went private, going team to team to map and automate manual operational processes.
Model Context Protocol servers, a custom ML pipeline, and a database built at a granularity nobody else was tracking.
Independent · Cloudflare Workers
A hosted Model Context Protocol server that hands any Claude client a set of authenticated, live tools over the network, with nothing to install locally.
What was built
Impact
Turns a normal chat window into something connected to live company data, with per-user permissions intact and no IT install on anyone's machine.
Independent · 12 tools
A twelve-tool MCP server that runs on the machine and turns a desktop AI client into something that can actually operate the systems behind it.
What was built
Independent · ML and Web
A consumer web app built on TensorFlow that maps 168 landmark points across a face in real time to compute structural metrics, then returns a scored analysis.
What was built
Independent · C# and .NET
A Windows desktop platform built to track UFC fights at a granularity that had never been done at scale, breaking every action into its specific form.
What was built
Most teams have an AI account and treat it like a smarter search box. I run hands-on sessions that turn it into a real part of how people work, built around the job your team already does. No technical background needed.
A different client than the automation work. Training organizations, technical schools, and manufacturers who need lab material produced faster than a subject matter expert can write it by hand.
Goes in
Comes out
The same five steps on every engagement, so you always know what happens next and what it costs before it happens.
Discovery call
Thirty minutes on how the business actually runs. What the team touches by hand, what breaks, and what nobody has time to fix. No slides and no pitch deck.
Process mapping
I sit with the people doing the work and write down what actually happens, step by step. The real bottleneck is usually somewhere nobody flagged on the call.
Proposal with hours
A fixed scope. Every piece listed with the hours it takes and what it costs. You approve the number before anything gets built.
Build with approval gates
Work ships in pieces and you sign off on each one. No multi-month black box, and no finding out at the end that it solves the wrong problem.
Handoff
You get the code, the accounts, and written documentation covering how it works, what it touches, and what to do when something looks wrong. It runs without me.
Then, if you want it, a retainer
Most clients keep me on a flat monthly retainer after handoff for monitoring, fixes, and small changes. It is optional, and everything is built so you are not stranded if you skip it.
If yours is not here, text me at 716 263 2627 and I will answer it straight.
You own the code, the accounts, and the documentation from day one. Nothing runs on a login only I have, and nothing is hosted somewhere you cannot reach. Every build ships with a written handoff covering how it works, what it touches, and what to do when something looks wrong. Most clients also keep me on a monthly retainer, which means a break is my problem to fix, not a scramble for your team.
Yes, and it usually makes the build go faster. Your IT vendor owns the network, the devices, and the accounts. I own the automation and the data layer sitting on top of them. I get on a call with them at the start, we agree in writing on access and boundaries, and they stay in the loop on anything that touches their systems.
Fixed scope with an hours estimate, not an open-ended hourly bill. After the discovery call and process mapping you get a proposal listing exactly what gets built, the hours behind each piece, and the cost. You approve before anything starts. If the scope changes mid build, you get a new number before I touch it. You will never open a surprise invoice. Ongoing monitoring and small changes are a flat monthly retainer.
Most first builds land between two and six weeks from the discovery call, depending on how many systems have to talk to each other. You see working pieces at every approval gate along the way, so you are never waiting months to find out whether it does what you wanted.
That is the normal starting point, and sorting it out is most of the value. The discovery call and process mapping exist to answer exactly that question. I sit with the people doing the work, map what actually happens, and come back with a list of what is worth automating and what is honestly not.
Matthew Ryan
Founder, Fractional CTO & Systems Builder
I'm Matthew Ryan, based in Buffalo, New York. I build software and operating systems for businesses, and I build products of my own. Octavian Ideas is the company through which I take on technical leadership, custom application and website builds, automation, and other creative work I pursue.
What interests me is the gap between what a business wants to become and what its current operation can support. A company can have ambition, demand, and capable people while still depending on someone moving information between spreadsheets every afternoon. I want to understand that work well enough to build something better.
I co-founded Semres with Noah, a software platform for moving companies, and I am a co-founder and technical architect at Bracey Skyway Partners. I also serve as CTO of WNY Moving. Those roles connect product development with the practical work of running a business.
Semres and FightStats are two projects I especially want people to understand. Semres connects business operations, communication, and growth workflows. FightStats explores a different interest: using detailed fight data to ask questions that broad statistics can miss. I like building things that make a problem easier to see and a useful answer easier to act on.
Octavian Ideas is where my custom software builds and other creative work take shape. Matthew Ryan and Noah share ownership of the company.
Experience
Jun 2026 to Present
Co-Founder · Semres
Multi-tenant SaaS automation platform for the moving industry.
May 2026 to Present
Chief Technology Officer · Western New York Moving
Full back-end automation and operations infrastructure build-out.
Mar 2026 to Present
Technical Analyst · 4.0 Storage
Operations digitization and mobile workflow automation.
Jan 2026 to Present
Founder · Skyway Vending
Nightlife vending operator. Built internal ops and partner portals.
Jan 2025 to Present
CTO and Lead Technical Architect · Bracey Skyway Partners
Jan 2025 to Present
Freelance App and Web Developer · Self-Employed
iOS apps, web platforms, TypeScript.
May 2024 to Dec 2024
Technical Architect · Nuvei
Process automation and operational efficiency across business units.
Feb 2024 to May 2024
Intern · Nuvei
Tell me how your business actually works day to day, and I'll show you what can be automated away. You can call or text me, or grab a time below.
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Intro with Matthew Ryan
