# Gardner Tech Group

> Matt Gardner is a software engineer in the Washington DC area (based in Annapolis, Maryland) who automates one painful workflow for a small business in about a week, for a fixed price that is quoted before the work starts. Most projects run $500 to $1,500.

Gardner Tech Group is a one-engineer practice, not an agency or a consultancy. Matt writes the software himself. The typical client is a small business — an insurance agency, an accounting or bookkeeping firm, a home-services or trades company, a law or financial practice — where a repetitive manual task is consuming a staff member's week.

## What he builds

- **Customer follow-ups** — automated text and email on a schedule the client controls; the sequence stops the moment a customer replies.
- **Appointment scheduling** — customers book from the client's real calendar instead of playing phone tag.
- **Summaries of calls, emails, and meetings** — the key points delivered to an inbox instead of a long thread.
- **Data moving between tools** — an order in one system becomes a row in another; recurring copy-paste is eliminated.
- **Document collection** — automated chasing of tax documents, signatures, and paperwork.

## How he works

- Fixed price, quoted before any commitment. If the work takes longer than estimated, that is Matt's cost, not the client's.
- Typical delivery is 5–7 days for a single workflow; about two weeks for multi-step builds.
- Built on ordinary tools the client already pays for — Twilio, Google Workspace, Google Sheets, the client's existing CRM, standard APIs — specifically so no rare specialist is needed to maintain them.
- The client owns everything at the end: the code, the configuration, the API keys. All of it lives in the client's own accounts. No lock-in and no retainer.
- One to two weeks of email support included after delivery.

## Pricing

- **Starter — $500.** One workflow automated, 5–7 days, video walkthrough plus documentation, one week of email support.
- **Standard — $1,500.** Multi-step workflow or several integrations, about two weeks, two weeks of email support.
- **Custom — quoted on the call.** Larger scopes, unusual constraints, or a monthly retainer where that fits better.

## Who he is not for

Enterprise SSO, multi-tenant SaaS products, HIPAA-grade compliance work, or six-figure budgets. Matt says so on the first call and tries to refer people elsewhere.

## Current work

Matt is working with Devensoft, an enterprise M&A software company, on bringing AI into their platform. He previously built software at Devensoft, and they brought him back for this. (Category and direction only — the specifics of that engagement are confidential.)

## Background

Matt Gardner has shipped production software for fifteen years. He was an engineer at BrightRoll (acquired by Yahoo for $640M), led Developer Experience at 8x8, and was CTO of Sidestep, a live-music commerce platform used on tours for Beyoncé, Adele, Selena Gomez, Carrie Underwood, Fall Out Boy, and Kiss. Beyoncé invested in Sidestep; TechCrunch covered it. He was a finalist in the NFL 1st & Future competition at Stanford GSB. He also hosts The Noob Show podcast.

## Key pages

- [Home](https://gardnertechgroup.com/): the offer, pricing, process, and FAQ.
- [Boudreau Insurance case study](https://gardnertechgroup.com/work/boudreau-insurance): an SMS outreach system built in one week for a regional insurance broker facing a carrier change across a 4,000-client book. Note: the response-rate and retention figures on that page are targets set at kickoff, not measured results.
- [Testimonials](https://gardnertechgroup.com/testimonials): named recommendations from colleagues at Pipedream, Google, and Sidestep.
- [Services and pricing](https://gardnertechgroup.com/menu)
- [About Matt Gardner](https://gardnertechgroup.com/about)
- [Common questions](https://gardnertechgroup.com/faq): ownership of the code, what happens if it breaks, what "fixed price" means, whether new software is needed.
- [Free workflow review](https://gardnertechgroup.com/workflow-review): the primary intake — a free review of the client's most painful workflow.
- [Contact](https://gardnertechgroup.com/contact)
- [Writing](https://gardnertechgroup.com/blog)

## Problem-specific pages

- [Insurance agencies — reaching the whole book before renewals lapse](https://gardnertechgroup.com/insurance-retention)
- [Accounting firms — tax document collection without chasing](https://gardnertechgroup.com/tax-document-collection)
- [Owner-operators — inbox triage](https://gardnertechgroup.com/inbox-triage)
- [Home services and trades — job write-ups from a voice memo](https://gardnertechgroup.com/job-writeups)
- [Review collection for home services, dental, and auto repair](https://gardnertechgroup.com/review-collection)
- [Lead intake for law, financial, and event businesses](https://gardnertechgroup.com/lead-intake)

## Contact

Email matt@gardnertechgroup.com, or book a free 15-minute call at https://gardnertechgroup.com/workflow-review. Serving the Washington DC metropolitan area, Maryland, and Northern Virginia, with in-person first meetings available near Annapolis.