Case study · ShiftMatch
Role
Co-founder · General Manager 2015–2022 · CEO 2023–2026
Journey
Bootstrapped · Cascom to ShiftMatch
Outcome
Profitable SaaS platform · Acquired in 2026
active users
shifts processed
hours of contingent work
consecutive profitable years
My role
Connecting product, customer and business decisions.
I co-founded the original business in 2000, and in the early years it ran alongside my creative work. My role began in product and experience design, branding, marketing and customer support, then moved into sales. As General Manager from 2015, I directly managed the product team and took responsibility across product, customers and commercial growth. I became CEO in 2023, leading our senior leaders across technology, sales and professional services while continuing to manage product.
A small, highly skilled team designed, built, supported and grew ShiftMatch over many years. This story focuses on my contribution within that team: framing the opportunity, leading product direction, staying close to customers and connecting delivery with commercial priorities.
2000
Co-founded the original business
2004
Launched Cascom
2015
Cascom became ShiftMatch; I became General Manager
2019
Global platform partnership
2023
Became CEO
2026
Acquired
01 · Recognising the opportunity
Filling a vacancy looked like a simple scheduling task. In practice it triggered a chain of decisions: who was available, who had the right skills, who remained compliant, who should be contacted, what they said in response and how the confirmed result returned to the roster.
Those decisions were spread across calls, messages, spreadsheets and individual knowledge. The important reframing was to look beyond a slightly better roster and make the entire process visible and manageable as one connected system.
Creative judgement
Look past the apparent task and define the larger operational problem that makes the task difficult.
02 · Simplifying the workflow
The workforce rules mattered: availability, qualifications, compliance, awards, locations and customer requirements could not simply be designed away. The product challenge was to retain that operational depth without forcing managers and workers to think about every dependency at once.
ShiftMatch connected the information behind each decision and presented the next useful action. Managers could identify suitable people and offer open shifts, workers could respond directly, and confirmed shifts returned to the roster. The diagram below expresses the system as a readable journey rather than a collection of technical features.
Making the system understandable.
A simplified view of how availability, skills, compliance and communication connect around an open shift.
03 · Shaping the product experience
A roster is not experienced in only one way. A manager filling tonight’s vacancy, someone planning several weeks ahead and a worker checking an offer all need different views of the same underlying information.
The platform evolved to support roster, calendar, Kanban and forward-planning perspectives. The creative work was not the production of more screens; it was deciding when a different representation genuinely made the work clearer. Close customer contact helped the team understand how people scanned information, where delays occurred and which decisions needed to remain prominent.
Product judgement
Choose the representation that best supports the decision being made, while keeping the underlying information consistent.
2012 · Cascom roster
An earlier operational view showing the foundations of the platform.
2025 · ShiftMatch roster
A more mature interface supporting multiple roster states and forward planning.
One system, another useful perspective.
The calendar view makes patterns across time visible without changing the underlying operational data.
04 · Learning from customers
Implementation and support remained close to product decisions. That gave us a direct view of where organisations struggled, how workarounds emerged and which problems appeared repeatedly across different customers.
Not every request became a feature. We weighed the underlying need, its value across the customer base, its fit with the product direction and the ongoing cost of supporting it.
To act on what we learned without losing direction, our CTO and I introduced shorter sprint cycles and a prioritised backlog. Long release cycles gave way to smaller, more predictable releases.
05 · Growing through the network
Many organisations filled shifts with labour-hire agencies as well as their own casual staff. We developed an agency model that connected those providers with the organisations needing shifts filled. It created an additional revenue stream and a channel that worked from both sides: customers brought in their agencies, and agencies introduced ShiftMatch to their other clients.
As more agencies joined to reach available shifts, the network became part of what made ShiftMatch valuable to larger partners. From 2019, I helped negotiate and develop a partnership with a global workforce-management platform, which created joint opportunities with its enterprise customers. As CEO, I developed a second platform partnership and integration alongside it.
Strategic judgement
Build value into the network around the product, not only into the product itself.
Cascom to ShiftMatch, 2015.
A name that said what the product did, for a broader proposition.
06 · Balancing delivery and commercial reality
Customer requests can reveal valuable needs, but responding to every request independently fragments a product. Growth creates opportunities, but it also places pressure on delivery capacity, service quality and the team. Product leadership therefore required choices about what to standardise, what to adapt and what not to pursue.
The business was bootstrapped, so investment had to be earned and sequenced. We balanced immediate customer commitments with a coherent product direction, growth with delivery capacity, and ambition with the long-term health of the company.
I became CEO in 2023. My co-founder and I led the acquisition discussions, and I coordinated the due-diligence responses with our CTO, technical team and appointed advisers. The acquisition in 2026 matters as an outcome, but the deeper evidence is what we built: an established platform, long-term customer relationships, multi-million-dollar recurring revenue, five consecutive profitable years and a team of 18.
Commercial judgement
Give ideas a form that customers value, the team can deliver and the business can sustain.
Built by a small, experienced team
The outcome came from a dedicated, highly skilled team working across product, technology, customer delivery, support, sales and professional services. My role was to connect those perspectives, make trade-offs clear and help the team sustain the work over time.
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