When I caught up with Will Matz this fall to talk about his promising career, the 23-year-old was living the life of a digital nomad.
We talked over Zoom while Matz was staying in Toronto for a few weeks.
“When my lease was up, I was like, I just wanted to get out and travel a little bit. See some places that I hadn't seen before,” he said. “So I just hopped in the car. Did Indianapolis for a little bit. Went out to the East Coast, stayed at the beach for a little bit. And then I came up here to Toronto. I've actually never been to Canada.”
This was not a true vacation, however, as Matz has continued with his full-time job.
“As long as I have Wi-Fi, I can work from pretty much anywhere,” he said.
Design, develop, deploy
Matz grew up in upstate New York and came to Ohio State University on a swimming scholarship. For a sense of his mindset, consider why he chose a Big Ten school over a number of other smaller colleges he could have swam for.
“Part of my reason for going to Ohio State was to put me in a situation where I was the worst on the team,” he said. “Because when I was in high school, going through high school training, I was pretty much always like the top of my team. And that wasn't a training environment that I felt was pushing me enough.”
Matz lasted two years on the swim team, after which a new coach and an injury derailed his athletic career.
“Obviously, that didn't work out,” he said. “But I still don't regret it at all. And I think that was some of the best training that I ever could have done in my life.”
Looking for a new challenge, Matz dove into the world of business incubation, including getting involved with Business Builders, a club that encourage entrepreneurship among Ohio State students.
“When I didn't have the swim team anymore, I was like, OK, what am I going to do with my life? You know, that was a huge part of my identity,” he said. “And I had stumbled sort of into startups; I did an internship at a startup over the summer and I was looking at the CTO, the CEO, and I was like, they're not doing anything that I can't do. But I'm not on the right path to get there.”
Along with the Business Builders, Matz got involved in D3, a student entrepreneurship club that encourages student teams to “design, develop and deploy” a new idea in a semester.
“All we did in that club was build stuff,” he said. “So you would get together with a group over the course of a semester, and try to build and launch something. That's all it was.”
Although one of those startups is continuing to develop as a business, Matz is no longer involved. These days, he is the technical lead at CaringWire, a “digital caregiver assistant” designed to guide family caregivers through the process of caring for an older adult.
“I think it's more challenging and sort of more fun to work at startups,” he said. “I could see myself working at a larger company that is really product-focused, or like analytics-focused. So products that I that I really love to use, I think I could see myself working at a company like that. Something like Spotify, for example. Very data-driven company; I love their product. And that's a company that, like, out of all them, I would consider doing over like Facebook, Google Oracle, Netflix.”
'Build stuff on the side'
Matz has no regrets that none of his initial ventures panned out, valuing the real-world experience he got more than anything else.
“I was able to jump into this role here at CaringWire and learn all the technology that they were working on because I had already seen all of it,” he said. “I wasn't learning in my computer science classes how to actually build technology that scales. But working on these projects, I was working on the same technology stack to build my own stuff starting from scratch. I'm familiar with all those technologies.
“Every time you build something, like on a software stack, you become more comfortable with it. And the next time that you need to build it, you can build faster. And you can build more advanced technology on top of it.”
Matz graduated with a degree in computer science and physics (they’re both math-based, he said). He’s thankful for the education he received at Ohio State, but credits his extracurricular activities equally for helping him. He recommends other budding entrepreneurs do the same.
“I would say definitely build stuff on the side. Because classes, I had only done the classes, and I hadn't built stuff and met people, I wouldn't be anywhere near as capable a software engineer as I am today,” he said. “You know, the classes won't get you there. They won't get you all the way there. I think it's a good foundation, but build stuff on the side.”
And a postscript. I reached back out to Matz to see how his digital nomad lifestyle has been going since we last talked. For now, anyway, it’s out of his system.
“I just signed a lease in Columbus and moved in over the weekend! So I'm settled down now.”
About this feature: Once a month, Columbus Inno will recognize some of the youngest, most innovative voices in our business community via an Inno Under 25 profile. Know someone we should include? Email Doug Buchanan at dbuchanan@bizjournals.com. And be sure to check out everything we have to offer on our just launched Columbus Inno page.
