01
We’ve been first in the repo.
We know the early calls that compound because we have made them with real customers, limited runway, and no legacy team to hide behind.
About Stackpad - We build new products like the later systems already matter.
Stackpad is an operator-led engineering team for founders building fintech, healthtech, marketplace, and money-adjacent products. We like the early stage: the first architecture, the first production environment, the first customer-facing workflow, and the first technical decisions your future team will inherit.
The team’s leadership came out of Catch — the health insurance platform built for the self-employed, where CMS/EDE compliance sat on top of billing, subsidy, and enrollment-payment systems. We ran engineering through phase transitions, a federal security audit, and acquisition diligence on a live system serving real customers.
That does not make us an audit shop. It makes us builders who know what happens when early technical decisions become real company infrastructure. We care about the greenfield build because that is where the expensive future either gets easier or quietly gets baked in.
We’re not advisors hovering above the work. We build in your repo, make the calls with you, and leave behind a product and a technical posture your next hires can keep improving.
What we believe
Builders, not slide decks.
The decisions that hold up later are made close to the code: architecture, infrastructure, data model, product flow, and the tradeoffs that let you ship without making tomorrow worse.
Why we’re different
Three things you can hold us to.
02
We work inside the engineering org.
Embedded, not parallel. Your repo, your tools, your standups. We use the same systems your team uses.
03
We build for what comes next.
The first version should move quickly, but it should not make the next round, first hire, audit, integration, or acquisition harder than it needs to be.
The leadership
Operator-led.
Stackpad’s leadership has been first engineer, frontend architect, and engineering lead across early-stage products and regulated systems. A bench of senior engineers joins as scope requires, and the team grows with demand — but you won’t get handed from sales to delivery. The people you meet are the people doing the work.
Matt Little
Co-Founder · ex-Catch
Has been first engineer or director of engineering at four startups: CyberSaint (cybersecurity GRC), ThirdChannel (retail SaaS), SidelineSwap (sporting-goods marketplace), and Catch (healthtech). Took CyberSaint from concept to its first 15 customers — building the software compliance teams use to run their audits. Owned inventory and the trade-in initiative at SidelineSwap. At Catch, led infrastructure, security, and the billing/subsidy/CMS-EDE compliance stack through ARC-AMPE and acquisition diligence. The work has been frontend, backend, infra, and product management depending on the year — but the through-line is being the senior engineer in the room when the consequences are real.
Lexi Smith
Co-Founder · ex-Catch
Frontend Architect at Catch through the regulatory and acquisition years. Built the consumer-facing architecture that integrated banking, taxes, investments, and insurance on a single platform — a feature-complete trio of apps shipped across Web, iOS, and Android. Owned the surface where customers entered financial details, signed enrollment paperwork, and where federal reviewers ended up reading every interaction. Shipped against aggregator integrations (Plaid), BaaS partners (Unit, Bond, BBVA), investment products, and DE/EDE (CMS) compliance — where money, regulation, and user experience all converged. Before Catch, co-founded Natured (New England’s online farmer’s market, sourcing from 100+ local producers) and Carewell (a caregiving platform built around dementia care).
Have a product to build?
Tell us what you’re trying to ship. We’ll tell you where we can help.
A first product, a new platform, a complex integration, a launch date, or an audit in the distance — the more specific you can be about the build, the more useful our first reply will be.