Taking new projects
I'm Mat Strommen. Small businesses pay every month for a stack of SaaS tools that each cover a slice of the job and none of them fit exactly. I build one system instead: a database, a display layer, and an AI that can make real changes to it, built around how you actually work instead of a template built for everyone.
Say you're running an HVAC outfit or a small construction company. Chances are you're paying for two or three tools that each cover part of the job and none of them fit exactly. I take those subscriptions off the table and replace them with just what you actually need to run the business.
You get a chat window, a test environment, and a way to push changes to a live system, plus the ability to actually manage the AI doing the work. Track sales, import data, run jobs on a schedule, automate more than before, at a fraction of what the SaaS stack was costing.
Sometimes the right answer is a half-day conversation, not a three-month build. Architecture reviews, AI-adoption strategy, and a sanity check on the tools you're already paying for, billed by the hour, no retainer.
I still do Kubernetes, Terraform, CI/CD, and cloud cost work when that's the actual need. It's not the lead anymore, but it hasn't gone anywhere: see the platform & infrastructure page.
It pulls in auction opportunities as they come up. No one is refreshing a page or retyping a listing into a spreadsheet.
It reads the auction's text, checks the seller's photos, counts what's actually in the lot, and checks it against eBay comps, looking for the value a two-line description left out.
Once we win a lot, the same system carries it through inventory, repair, listing, and sale, plus the P&L, the tax ledger, and a CRM for the people buying it.
This isn't a slide in a deck. Strommen Systems is a real surplus-resale business, and this is the software we actually use to run it, end to end. I'll show you the real thing if you want to see it, not a demo account.
Not a team of strangers cycling through Slack. You get the person who understands your system, builds the fix, and is on the call when it goes live.
Every change is written down and reviewable before it happens. Nothing lives only in my head or a one-off script, and the keys to anything sensitive sit in a proper vault, not a text file. Reproducible is the only definition of "done" that means anything.
A short list of hard-coded rules blocks the dangerous stuff (deleting data, spending money, going live) before the AI ever gets a vote. Suggestions can be probabilistic; anything that touches your real data or your real customers can't be.
Every change is checked automatically before it reaches your customers, not after one of them finds the bug. Nothing skips that step to save time, and nothing that fails it goes out anyway.
The AI starts on a short leash. It earns more room by being right, not by being promised more up front, and it only acts on its own once it's proven reliable somewhere lower-stakes first. One real mistake sends it back to a shorter leash.
Every engagement ends with a plain-English guide, a diagram of how it works, and someone on your team who can keep it running. The goal is for you to stop needing me.
Tell me what you're working on. I read every message; if it's a fit I'll reply within two business days with either a yes, a no, or a useful pointer if I'm not the right person.
Smallest engagement: a single half-day advisory call. Largest: roughly three months of focused build work. No retainers, no agencies-of-record.
hello@strommen.systems