# Matt Edmund's journey: how he got here

> American, from Arizona; twenty years in Europe in telecoms and recruitment; co-founded SwingDev (4 to about 200 engineers in seven years, acquired); ran engineering teams for clients for over a decade; founded 33prime; now CTO of Tacit Mind, Drop The Hands and Golf Course Atlas, based in Poland. In his words: "Looking back, it was the same problem every time, seen from a different side."

## 1. Arizona: where it started

Matt is American. It started in Arizona, and Arizona is still one of the two clocks on his website (the other is Poland).

## 2. Europe, twenty years: telecoms, then recruitment

He moved to Europe and stayed for twenty years, across several countries. Telecoms first, then recruitment: putting the right people in front of the right work. He is still building that, now with twins doing the first round (AI-native recruitment).

## 3. SwingDev, seven years: four people to about 200 engineers

Matt co-founded SwingDev as one of four people. It partnered with a Silicon Valley recruiting firm and built software for venture capital firms and the companies they backed. Seven years later it was about 200 engineers, and one of its biggest clients acquired the company.

What he took from it: "Software is never the point. It's a tool someone uses to reach a business goal."

## 4. Running teams for clients: the same problem, four times

"Delivery was never an issue. It was more the misunderstanding." Over more than a decade of building for clients, the code was rarely what went wrong. He kept going after the misunderstanding, one layer closer each time:

1. **Match better.** Screened more than 200 engineering teams on seven dimensions. Delivery stopped failing. Projects still went wrong.
2. **Put someone in the middle.** A project ambassador between US clients and European teams. Everyone felt aligned, and two weeks later it turned out they weren't.
3. **Workshop it, then prototype it.** That fixed the development problem. The client problem survived, because the real gaps only show once the thing actually runs.
4. **Build the real thing.** Only a working product in real hands proves you understood.

Along the way he won a Europe-wide engineering supplier contract and built the app.

What he took from it: "Agreement is not alignment. A signed spec proves nothing."

## 5. 33prime: idea to shipped, in about a quarter

33prime is his studio. It stopped prototyping understanding and started building the product, in real hands within about three months: weekly ships on real data, and the client owns the cloud, the accounts and the code. Work includes:

- Real-time computer vision for city transit: a bus-mounted system that detects cars driving in bus lanes. Matt led discovery, supplier choice and delivery; it came in on budget at half the competing bid.
- An HVAC field-service operations platform (back office, technician app, customer portal), which started with a two-day workshop with every department.
- A patient-owned health-data platform, a music-royalties platform, build-materials software for contractors, and PR automation.
- An AI-native recruitment platform and a regulatory-intelligence system that turns enforcement documents into typed, evidence-backed data.
- A voice-first 3D companion for seniors.
- Six years alongside an embedded engineering team in Poland, from firmware to FPGA.

33prime never names past clients publicly.

## 6. Now, from Poland: building the twin in public

Poland is home. Matt is CTO of Tacit Mind, Drop The Hands and Golf Course Atlas. In April 2026 his twin started listening. Now it writes like him. On 30 January 2027 it sits a real interview against him, judged blind.

Where it all points: "Every fix I tried was reaching for the same thing: what someone actually means, and why. That's what Tacit Mind keeps."