our story
Betta Group is a New Zealand owned and operated business still operating from Havelock North, where it all began 14 years ago. Here’s Matt Mason, our CEO’s story –
In the Beginning
Matt arrived back in NZ after doing his OE and the story is, he had $500 to his name. Having qualified with a BA in Architectural Engineering, Matt was looking at his career options.
What he really wanted to do was to start a business. But he had no capital.
So he needed to earn some cash and headed to the Tutaekuri River in Hawkes Bay to go whitebaiting for three months. Matt says, “I made $5000, and with it I bought a car, a computer and a moisture meter, and started building some software.”
Spotting a gap in the market, Matt saw the potential of developing a system for property inspections, so he started working on a software inspection system tailored to New Zealanders.
That was back in 2011 and after doing the hard mahi, Matt built New Zealand’s biggest property inspection company starting with Betta Inspect It. Later he added Betta Property Compliance and Betta Asbestos Consultancy which make up the Betta Group.
The Betta Group is a licencee / franchise business with inspectors throughout New Zealand who are locals in their area. They use their building industry skills, knowledge and expertise to inspect properties.
Matt’s greatest joy is to the inspectors building their own business ground up and achieving their hopes, dreams and goals.
How has Betta Group been successful?
Being solution focused and developing a software system specifically for the Kiwi market, Matt spotted a gap – there were no property inspection companies doing this already, no-one that was focused on the Kiwi market.
How did Matt do this?
Through sheer bloody mindedness! Doing the hard yards, Matt taught himself to code via YouTube. Matt’s first inspection took eleven hours rather than the ideal one to two hours it takes today. Matt persevered to overcome the obstacles, improving the software system and timeframes by using the skills of external software developers.
The original system is the basis of what Betta Group uses now, but it has been rebuilt three times since.
Matt says, “For the first two years, we were just treading water, but from there we went into a big growth phase. That put pressure on the business which pushed the business into a rebuild phase to manage that growth. Now, we are growing again.“
We are now at an exciting stage for the business. We are well-capitalised and have good systems across our brands. We have a clear and targeted five-year strategic plan that we are working towards. The inspector network has solidified their businesses throughout New Zealand. We are well positioned and have earned the right to continue to grow.