Making a difference is a guiding light for the team at Hanzo, and perhaps, is exemplified most clearly by those who deliver service to customers. For this Meet Team Hanzo spotlight, I talked with Matthew Stringer, from the Hanzo Service Delivery team. We spoke about supporting customers in solving real-world legal challenges with technology, his inspiration from space, and some practical life philosophy we all can apply.
Hanzo Spotlight: Matthew Stringer, Service Delivery Manager
What do you do at Hanzo?
Matthew: I’m the Service Delivery Manager, based in the UK office, and I look after our Crawl Engineers and QA teams. The work we do ensures the high-quality delivery of all the products and services Hanzo offers, from web-archiving, bespoke captures for legal, to online investigations. Our mission is to delight customers with the best quality dynamic web captures to support them in their jobs whether they’re in compliance, eDiscovery or some other legal support role.
What problem are you currently solving?
Matthew: The main problem I am currently working on is helping customers succeed with their online investigations. It’s amazing, the information people share on the internet. While it's not conveniently presented, there are bits of information that can be collectively used to find the “smoking gun” and can be used to tackle fraud or other such crimes. Hanzo’s tools enable the discovery of this information, the ability to capture it in a legally defensible manner, and aggregate it into a single report that helps disprove untrue claims.
What is your favorite part of working for a legal technology company?
Matthew: Making a real difference. I’ve been working with electronics, communications, and data hosting for many years, always with solid products and solutions, however, Hanzo is unlike anything I’ve worked on before. The technology can actually make a difference to average people. It’s rewarding to work for a company that is pioneering solutions to problems that have long since been accepted as too difficult or expensive to resolve.
When you hear about the crazy sums of money that are routinely lost to false claims every year that go unchallenged, Hanzo can change that and that makes a difference on the passed on cost to the consumer. Hanzo’s clear vision in solving these problems has huge potential to make a difference, and I think that’s really quite exciting.
I love that passion. Tell me more about your philosophy to problem-solving in work and in life?
Matthew: I’m probably a little old fashioned and have an engineer’s mindset to most things. When I was little, NASA was wrapping up their Apollo program. I’ve always been amazed by what was achieved there. They did incredible things that had never been done before, had huge complexities and hurdles to overcome, but they weren’t intimidated by the challenges and saw them through to the end. That approach and attitude is what makes people great and illustrates that nothing is too difficult to attempt. They showed that we can really do anything we put our minds to, and whilst I’m not sending rockets to the moon, I try to adopt the same philosophy and try to inspire people to do the same. Don’t be put off by a challenge, find a way forward.
Matthew, meeting a real-life inspiration, former NASA astronaut, Jim Lovell.
Find a way forward. That’s a great philosophy to have when solving challenges, even if it’s not rocket science. What is your favorite thing to do when you're not working?
Matthew: Unquestionably, music production. When I was little, I heard Gustav Holst’s ‘The Planet Suite’, I found it captivating because the music could paint pictures and animations in your head, such as the violence of Mars or the fanfare of Jupiter. I wanted to be able to create my own “movies” and do so with music. I was less interested in drones or soundscapes but instead to create melodic arrangements that illustrate the movies in my head. I’ve released a dozen albums and it’s rewarding to receive messages from fans telling me what my music means to them and describing (often in great detail) their own ‘movies’ created by my work. I find it quite compelling.
That’s very creative. Any career advice for people just getting started?
Matthew: I think the trick is to try and figure out what you’d be good at and then try to be the best you can at doing it whilst trying to broaden your perspective on the world. Also, it’s worth noting that it takes time, I’ve done my fair share of working two jobs on minimum wage! Don’t get disheartened, keep at it as it will pay off.
Any other life or futuristic insights?
Matthew: The future may not offer flying cars, it’s because it’s way more exciting.
Intrigued by Matthew? We are too. Take a look at our careers page if you are seeking a way to unabashedly make a difference like him, we’re looking to add to Hanzo’s great team.
