STRONGEST AI

Strongest AI is a cloud-based platform and toolkit for building best-in-class fitness apps.

We've invested more than $1,000,000 into building a robust platform and reference implementation for iPhone & Apple Watch that will save your team hundreds of thousands of dollars in development expense and accelerate your time-to-market by more than a year!

Learn more about what you can build with Strongest AI by trying out our reference implementation at https://strongest.app (or search for "Strongest AI" in the App Store.)

Founder & CEO

Built Technologies

In what was a highly operational role, I had the remarkable opportunity to lead the broader Delivery Team that spanned nearly fifty people across Product, Engineering, Implementations, and Support.

I collaborated daily with the CEO and other key leaders to establish strategy, define operating principles, and refine plans that impacted nearly every aspect of the company during an intense period of substantial growth following Series A funding.

In what was one of the most impactful years of my life, the team substantially grew revenue, increased headcount, and improved the cloud based technology that is transforming a multi-trillion dollar global industry.

Chief Technology Officer

O'Reilly Media

I've independently authored several books for O'Reilly Media (Dojo: The Definitive Guide, Mining the Social Web, 21 Recipes for Mining Twitter, and PayPal APIs: Up and Running (2e)) and consulted on numerous efforts ranging from technical review of titles such as Programming Collective Intelligence, Algorithms in a Nutshell, and JavaScript: The Definitive Guide to internal data mining and web app development projects.

Author & Speaker

Zaffra, LLC

Zaffra is a boutique consulting firm that I used for advising early stage companies and providing consultative support on special projects.

Managing Partner

Digital Reasoning

I lead technology, data science, and intellectual property strategy for the company.  Our software products transform everyday sources of human communication into rich contextual graphs of knowledge that can be queried to answer questions about entities and relationships in time and space.

I managed a software development process and lead a team of 20+ talented engineers and scientists, and together, we have built and shipped multiple versions of Synthesys, an unstructured data analytics product that transforms raw data into queryable knowledge. The current version of Synthesys resolves the identities of entities and relationships across hundreds of millions of documents on scalable commodity hardware in a computationally efficient manner.

Vice President, Engineering

I was originally hired into Digital Reasoning to productize research efforts, and several key aspects of my work helped lead to the inception of an unstructured data analytics software product that combined natural language processing, named entity recognition, and semantic noun clustering into an integrated software development kit. The maturation of this product later became known as Synthesys.

Director of Research Solutions

Dojo Foundation

I authored Dojo: The Definitive Guide, published by O'Reilly Media in Jun 2008, and worked closely with core contributors and committers to smooth out API wrinkles, update documentation, and fix bugs. Dojo: TDG was the first book of its kind and set the standard for many books to come on JavaScript toolkits.

Open Source Contributor

United States Air Force

As an active duty Air Force officer, I supported the 789th Communications Squadron (Andrews AFB, MD) as a Program Manager.  

As a reservist, I supported the Defense Intelligence Agency (Bolling AFB, Washington DC) as an open source researcher on advanced web development technologies that could be used to modernize application development across the enterprise.

Communications Officer

Sun Microsystems

As a consultant at Sun Microsystems, I provided subject matter expertise and advised the Sun Convergence team on web application development with Ajax development patterns in order to upgrade the client side code for the Sun Convergence product (See http://wikis.sun.com/display/SunConvergence/Home).

Principal Software Engineer

Parsons

During a transition period, I worked briefly as a senior software engineer at the Parsons Corporation where I assisted the company with deploying a sensitive project for the Department of Homeland Security at various security checkpoints owned by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Senior Software Engineer

White Oak Technologies

At White Oak, I led the development of a classified software project that was built from scratch to solve a strategic problem. As part of this role, I deployed to central Asia to learn more about the problem we were solving, collect requirements directly from users, and accelerate the adoption of the project.

Computer Scientist

I’m obsessed with optimizing human performance: body, mind, and soul.

I believe that entrepreneurism is a spiritual journey.

One of my favorite mental models for life is framing it as a multi-objective optimization problem.

I’m learning to be satisfied with the outcome when I’ve truly given my best effort.

I appreciate clear thinking, especially first-principles thinking.

I’m too skeptical to willingly outsource my thinking to others.

I’m a builder, and I enjoy the grind of putting in a good day of work.

I tend to get grumpy when I don’t exercise, and I believe that barbell medicine is some of the best medicine.

I’m creating a platform for fitness creators that is the beginning of something great.

Matthew Russell

I help executives, solopreneurs, and business owners create practical, long-term financial strategies that align with their goals and priorities. My focus is on helping clients navigate life’s complexities with clarity and confidence—whether it’s planning to make work optional, optimizing retirement income streams, managing career transitions, or preparing for unexpected health events. Life isn’t always “up and to the right,” so a well-constructed financial strategy needs to be resilient and proactive.Before financial advising, I spent over 20 years in tech leading teams and driving growth in B2B SaaS and Platform companies. Those experiences taught me how to solve complex problems, think strategically, and make decisions in high-stakes environments—skills I now use to help clients make smart financial choices.On a personal level, caring for my mom during her battle with Alzheimer’s while raising a young family shaped my approach: empathy and practical know-how are both essential in helping clients align their finances with what truly matters.Based in Nashville and serving clients coast to coast, my team and I specialize in:✅ Tax-efficient strategies for concentrated equity and variable compensation✅ Optimizing compensation plans (stock options, RSUs, bonuses)✅ Creating financial independence through diversified, risk-managed investing✅ Building predictable retirement income with pensions and annuities✅ Protecting wealth and family legacy through insurance and estate planning✅ Business exit and partnership planning

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Matthew Russell

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