MATT AO SIGMA KAPPA ’14

HE BROUGHT ESCAPE ROOMS TO LIFE IN EAST LANSING, THEN MADE A BIG SPLASH IN SILICON VALLEY

His LinkedIn profile highlighted skills in Horse Racing, Basket Weaving and Fire Breathing. Matt Ao laughs, noting he didn’t post those attributes –they were endorsements from colleagues.

“I realized they were funny and might draw some extra attention. One recruiter thought they were real and I didn’t correct the notion.” After all, shouldn’t a software developer have an active imagination?

Basket weaving fiction aside, Matt did weave a rapid rise in the tech world.

Matt turned 30 just last year – but only after launching one of America’s first Escape Rooms, turning around a private-room karaoke business, landing a dream job at Apple Computing, helping start up an online sports app, and benefitting when Spotify bought it out.

“When trying to be the very best, you have to get to Silicon Valley. I applied to all the leading companies, and they all rejected me.” Matt’s GPA was good, but not enough, as he competed against top achievers from the best collegiate computer science programs.

After rejections from western firms, Matt created his own first big break, by searching for the best tech companies in the Midwest. He found, almost in his backyard, a global leader in screen capture and video editing software. At TechSmith for three years, he concentrated on “mastering his craft as a software engineer” and grew more savvy in the tech world, joining professional communities and speaking at conferences.

While in that first job, Matt spent his spare time to start his first business, one inspired by a session in an Escape Room in China during a 2015 trip to see relatives.

“It was a blast, a very immersive experience. I had seen Escape Rooms in flash and web games, but I thought, ‘Wow, I love games and puzzles. I can bring this to the real world.”

Not even a year out of school, Matt became a student again, and a teacher as well. He learned lessons about hiring contractors and dealing with city permits. Since Escape Rooms were new to East Lansing, Matt had to make presentations to several city committees to earn the special use permits for his building.

Matt, who avoided learning his family’s language as a youngster, grew to realize the potential of learning Chinese. So, while at MSU, he minored in it and still regularly studies the language, in hopes it it could open future business opportunities.

“It has already helped me connect better with my family on annual trips to China, and helped me build my karaoke business,” Matt says. That second business, Nimbus KTV, drew most of its customers from East Asian students in the MSU community.

Matt kept applying for work at Apple through those first years of writing software for TechSmith and operating two businesses, his ESC Room, and a karaoke room catering to East Asian students in the MSU community. Fourth time was the charm; Matt finally landed a job there in 2017.

“Apple helped me peak in my software engineering mastery. It’s still among the best companies in the world to work for. The culture is superb. Being part of their product teams was great for me.”

Strong as the pull of Apple was, it would only hold Matt for a couple years before he had to scratch the entrepreneurial itch. He teamed up with Howard Akumiah, a former pupil of Matt’s computer programming lab at MSU.

Howard kept in touch with Matt after graduation, calling frequently to propose business startup ideas. “It was probably pitch number 20 that arrived at the right time,” Matt says. It followed soon after the 2018 Supreme Court decision that opened up online sports betting.

A group of tech entrepreneurs founded Betty Labs in 2019, with Howard as CEO and Matt as CTO. Its first release was a live gameshow app called Sideline that anyone could play on their cell phones during NFL and NBA games. It fed prediction questions to users, who could win cash by answering enough questions correctly.

Howard and Matt soon found that the social aspects of the platform were as important to users as winning money, especially as the pandemic took hold in early 2020. Social experiences over the internet exploded in popularity and live audio became the hottest feature in apps.

Betty Labs responded with Locker Room, a live audio platform that competed with Twitter Spaces and Clubhouse and had an appeal similar to sports talk radio. In Locker Room, users could ‘browse’ sports broadcasts and hop in anytime to voice their comments. The app drew early interest from Spotify, which bought Betty Labs in early 2021, bringing Matt along as senior engineering manager.

What’s next on Matt’s horizon? He’s open to broadening his universe, looking to identify industries “where folks are sick of crappy software and where modern software can make a serious impact.”