Interview With Susan Hion-Jarvis, Co-Founder and CPO of Matched
In this edition of Founder Spotlight, we’re featuring a prominent figure in the tech industry –Susan Hion-Jarvis, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer of Matched. This revolutionary platform is transforming how we access knowledge and achieve our goals. With a background in leading product development at fintech and education giants, Susan brings a wealth of experience to Matched, where she drives the product vision to create equal opportunities by making knowledge more accessible.
Alongside her co-founder, Jessica Box, she has built a platform that connects individuals with advisors based on shared interests, helping them achieve personal and professional milestones. With a successful angel round under their belt, Matched is poised to revolutionize how we learn and grow. Susan’s dedication to democratizing knowledge and fostering a community of lifelong learners makes her a true innovator in the tech industry. She has volunteered with Girls in Tech, where she led digital programs aimed at connecting, engaging, and inspiring women to pursue careers in technology.
Let’s read Susan’s story about the Matched!
Hi Susan, welcome to the founder’s spotlight! Could you tell us what inspired you to co-found Matched? We’d love to hear what fuels your passion for creating equal opportunities through the platform?
The uncomfortable truth is that opportunity is part hard work and part luck. For me, I always disliked the idea that your privilege shapes so much of the opportunities you get, usually due to connections and influences that shape you and your decisions. Matched is a socio-economic equaliser, it allows Learners to access Trainers outside of their existing network. To gain access to experience that will shape their current and future behaviours and decisions. By disconnecting opportunities from privilege, we pave a fairer path for all, we give less space to luck and more to hard work and talent.
How do you define the product vision for Matched, and what steps do you take to ensure it aligns with user needs?
The vision of Matched stems from Jessica Box (my Co-Founder!) and I’s lived experience in being first product or growth hires and being in relatively new professions. Today the infrastructure supporting a career in Product Management is abundant but when I first started out, a product management career in tech, in Australia, was quite new. Where it wasn’t new was in Silicon Valley. I often found that the experience I needed to help solve the problems I was trying to answer sat outside of the business, they actually sat outside of the country, and out of my direct network. Oftentimes people refer to LinkedIn as the solution for this and whilst it’s an amazingly powerful platform, I oftentimes was left on read as many others are from cold outreach. Matched is the warm “hi”.
In terms of how we’re ensuring to align it with user needs. We speak to customers every day. We’re beholden to the vision but not the roadmap. One of the lessons I’ve learnt multiple times over is focusing on the problem will get you where you need to be. Too often product teams ship features that don’t perform because the actual need of the customer is missed.
What are the key benefits of Matched’s career development initiatives? What significant trends do you see shaping the future of educational technology and mentorship platforms?
We realise the role that communities play. Learners have the ability to connect with other learners who are on a similar pathway to them. This allows for support and peer guidance which is just as important as expert opinion. There is a reason why group fitness is a successful model for health and wellness goals. In addition, for those who are looking to augment their experience with dedicated time with a Trainer, we provide the ability to connect directly to go deep in a 1:1 environment.
We’re in the age of AI and whilst we will see an increasing role technology plays in life and work, the importance of human connectedness will also be amplified. Whilst we also intend on leveraging the benefits of AI in delivering value to our customers we see this as an enhancement layer to the access and connection between Learners and Trainers that is the core of our offering.
How do you see the concept of “portfolio careers” evolving in the next decade, especially with the rise of remote work and gig economies?
Since launching Matched two months ago, portfolio careers have been a hot topic, sparking significant engagement and interest on our platform. The hallmarks of what portfolio careers are aren’t new, its resurgence reflects growing dissatisfaction with traditional work structures. Remote work has enabled this shift but isn’t the driving force. I believe what we’re seeing is a cultural and generational shift.
Gen Z in particular are challenging traditional institutions and redefining work on their terms. Millennials, with established careers, are at the point in their career where they are able to leverage their skills to create more flexible work arrangements that meet the needs of their life whilst still being in line with their career ambitions.
On a personal note, I started building Matched whilst I was on maternity leave with my first child. I can not tell you the number of new mothers I spoke to who were struggling with how to balance the demands of their careers with the flexibility they now wanted to also be a present parent. A fair amount of them went into contracting, fractional work and starting their own business instead of going back to full time work.
What strategies does Matched use to stand out from competitors in the mentoring space? How has user feedback shaped the development of Matched’s features?
We are agnostic to industry, seniority and DEIB group. We are also conscious about the impact of accessibility driven by price so building a model that scales based on seniority. In addition we are Learner focused (versus trainer or B2B). We believe the best way to create meaningful opportunities is to meet the needs of where the learner is today and grow with them. A big part of goal achievement is a behaviour change and so Matched can be the platform that supports habit creation in order to achieve goal attainment.
User feedback has played a key role throughout Matched’s journey so far (and will continue to do so). Before writing one line of code we validated the problem space with a quant survey to 500 people. We launched a waitlist which was a simple landing page with that validated problem space and saw it grow to 800+ people within a couple of months. When it comes to product development, we have a bias for in-product testing and ship features with the intention of shaping them with our customers based on their behaviour and feedback. The key however is to be able to identify when as an entrepreneur you lead and create, and when you follow.
What are your long-term goals for Matched, and how do you plan to measure success in achieving them?
The AI revolution is well underway, and according to the Future of Jobs Report 2025, 59% of the global workforce will require reskilling or upskilling by 2030. At Matched, we aim to be the go-to platform for achieving your work and life goals. We’ve designed the product to be goal-first, evolving alongside you to ensure Matched grows with you as your goals change. Our focus is on the meaningful impact we create in the lives of our Learners and Trainers— that’s how we define success.
Congratulations for the successful angel round! What goals do you plan to achieve with the raised amount in this funding round? What advice would you give other founders about navigating the fundraising process?
While it’s worth flagging that we haven’t publicly announced our raise amount. The driver for raising capital was to bring to life the MVP of Matched. We had some amazing engineers who understand the possibility of Matched and we sense that timing in the market for a platform like ours is now. So Jess and I decided to raise, to speed up our velocity and get the product in customers hands sooner. We’re now two months post launch and we’re getting great feedback from learners and trainers on how they wished our platform was available earlier in their career. We’re also receiving great insights on where we need to spend more time and learning with our early adopters in shaping the early iteration of our product.
My key advice to founders embarking on fundraising for the first time is to find someone who has successfully navigated the process multiple times themselves. Fundraising is far too critical to approach without proper guidance—you don’t want to “wing it.” Having someone in your corner who knows the ins and outs can make all the difference. For us, that person was Janey Martino, whose expertise and support was invaluable.
How would you describe your leadership style, and the challenges you’ve faced as a leader and how you overcame it?
Over the years I’ve developed a style that lends itself to servant leadership; giving space to the whole person to show up at work. The dichotomy between work and life is a fallacy, it’s impossible for one to not influence the other and technology has only blurred the line further.
Since co-founding Matched I’m proud of how we have managed to stay true to our company and personal values on tackling difficult situations. One adjustment I have made is how much latitude you give to the team before needing to push forward with a decision. There is an immense opportunity for learning at an early stage company but you have to do it quickly and sometimes the business needs to move faster than you can learn.
How do you manage work-life balance while leading a startup in a fast-paced environment?
Prioritisation is key. It’s crucial to be intentional not only with how you spend your time, but also the questions you ask the team as they become distractions to planned work. Having worked in many fast-paced environments, I used to think I was great at prioritisation, and whilst I still believe that to be true, I now realise the silver bullet that is being able to solve problems with time. But as a mother and a Co-Founder, I no longer have that luxury. So, I’ve reset my expectations for what I can realistically achieve in a day. I’m deliberate about what I commit to, and disciplined on giving it my full focus.
What advice would you give to women looking to advance their careers in tech and leadership roles?
Careers aren’t single player games. No one does it all by themselves so find your people who inspire and challenge you.
Be comfortable with who you are at work. Early in my career I felt the need to hold back parts of myself in order to appear more professional in efforts to command authority. However with more women in the workforce and in senior roles the space for femininity and leadership has opened up. So be who you are, not a version of yourself you think is more palatable to others. Common rules of decency and respect still apply.
