About Materio
Renovating the design & build process
A problem hiding in plain sight
It started with the founders’ apartment remodel—a project that should have been exciting, but quickly turned into a scattered mess of emails, texts, spreadsheets, and miscommunications. There were long threads for project updates, text chains with their contractor, and 25-bullet email replies from their architect. Budgets lived in spreadsheets that became outdated almost immediately. So it was no surprise when things started slipping through the cracks.
What they experienced wasn’t just a one-off headache—it was a symptom of a much bigger problem. Despite the complexity and creativity involved in every design-build project, the tools meant to support professionals were either too fragmented, too narrow, or just not built with real collaboration in mind. Most firms were forced to cobble together a mix of software—or default back to phone calls and sticky notes. Even the more advanced platforms picked a side: built for designers or builders, never both.
The industry didn’t need another point solution. It needed a platform that respected how the work actually gets done.
Built by people who get it
Co-founders Mary Beth and Thomas bring together a rare mix of deep industry empathy and platform-scale experience.
Mary Beth grew up in a family of builders and designers—she spent countless nights watching her parents spread project paperwork across their kitchen table, struggling late into the evening with scattered communications and missed details. Those nights at the kitchen table stuck with her—and ultimately shaped her career in digital products and UX research, where she focused on turning chaos into clarity.
Thomas spent nearly a decade at Squarespace, where he led the Commerce platform team and helped scale it to hundreds of thousands of merchants transacting billions annually. He knows how to build tools creative professionals love—and trust—at scale.
Together, they’ve assembled a team from top-tier tech companies and award-winning design agencies. The one thing everyone shares? A relentless commitment to research, real-world workflows, and getting the details right.
A new standard for the industry
Materio isn’t another tool competing for space in your workflow. It’s the operating system for the design-build industry—a platform that connects designers, builders, and homeowners in one seamless system.
We talk to professionals across the industry every week. The message is always the same: projects need fewer tools, not more. Less miscommunication, not more overhead. Every feature in Materio is informed by real feedback, tested in real workflows, and designed to scale with your projects—whether you're designing a coffee shop or managing a 20,000 square foot estate.
While others digitize old paper processes, Materio reimagines how creative teams actually collaborate.
Our community is building the future with us
Since launching in 2020, over 1,500 design professionals use Materio to manage everything from coffee shops to 20,000 square foot estates. They're saving an average of 15 hours per week and finally getting their nights and weekends back.
"Materio should be industry standard. We did the math and Materio is giving us 15-20% of our time back after juggling multiple softwares over the years.” - Katherine Maund, Copeland + Co. Interiors, Owner + Principal
Always learning, always growing
We’re not just shipping features—we’re building the future of how this industry works. Through constant research and tight feedback loops, Materio evolves with your needs. Because the industry doesn’t stand still, and neither do we.
Our goal isn’t modest: we’re creating the new standard for how the industry runs projects. And we’re just getting started.
Meet our leadership team
Thomas Chau
Co-founder
Thomas is a technical leader with over a decade of experience. Prior to founding Materio, he created Squarespace’s Commerce platform and led its engineering team, growing it to hundreds of thousands of merchants transacting billions of dollars per year. He is a systems thinker who relentlessly simplifies Materio, makes it faster, and ensures it is built for scale. In spite of the widely varied needs of every business, he invents simple solutions that serve them all.
Mary Beth Chau
Co-founder
Mary Beth comes from a family of builders and designers, seeing firsthand their daily struggles with complex remodels. Though she built a career crafting digital products, after the huge frustrations of managing her own apartment remodel, she decided to start Materio to solve the problem once and for all. A strategic problem solver, Mary Beth brings her design background and deep understanding of User Experience research to ensure Materio is constantly learning from its users and taking steps to optimize their work every day.