David Savory
Technical founder and polymath operator who builds pragmatic, intelligent operational systems to solve real problems.
Summary
New Zealand–born, trained as a physical chemist (BSc Hons, 1st Class, and a PhD) before moving into performance-marketing technology and relocating to Asia — first the Philippines, then Thailand, now home base.
Today, a technical founder and operator running two ventures and developing several more. The through-line across all of it is consistent: building pragmatic, intelligent operational systems — the analytics, tracking, automation and data layers that make a business work — and applying the same engineering instinct across very different domains, from SaaS to physical retail to coffee chemistry.
Focus is shown by what's active; range by everything around it. The two operating ventures carry most weight; the development instinct is a single thesis — applying pragmatic engineering and AI to under-served, data-heavy operational workflows — executed across three verticals.
Core Competencies
Active Ventures
A funnel orchestration platform that acts as the performance rails for marketing pipelines. Beyond tracking and funnel-building, it lets operators visually wire arbitrary branching logic, real-time decision nodes, automatic optimisation nodes, and real-time communication with external systems.
The only tracker that lets you build completely arbitrary, non-linear funnel logic, visually. Every competitor, without exception, is constrained to linear flows — with page-level split testing and basic conditional routing bolted on. FunnelFlux is architecturally different at the core.
Role & history: Joined as CEO, later took full ownership. A platform with roughly a decade of operating history, trusted by thousands of performance marketers, run by a small, focused team.
Technical authorship: Owns the architecture end-to-end. Pre-AI, made every architecture decision, built the testing infrastructure, designed and managed the database schema, and directed the engineering team — architecting deliberately for cost as well as performance and scalability. Post-AI, contributing massively to production code, engineering and product expansion.
2026 vision: A conversion-optimisation layer built for high-volume performance media buyers — a segment priced out by Optimizely, VWO and Convert. Where existing tools optimise only at the page level, this optimises across all three dimensions — path, page, and multivariate combination — eventually using edge inference rather than static segmentation.
Pioneering importer and operator of Japan's leading photobooth brand in Thailand, and the brand's first pilot in Southeast Asia, with a roadmap across the region.
As technical founder, rapidly builds the company's bespoke intelligence and operations layer — leveraging AI where it adds functional value — to give a physical-retail startup software leverage its competitors lack:
- → Custom analytics
- → A custom POS and payment layer
- → Video generation system to transform photo moments into shareable experiences layer
- → An influencer-management and analytics portal that predicts influencer-content performance then allows better attribution against real in-store retail activity — a problem most retailers can't crack
- → Currently working on polishing vision for a community-lead platform that creates a content-driven retail/digital loop to further expand the business.
In Development — One Thesis, Three Verticals
Thesis: Applying pragmatic engineering and AI to under-served, data-heavy operational workflows.
AI-first accounting for Thai startups: turns key sources of truth into clean, audit-ready books, educates founders through hard local compliance, and uses AI — including processing of varied, unstructured accounting documents — to streamline the work.
A data-centralisation platform that pulls and unifies data from the many systems performance marketers run on, then lets them run intelligence, automations and AI “playbooks” across it. The differentiator is combining cross-system data sync with an AI automation layer for media buyers — something off-the-shelf tools don't do.
An AI-first insurance aggregation platform helping US consumers find strong-fit policies across multiple product types. Acts as the technology pipeline that intelligently connects consumers to the right coverage and unifies the data they need to decide, and apply.
Side Project
Products and workshops that let coffee drinkers, baristas and enthusiasts tune their water's mineral composition to optimise flavour, paired with clear, plain-language education built on a chemistry background. PhD background meets love of coffee.
Track Record
SkillballerA UK tech-platform venture — a skill game plus subscription model to diversify charity fundraising — that didn't reach lift-off. Included for the build and the model, not as a win.
iStack TrainingFounded iStack Training and led 6 Week AMC — a $2,997, university-level affiliate-marketing bootcamp that launched many successful affiliate marketing careers. Extremely successful with multiple yearly cohorts; since wound down.
iStack HoldingsRelocated to the Philippines to build the company's operational base from the ground up — founding the Manila team of designers, developers and technical staff, sourcing office space, infrastructure and hardware, and setting up the legal framework to employ staff in the Philippines under a Hong Kong entity. Grew the team from ~5 to 30-40 people over several years, built the team and management structure, and ran hiring and culture.
STM Forum
Established expert and paid moderator in a leading affiliate-marketing community, guiding hundreds of marketers through the field.
Foundation
PhD, Physical Chemistry — University of Otago
Used ATR-IR spectroscopy to investigate an unexplained photocatalytic phenomenon observed in titanium dioxide under aqueous conditions: uncharted territory the existing literature couldn't satisfactorily explain. The work demanded pragmatic experimental design, building custom instrumentation alongside engineers, and reconciling fragmented, often contradictory data across hundreds of experiments into a coherent explanation.
Output: published thesis (granted distinction), 5 publications, several conference presentations, an invited seminar at a US energy research institute in Delaware, and extensive undergraduate lab teaching.
The transferable core isn't the chemistry — it's the method: operating at the frontier of the unknown, inventing a way to understand it, and turning confusing fragments into clarity. That is also the job description of a founder.
BSc (Hons), 1st Class — University of Otago
Seven-plus years at Otago University, Dunedin, New Zealand.