Built from
the field up.
Blue Butterfly started with a summer job, a pile of spreadsheets, and a question that wouldn't go away.
Matthew Dunkerley spent summers during university working in the field as a geologist. The work itself was straightforward — core logging, interval recording, geological observations — but the workflow around it was not. Geologists were logging directly into spreadsheets. Multiple versions of the same dataset floated between laptops with no clear source of truth. In some cases, data was still being recorded by hand and re-entered into Excel at the end of the day. Every field season started with the same risks: version conflicts, missing records, and the slow creep of errors that only surface weeks later when someone tries to run the data through a model.
The tools available were either deeply expensive enterprise platforms with weeks-long setup times, or nothing more than a shared Excel file with someone's initials at the end of the filename. There was no middle ground designed around how exploration teams actually work. Dunkerley later reconnected with Alexander Gifford — a technology entrepreneur and longtime friend — and together they saw clearly what nobody had built yet: a modern, browser-based platform purpose-built for exploration geological data management.
geologist interviews at AME Roundup and PDAC
Before writing a line of code, Gifford and Dunkerley went to the industry. They attended AME Roundup and PDAC — the two largest mineral exploration conferences in Canada — and spent their time in conversations rather than booths. More than 100 interviews with geologists, exploration managers, consultants, and mining professionals. They were listening for patterns: the workflows that broke every season, the problems people had given up trying to solve, the workarounds that had become standard practice.
Seven problems came up in almost every conversation.
Blue Butterfly, founded in 2023, was built to solve exactly these problems. The platform combines a structured SQL backend with an intuitive logging interface that enforces data consistency and creates a genuine single source of truth for project data. It streamlines the path from field observation to downstream geological software — no "Excel gymnastics" in the middle. The team is based in Toronto, Canada.
Matthew Dunkerley
Co-Founder
Matthew brings firsthand geological field experience to the product. His summers working in mineral exploration — and the data management problems he encountered there — are the direct origin of Blue Butterfly. He drives product direction and geological domain expertise, ensuring the platform reflects how exploration teams actually work rather than how software designers assume they do.
B.Sc. Geology, University of Toronto · Coast Mountain Geological · Vale Base Metals
Alexander Gifford
Co-Founder
Alexander comes from the technology sector, having worked across multiple startups and operated his own web development and consulting business. He leads engineering and the technical architecture of the platform. His background building production software products — combined with the industry research he and Matthew conducted together — shapes how Blue Butterfly is designed and built.
B.Comm, Toronto Metropolitan University · Technology entrepreneur · Web development & consulting
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