About Lightning Developments
I build the systems I wish I'd had when running my own business.
I'm Rupert Gough — founder of Lightning Developments, based in Tauranga, New Zealand. I've spent most of my career running businesses, not writing code. That's what makes me different.
From Mortgage Lab to Lightning Developments
I built Mortgage Lab from scratch — a mortgage advisory business that I scaled across New Zealand before selling it to the Maurice Trapp Group in 2022. During that journey, I lived every operational headache a small business can throw at you.
Spreadsheets that no one could make sense of. Manual processes that ate hours every week. Client data scattered across email, shared drives, and people's heads. Commission calculations that took days when they should have taken minutes.
I started building tools to fix my own problems — internal dashboards, automation workflows, client portals. The more I built, the more I realised that every small business I knew had the same issues. And most of them had no idea that the solutions were now affordable.
Bridging two worlds
Most developers have never run a business. They build what they're told to build, but they don't understand why a business owner needs it — or what the real problem is behind the request.
And most business owners don't have the technical understanding to know what's possible. They know something could be better, but they don't know where to start.
I join the two worlds. I show business owners what's possible — and then I build it for them.
80 hrs
How long a process used to take annually
4 hrs
How long it takes now
5 hrs
How long it took me to build
One client had an annual process that consumed 80 hours of work. I built a system in 5 hours that reduced it to 4. That's the kind of result that used to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars — now it costs a fraction.
What working with me looks like
I start by understanding your business — not your tech stack. What takes too long? Where do things fall through the cracks? What questions can't you answer without digging through spreadsheets?
Then I build the systems to fix it. Sometimes that's connecting the tools you already use. Sometimes it's replacing a mess of spreadsheets with a proper dashboard. Sometimes it's automating the busywork that eats your team's time.
Every hour is tracked to the second. You only pay for the work that gets done. No retainers you don't use, no mystery invoices.
Beyond the code
Based in Tauranga with my daughter Sophie. When I'm not building systems, you'll find me out on the water — paddleboarding, wing foiling, or chasing snow on the ski fields in winter. Also a dedicated Formula 1 fan and Lewis Hamilton supporter.
What fires me up? The moment a business owner sees the genuine benefit. When they realise that systems previously out of reach — things that would have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars a couple of years ago — will now cost them a couple of thousand. You can see their minds start buzzing with possibilities.
I love watching a business owner go from overwhelmed by admin to addicted to efficiency.