2004 → 2008
The operator pattern starts early
Before Surton, Chris was building quoting systems for insurers. That work evolved into BriteCore — an ambitious attempt to build software capable of running an entire insurance company.
About Surton
Built by founders who know what high-stakes delivery actually feels like.
Most companies don't suffer from a lack of AI ambition. They suffer from a lack of experienced implementation capacity. Chris Reynolds and Ben Hayden built Surton to close that gap — pairing founder-level judgment with hands-on technical execution.
The result is a lean team built for AI implementation, platform modernization, and the moments where executive urgency collides with real engineering complexity.
20+
years Chris has spent leading complex software systems
16+
years of hands-on engineering leadership from Ben
11x
growth Surton recorded in 2024 as AI demand accelerated
~400k weekly listeners
audience tied to Chris's founder-focused podcast
Company story
From operator experience to implementation leverage.
Surton was built after years of watching the same pattern repeat: technology moves faster than most organizations can adopt it well. Chris and Ben have both lived inside that problem — startup building, platform scale, architecture tradeoffs, hiring, and the organizational realities that come with growth.
That's why Surton's approach is intentionally practical. The goal isn't to sell novelty. It's to help leaders make better technical decisions, build cleaner systems, and move faster with less regret.
BriteCore era
Chris and Ben learn how scale actually feels
As BriteCore grew, Ben joined as a founding engineer and helped shape the platform's architecture, delivery systems, and operational foundations. The lesson both founders carried forward: judgment compounds.
2022
Surton launches with a leaner thesis
Surton was built around senior talent, practical execution, and a lighter operating model — not process theater, not bloated staffing, and not advisory detached from implementation.
2024 → today
AI makes the implementation gap impossible to ignore
As companies raced to turn AI ambition into real operating leverage, Surton's model became more valuable. The firm's growth was a result of market urgency meeting operator-grade execution.
Founder profiles
Two complementary founders, one operator-first standard.
Chris brings founder judgment, executive perspective, and market-facing clarity. Ben brings the systems depth and delivery rigor that turn ambitious technical plans into durable implementations.
CEO · Founder · Podcast host
Chris Reynolds
CEO & Co-Founder, Surton
Chris co-founded BriteCore (a P&C insurance software firm) as CTO and spent a decade growing it into a category-defining insurance platform before it sold to private equity.
Today he leads Surton's AI services work, partnering with founders and executives to align technology decisions to business outcomes. He also co-hosts the Build Your Business podcast with Matt Reynolds (~400k weekly listeners) and writes The Blueprint, a weekly newsletter for operators on AI adoption, engineering leadership, and building a business without turning yourself into the bottleneck.
Chris holds multiple cloud certifications and is a strong advocate for small elite teams, rigorous documentation, and an automation-first culture. His operator background spans product, infrastructure, go-to-market, and executive leadership.
His work has earned recognition including Missouri Small Business of the Year, a Lifetime Service award from the National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies, and multiple Inc. 5000 appearances.
At BriteCore, Chris saw firsthand how architecture decisions, team quality, and commercial pressure collide inside a real operating business. That experience shapes how Surton approaches AI work today: stay close to the bottleneck, keep the technical path legible, and ship systems the client can confidently own after launch.
Outside client work, Chris co-hosts the Build Your Business podcast with Matt Reynolds and writes The Blueprint — a weekly newsletter for operators on delegation, systems, AI adoption, and the habits that help companies grow without adding chaos.
- Former BriteCore co-founder and CTO
- AI implementation and executive advising
- Board-level perspective in insurance and regulated industries
CTO · Founder · Systems lead
Ben Hayden
CTO & Co-Founder, Surton
Ben has 16+ years of hands-on engineering experience and holds AWS architecture credentials. He leads teams through large migrations, greenfield builds, and modernizations — turning ambiguous requirements into secure, scalable, cost-efficient systems.
Before Surton, Ben was a founding engineer at BriteCore alongside Chris, where he helped shape the platform's architecture and engineering practices. His work spans event-driven architectures, containers and serverless, data pipelines, and infrastructure-as-code.
Clients lean on Ben when there's no room for architectural drift — when decisions need to move cleanly from whiteboard to production without losing the thread between business risk, delivery speed, and system quality.
Ben is the technical operator clients call when there's no room for architectural drift. He's equally comfortable in strategy sessions, design documents, delivery plans, and the production details that decide whether a system is actually maintainable.
His background makes him especially valuable when the work spans cloud architecture, modernization, DevOps, and AI-adjacent systems — the kind of projects where business risk and engineering quality are tightly coupled.
- Cloud architecture and modernization
- Migrations, DevOps, and platform reliability
- Hands-on technical leadership from strategy to production
Credentials & signals
The credentials support the work — they do not replace it.
Surton's certifications matter because they map to real delivery contexts: architecture decisions, cloud migrations, production systems, and AI rollouts that need strong foundations underneath them.
Architecture depth
Professional and associate-level AWS architecture credentials back Surton's work on cloud platforms, modernization, and complex migrations.
Delivery discipline
Database, developer, and DevOps certifications reinforce a bias toward operational reliability, observability, and production-ready systems.
AI readiness
AWS, Microsoft, and IBM AI credentials support the practical side of Surton's current work: helping teams adopt AI with sound systems underneath it.
Recognized operator experience
Chris's work has been recognized with Missouri Small Business of the Year, a Lifetime Service award from the National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies, and multiple Inc. 5000 appearances.
Real-world cloud and AI credentials
Surton's certification mix spans AWS architecture, DevOps, data, and AI — plus Microsoft and IBM AI credentials that support current implementation work.
Founder-level communication, not just delivery
Through Build Your Business and The Blueprint newsletter, Chris turns hard-earned operator lessons into practical guidance for founders and executives.
Ready to make AI useful inside your business?
Whether you need a working AI workflow, executive clarity before you scale, or senior technical leadership you can lean on, we've done this before. Bring us the bottleneck and we'll help you ship your way through it.