Mathew Stava

CEO and Chairman Spinnaker Support

Last Reviewed: September 19, 2026

Executive Summary

Mathew Stava — published everywhere, including by his own company, as Matt Stava — founded Spinnaker Support in 2008 and remains its chief executive and chairman nearly two decades later. The business sells third-party support and managed services for enterprise software: Oracle, SAP, JD Edwards and VMware. The commercial logic of that market is straightforward and slightly adversarial. Enterprise software vendors charge annual maintenance that customers largely pay in order to stay supported, and which the vendor uses in part to fund upgrades the customer may not want. An independent support provider offers the support without the upgrade treadmill, which as Stava frames it returns control of the roadmap to the customer’s CIO rather than leaving it with the vendor. Spinnaker Support started narrowly, supporting only JD Edwards users, and widened from there; it has grown at double-digit rates into 2026 and expanded its executive team in April of that year to support further international growth.

Career Highlights

• Founded Spinnaker Support in 2008 and has led it as chief executive and chairman ever since.
• Started the business supporting JD Edwards users only, adding Oracle and SAP support roughly four years later and VMware later still.
• Grew the company into a global provider of third-party support and managed services, sustaining double-digit growth into 2026.
• Expanded the executive team in April 2026, adding a chief revenue officer and a vice president of global marketing, alongside a C-suite covering strategy, finance, delivery, information, people, technology and EMEA technology.
• Completed a small acquisition to accelerate the company’s managed services capability.
• Co-founded Spinnaker Management Group in 2002, the supply chain consultancy that preceded the support business.
• Earlier career in supply chain architecture and restructuring consulting at Andersen Consulting, and as supply chain practice lead at Solutions Consulting.

Professional Journey

Stava began in management consulting at Andersen Consulting, the firm that later became Accenture, working on supply chain architecture and restructuring. He describes the formative part of that period as a partner who gave him access well above his grade — major engagements for brands including Anheuser-Busch, with direct exposure to chief information officers and senior executives. That is a specific and useful kind of early training for someone who would later build a business selling to exactly those people.

He moved on to Solutions Consulting, where he led the supply chain practice; the firm was subsequently acquired by Perot Systems. In 2002 he co-founded Spinnaker Management Group, a supply chain consultancy, which established both the Spinnaker brand and the pattern of building an independent advisory business rather than working inside a large one.

Spinnaker Support followed in 2008. Its founding proposition was deliberately narrow: support for JD Edwards users who wanted an alternative to vendor-provided maintenance, with lower cost and better service as the pitch. Roughly four years in, the company extended into Oracle and SAP support, and later added VMware — each expansion opening a considerably larger installed base than the last. The differentiation Stava emphasises is less about price than about control: customising the support experience to the client rather than applying a standard service level, and giving the CIO authority over the upgrade roadmap instead of having it dictated by the vendor’s release schedule. His own phrasing is that the company is there to make sure everything runs optimally so that clients can focus on moving their organisations forward.

The company has been run with what Stava describes as fiscal conservatism, including a willingness to withdraw from markets that underperform rather than subsidise them, and it has made at least one small acquisition to accelerate its managed services capability. It now operates a broad C-suite — chief strategy, financial, delivery, information, human resources, revenue and technology officers, plus a separate EMEA chief technology officer — and a senior management layer of some sixteen vice presidents covering the Oracle, SAP and JD Edwards practices, the APAC and EMEA regions, and functions from cybersecurity to customer experience. In April 2026 the company announced further additions to that team, citing accelerating demand for independent support across all three practices. Stava has said he takes particular satisfaction in watching employees move up into management and vice-president roles, which is consistent with the depth of the internal bench the company now publishes.

Education

University of Kansas

Bachelor of Science, Business Administration and Finance

No graduation year is published. This entry rests on Spinnaker Support’s own biography of him and was not corroborated against a university or third-party source.