Dave: Hey everyone, Dave here with another episode of the Philly Tech Connect podcast. Today I’m speaking with Matt Canning, a Philly-based technologist, executive leader, entrepreneur, and the founder of Noplex—an ecosystem built to empower individuals struggling with ADHD to succeed in a neurotypical world. Matt, how are you doing?
Matt: I’m doing fantastic. How are you?
Dave: I’m doing well. I’m excited to talk about this product you’re working on—actually, you describe it as an ecosystem. So let’s kind of start there. Tell us a little bit about the background of Noplex and why you don’t refer to it as a product. Is there a specific reason you chose the word “ecosystem”?
Matt: That’s a great question. Yes—so Noplex, as you mentioned, is built to empower individuals with ADHD to manage their lives in a neurotypical world. I was inspired to create it due to people in my immediate family who struggle with ADHD. It’s been something top of mind for a long time as a parent. Over the years, I realized there were gaps—not necessarily in care, but in tooling. If you have ADHD in 2025, you have an abundance of telehealth options, coaching opportunities, and even video games that claim to help improve focus. But nothing really addresses the day-to-day reality—like dropping off medication at a relative’s house or picking up your brother from the bus stop. For those who really struggle, even basic things like drinking water or walking the dog can be tough. There was nothing out there for that. People were retrofitting tools built with a neurotypical bias, and because of that, people with ADHD tend to churn quickly on productivity tools—despite a deep desire to manage their lives digitally. So, we went down the rabbit hole. I started to understand ADHD a lot better, and I saw that cultural stigmas around it have eroded. There’s a huge culture of influencers now focused on the superpower side of ADHD rather than the disability side. The moment I realized I needed to drop everything and build this app was when I found out there had been over 30 billion TikTok posts tagged with ADHD-related tags. There are ADHD podcasts with huge audiences—there’s a whole world out there. The community we could serve was much larger than I originally thought. So, when we talk about Noplex as an ecosystem, it’s because while we currently have an app—you can get it on Google Play, the Apple App Store, or use it on the web—we’re also building a product and service for behavioral health providers. Therapists and coaches can connect with clients through Noplex and receive AI-derived behavioral insights about strategy, compliance, and more. That cyclical side of things is why we call it an ecosystem.
Dave: Nice. Interesting. I’m very curious—I’m no stranger to productivity apps. I use a pretty simple Trello Kanban system for my day-to-day, and it’s worked for me. But what were some of the oversights in traditional productivity apps that made them not work well for your target users?
Matt: That’s a great question. So—we’re not clinicians. We’re user experience professionals, and my team and I have been doing that for a long time. We looked at it and said: how can we distill all the complexities of ADHD into a digestible set of challenges? And how can we achieve the same outcomes as traditional productivity tools while circumventing the challenges ADHD presents? We talked to clinicians and essentially tried to create digital proxies for manual processes that work well for people with ADHD.
For example, in Noplex, where you curate your tasks and where you execute them are two separate spaces. One common strategy therapists use is having someone take their full to-do list and just move three items to today’s calendar—forget the rest. That helps reduce overwhelm and the sense of failure. We replicated this idea in our app with a concept called The Horizon. You enter tasks, prioritize them, add metadata, etc.—but then you only see today’s tasks in your Horizon. That’s your primary view. It’s what your progress bar is based on, what your notifications are tied to, and what you get nudged on if you haven’t done anything or still have things pending. This separation between curation and execution has been powerful. It helps people focus. And although we launched for people with ADHD, we started getting feedback from people with anxiety—either comorbid with ADHD or not at all—saying it really resonated with them.
One quote I loved was:
“If I have 30 things on my to-do list and I complete 3, all I see are the 27 remaining, mocking me. With Noplex, I don’t have that. I can’t force my way into seeing everything at once.”
Dave: Very cool. So in some ways, you’ve simplified and reduced the noise for individuals who might feel overwhelmed by traditional to-do lists. You mentioned anxiety—have you gotten feedback from neurotypical people who just prefer this over other systems?
Matt: Absolutely, great question. Actually, our top users by volume—those we’ve interacted with and surveyed—are individuals who identify as neurotypical. They just find it to be a better experience. We also have this concept of a Supporter. For example, if I have a recurring task like taking out the trash on Tuesdays, I can add my wife as a supporter. She’ll get a notification that she’s a supporter for that task. If I complete it, she gets notified. If I forget, she knows. That’s not exclusive to ADHD—it’s just a helpful feature in a complex digital world. Another example is Routines. You can have a Saturday routine for chores, or ad hoc routines for situations like leaving a rental. I always forget to log out of streaming services when I travel—so having a “leaving a rental” routine that reminds me helps a lot. Again, not ADHD-specific—it just works for people.
Dave: Yeah, I guarantee someone’s watching my kids’ Disney subscription right now because we were just in Orlando. Let them enjoy it. So, we haven’t really talked much about your background, but I know you’ve had senior roles at Fortune 50 companies and serious B2B companies. Are you still employed or full-time on Noplex now? And what does your team look like?
Matt: I’ve been in the Philly area my whole life. I worked at Comcast for a long time in a variety of roles—you don’t get much bigger than that. Around June or August of 2023, I started prototyping Noplex and decided to go all-in. Since then, I’ve been full-time. I have a head of engineering and a head of product—people I’ve worked with in the past across different contexts. They’ve been full-time since February 2024. We’ve had some interns and a couple contractors—one for software engineering and one for growth strategy and social media. So our core team is the three of us, and we augment as needed.
Dave: Nice. And how has the transition been—from big companies to a startup?
Matt: I feel like a lot of the leadership skills translate well. Just like life lessons from sports or music can apply to your career, the same goes for working across different scales of companies. Whether it’s people skills, setting agendas, prioritizing, or tracking KPIs—those fundamentals serve a team of any size. We’re not overly focused on culture just yet, but that will come.
Dave: So, what’s next for Noplex?
Matt: We officially launched on Christmas Eve, and we haven’t done any real marketing yet—just organic discovery, which has gone well. So far, our approach has been direct-to-user. Now, we’re entering an initiative we’re calling consumer wholesale—getting Noplex into the hands of companies as an employer health and wellness benefit or offering it to universities as a student resource. We’re shifting to broader distribution via single-point partnerships.
Dave: Sounds like some good goals for the year. I’m excited to follow along. For people who want to learn more about you and Noplex, where should they go?
Matt: Noplex is at noplex.ai. We’re working on acquiring the .com from a manufacturing company in Europe—they don’t seem too attached to it, so fingers crossed. And my personal website is matthewcanning.com—that’s just a hub for some of the things I’ve been working on.
Dave: Nice! Great chatting with you, Matt. Thank you so much for your time.
Matt: Absolutely. Thank you—it’s been a pleasure.