Mat Ryer has been programming computers since he was 6 years old. He would build games and programs, first in BASIC on a ZX Spectrum and then in AmigaBASIC and AMOS on Commodore Amiga with his father. Many hours were spent on manually copying the code from the Amiga Format magazine and tweaking variables or moving GOTO statements around to see what might happen. The same spirit of exploration and obsession with programming led Mat to starting work with a local agency in Mansfield, England, when he was 18, where he started to build websites and other online services.

After several years of working with various technologies and industries in London and around the world, Mat noticed a new systems language called Go that Google was pioneering. Since it addressed very pertinent and relevant modern technical challenges, Mat started using it to solve problems while the language was still in the beta stage. He has used it ever since. Mat contributes to open-source projects and founded Go packages, including Testify, Moq, Silk, and Is, as well as a macOS developer tool called BitBar.

In 2018, Mat co-founded Machine Box and still spends a lot of time speaking at conferences, writing about Go on his blog, and is an active member of the Go community.