Nexus Maine: Jimmy Haight and George Matelich
- Brick + Tides
- Dec 30, 2025
- 7 min read
Updated: Dec 31, 2025
A Soft Morning in Kennebunkport
The meteorologists had promised drama.
Strong winds were coming, they said. Heavy rain too. But that morning in Kennebunkport, nothing had arrived yet. The air was still. The harbor barely moved. It was one of those Maine mornings where the forecast feels like a suggestion rather than a fact.
Snow does not usually melt in mid December in Maine. And yet, here we were, standing in the mid forties, watching it disappear. The ground gave it back slowly, turning it into heavy fog that settled low over town. Shrink wrapped boats slept through the season, sealed tight and stacked along the harbor.
Down the street from Mornings in Paris, the Clam Shack was closed for the winter, but Maine had left a note. Four floating lobster containers, the kind lobstermen use to keep their catch alive in the ocean, had been pulled ashore and dropped into the road to hold parking spots. Two spots per container. No cones. No signs. Just lobster gear doing municipal work.
It was, without question, the most Maine thing happening anywhere that morning.
Beside the Clam Shack, metal lobster traps were stacked neatly for the winter, resting near one of the most famous restaurants in New England, waiting patiently for a season that always comes back around.
Inside Mornings in Paris, coffee steamed and the world felt smaller. At a table near the window, two men sat quietly in the middle of all of it, building something new in a place that has always known how to wait.
Two Young Builders, One Shared Tension
Jimmy Haight is 36. George Matelich is 29. They both live in Kennebunk. Their work lives nationally, in emerging technology and venture circles that usually orbit Boston, New York, and San Francisco. But their lives are planted here.
That tension sits at the center of their story. How do you build big, ambitious careers while choosing a small, deeply rooted place to live?
Early Clues: Practicing Before It Had a Name
Jimmy grew up in Dover, New Hampshire, just outside Portsmouth. He remembers a childhood filled with wiffleball, sports practices, and neighborhood games. He also remembers having a paper route before he was even a teenager, and learning early that commitment does not pause for snow days.
“When the first snow fell, I thought the paper route could wait. My dad didn’t. He said, ‘This is your job,’ and sent me out anyway. I didn’t realize it at the time, but that lesson stayed with me.”
In high school, he built a tiny business with a friend (building the website with GeoCities) importing sunglasses and selling them to classmates. It was not about scale. It was about curiosity.
George’s childhood unfolded just north of New York City in Westchester County. Skateboarding shaped his early years, and later, so did trying to build things around it. A short lived skate brand, landscaping jobs, and eventually a pizza blog in San Francisco all taught him the same lesson.
The pizza blog, Slice of SF, became a quiet experiment in connection. It showed him how quickly people organize around shared interests, and how opportunity follows when they do.
Side projects were never really side projects.
Choosing Maine, On Purpose
Jimmy’s move to Maine came after years in Boston and then a bold four year detour to Scottsdale, Arizona. When it came time to start a family, he and his wife chose Kennebunk for a reason that felt both practical and deeply human.
Kennebunk placed them directly between both sets of grandparents.
George and his wife did not come to Maine with a plan to move. They visited Kennebunk for the first time for New Years 2022, simply to see a place they had never been. “We loved it,” George said.
At the time, Maine felt like somewhere you return to, not somewhere you land. They talked about it as a place for future visits, maybe a second home in the distant future, while assuming Boston would eventually make more sense. But when a two hundred year old home appeared in Kennebunk months later, curiosity turned into commitment. They stepped inside, and almost immediately asked the only question that mattered. How do we make this work?
Careers Without Borders
Jimmy’s career has always lived at the intersection of emerging financial technology and people. As the Head of Community, he has worked in cutting edge spaces long enough to know that the most important breakthroughs are rarely technical alone. They happen when humans find each other, share context, and move together.
George’s path took him through large corporations and startups before clarity arrived. In January of this year, he launched Rely, a company focused on automating due diligence for large apartment buildings.
Buying institutional scale real estate requires sifting through massive amounts of unstructured information, a process that can take weeks. Rely compresses that work into minutes, ingesting everything from lease agreements and applications to insurance records and payment histories, then turning it into answers investors can trust.
Their work stretches nationally. Their lives do not.
That separation matters.
An Email Lost, A Coffee Found
Jimmy and George did not meet through a planned networking event or an introduction brokered by a boardroom.
They met through coincidence.
While living in San Francisco, George mentioned to a mutual acquaintance that he was moving to Maine. An email introduction was sent, thoughtfully written and well intentioned.
George's email landed exactly where so many important messages land - Jimmy’s spam folder.
Months later, while resetting a password and doing the digital equivalent of rummaging through a drawer, Jimmy noticed a subject line that mentioned Kennebunk. He paused. He replied. George responded. A Zoom call followed.
When George arrived in Maine in September of 2023, they met for coffee. Then they met again. Then their families met.
Something clicked.
There were more people like them. They just needed a way to find each other.
Building Nexus Maine
The idea for Nexus Maine did not arrive fully formed.
In December 2023, they talked about it. In January 2024, they asked people if something like this would matter. In February, they shared a simple sign up form and waited.
From the beginning, Katie Shorey, president of Startup Maine, saw what Nexus could become. She shared the idea through her network and helped it find its first audience. Her early belief helped turn a conversation into a community.
One hundred eighty people responded in 24 hours.
They did not build a five year plan. They built a room.
“If we make a couple of friends from doing this, it will have been worthwhile,” George said. Everything else would be extra.
When People Collide, Good Things Happen
Today, Nexus Maine includes roughly 1600 people across its email list and Slack community.
Their Slack channel has become a living place. Business lawyers answer questions. Founders find collaborators. Designers offer help. Jobs are posted. Coffee meetings are arranged. Problems that once stalled now move.
George describes it as a particle accelerator, a space designed for collision rather than isolation.
Jimmy describes it more simply. Awareness creates opportunity. And opportunity grows faster when people stop working alone.
What started as a way to make a few friends has become connective tissue.
The Best Version of Maine
There is a temptation, especially in tech, to measure success by comparison.
Jimmy resists that instinct. Maine does not need to become the next Silicon Valley. It needs to become the best version of itself.
George approaches it the same way from a business lens. Rely is built for a national market, but whenever possible, hiring, services, and energy stay rooted here. Growth is not the goal on its own. Impact is.
Ambition without erosion. Progress without losing character.
Wasting Time Constructively
George carries a phrase that feels less like a motto and more like a way of moving through the world.
Wasting time constructively.
It comes from a finance memoir, but the idea itself has nothing to do with finance. It is about curiosity without an agenda. About saying yes to conversations that do not have a clear outcome. About trusting that time spent with interesting people is rarely wasted, even when you cannot immediately explain why it mattered.
George learned early that many of the most important doors in his life did not open because he knocked on them. They opened because he listened. Because he stayed in touch. Over time, those small, unplanned moments compounded into friendships, opportunities, and a deeper understanding of what was possible.
In a place like Maine, the idea feels natural. You run into the same people again. Conversations stretch. Relationships deepen slowly. The return is not instant, but it is durable.
Nexus Maine grew from that same instinct. Meet people first. Remove pressure. Let connection come before outcome.
Sometimes the most productive thing you can do is sit down, have a coffee, and see what happens.
Staying Put, Looking Forward
Inside Mornings in Paris, the coffee had long gone cold. Outside, the fog still clung to Kennebunkport, and the town continued doing what it has always done, quietly making room for people willing to stay.
Jimmy and George did not set out to build a movement. They followed curiosity, answered a few messages, met for coffee, and paid attention when something felt worth pursuing. What emerged was not a strategy, but a signal. A reminder that opportunity often arrives softly, disguised as coincidence.
And sometimes, it starts with an email you almost miss.
Don't forget to reset passwords and check your spam folder.
Many thanks to Jimmy and George for their time on December 19, 2025 in Kennebunkport, Maine.
Visit NexusMaine.com for more info.
BRICK+TIDES is a weekly digital magazine based in York County, Maine. We share positive and inspiring stories about local businesses, people, and places that make Southern Maine special. If you'd like to read our free weekly email, we'd love for you to subscribe!
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Photos and interview by Cy Cyr. Contact him at info@bricktides.com
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