Wyndham's Jack Ridder, 21, is rebuilding websites for businesses across New Zealand, with a budgeting app due out on 16 November

Most 21-year-olds are finishing a degree or working out what comes next. Jack Ridder is a director of two companies, runs a web studio from Invercargill and has an app launching in 10 days.

Ridder, who grew up in Wyndham, is the founder of Bryder Studios, which builds new websites, rebuilds tired ones and sets up the systems that sit behind them, from phone lines and business email to online bookings and customer portals. The studio works face to face across Southland and by video call with clients in the rest of the country.

"I build it," is how he puts it on the studio's website, and he means that literally: design, code, hosting and support are all done in-house rather than farmed out.

The pitch to business owners is plain. Plenty of firms have a website that was built years ago, a phone system that drops calls, email on a free account and a pile of spreadsheets holding the rest together. Ridder's work is to replace that with something that looks current, loads quickly on a phone and connects the pieces, so a customer can find the business and get in touch, and the owner can see what happened without chasing paperwork.

"The site is usually the easy part," Ridder says. "What a business actually needs is for the website, the phone number, the email and the bookings to work together. When one of those is broken, the owner is the one who ends up copying things between systems at nine o'clock at night."

Bryder Studios publishes its prices, which is still unusual in the trade. A three-page starter site is listed from $500, a standard five-page site from $1200 and a custom business site of up to 15 pages from $3500, with hosting and care at $79 a month from launch. Logos start at $450 and a full rebrand at $1200. Larger client portals and web apps are quoted, typically from $8000. The studio also installs 3CX phone systems with 0800 or local 03 numbers, sets up Microsoft 365 email, and bundles the lot into a start-up kit for people opening a new business: domain, logo, website, email, phone number and Google listing under one quote.

Prospective clients get a free mock-up within a couple of business days, a fixed written quote with a launch date, two rounds of changes, and ownership of their domain, files and logo once the final invoice is paid.

"Small businesses don't want four suppliers and four invoices," Ridder says. "They want one person who answers the phone and fixes it. Publishing the prices just saves everyone a week of emails."

The studio is one arm of a small Invercargill group Ridder set up in March this year. The other is KiwiBudget Limited, the company behind a personal budgeting app that connects, read-only, to New Zealand bank accounts through the open-banking provider Akahu, builds a budget around the user's pay cycle and tracks bills, savings goals and KiwiSaver. It launches on iOS and Android on 16 November at $1.50 a month.

The idea came from the supermarket floor. Ridder told The Southland Times in September that working in supermarkets, and watching people put items back or walk out without paying, convinced him that families on middling and lower incomes needed a simpler way to see what was coming out of their account before payday. A price tracker for grocery staples is planned as a later feature.

He has talked about the app on RNZ's Nine to Noon, More FM and Hokonui, and it has been covered by the Otago Daily Times, The Southland Times and The Press.

Ridder works from Invercargill and intends to keep it that way.

"Everything I build runs on the same infrastructure whether the client is in Gore or Auckland, so there's no reason to be anywhere else," he says. "Being in Southland means I can sit across the table from a local builder or a cafe owner, and the out-of-town work happens on a video call. Nobody has ever asked where the server is."

He is part of a small but visible group of younger Southlanders starting businesses here rather than leaving for them. Southland's population has grown more slowly than most regions over the past decade, and local business groups have spent years talking about how to keep school-leavers in the province.

Asked what comes next, Ridder points to the app launch first, then the studio.

"November is KiwiBudget. After that the goal for the studio is boring and deliberate: more Southland businesses with a website that actually brings in work, and a care plan so they never have to think about it again."

Bryder Studios is at studios.bryder.co.nz and on 03 218 3249. KiwiBudget is at kiwibudget.nz.