Company31
The founder

The biggest journeys start with one brave decision.

Manuel Re left home very young, with a uniform and a duffel bag. Three careers and three continents later, he builds futures for businesses like yours.

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Manuel Re, founder of Company31
Manuel Re

Best introduced by his son.

When Manuel’s son was asked to write about someone he admires for a school project, he chose his dad. We read it, and realised no copywriter could beat it. So this page borrows his words, and fills in the career details a kid rightly finds boring.

The short version: twenty years governing technology and change for banks, carmakers, newsrooms and charities, now on the side of small and mid-sized business across Australia and New Zealand. PRINCE2 Practitioner. Founder of Company31. Reads every message himself.

Soldier. Builder. Founder. Dad.
Chapter 01

The boy from Casale Monferrato

A small town in Italy’s north: old cathedrals, stone houses, vineyards, and its own biscuit. His father was the chief of police. The family didn’t have much, and he never once felt poor.

Still very young, he won a place at a military cadet school and left home. From then on, home was a barracks and a training ground. He gave everything to it, and it gave him back the habits that still run Company31: turn up early, do the work properly, never quit.

From the school project: “They didn’t have much money. But he always says they had everything that really mattered.”

Chapter 02

The officer

He worked his way up to officer in one of the toughest units of the Italian army, and learned what no classroom teaches: stay calm, decide under pressure, look after your people.

At twenty-four he lost his father, the man the whole town respected. The grief stopped him cold. Then it set him moving: there was a world beyond the uniform, and he meant to see it.

From the school project: “He was building a kind of strength you can’t actually see, the strength on the inside.”

Chapter 03

The builder

A software company took him to America for a short stint. It lasted ten years and ended as Vice President of Product in New York, with newsrooms like The Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times running on platforms his teams delivered.

The work took him to every inhabited continent on Earth. Then one project took him to Sydney, and a party introduced him to the woman who became his wife. It was love at first sight. He never really left.

From the school project: “He thought it would just be another short trip, another place to tick off his list.”

Chapter 04

Home

Sydney gave him a family and a second act: charities that needed enterprise discipline, a stalled transformation portfolio to rescue at the peak body for NSW business, and finally a company of his own.

Company31 is everything he learned, working for you. The army’s calm. The enterprise rigour. The migrant’s work ethic. He lives in Clovelly with his wife and two kids, and he knows exactly how lucky he is.

From the school project: “When you look at everything he’s done, it’s hard not to feel proud of him.”

“Sometimes, home is where life leads you.”

His son wrote that. And sometimes the right adviser is someone who has rebuilt his own life more than once, and knows exactly what change asks of people.

The career, in numbers

The part a kid finds boring.

Twenty years of enterprise delivery leaves a paper trail. These are the numbers boards remember, and the standard every Company31 engagement is held to.

Governed

A$7.5M

Transformation portfolio governed at the peak body for NSW business, reporting to the CEO and Board, leading a team of 21.

Found

A$700K

Annual savings recovered from a stalled platform rollout, by retiring licences nobody was using and finishing the job properly.

Faster

30%

Cut from programme cycle time on a national migration for one of the world’s biggest carmakers. A banking rollout went live six months early.

Delivered for

Names you know. Standards you keep.

From Milan to New York to Sydney: banks, carmakers, the world’s great mastheads, charities and peak bodies. The discipline those names demand is the discipline your business gets.

PRINCE2 Practitioner. President of a NSW charity he helped grow from a household operation into a leading nonprofit. Member of the Australian Computer Society. Two decades on the major enterprise platforms, which is exactly why Company31 recommends none of them by default.

An empty boardroom with a long table and floor to ceiling windows

Talk to the person, not a brochure.

A sentence, a voice note, a paragraph. Manuel reads everything himself, and answers honestly on whether it is a fit.

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