Why EXT? Learn our story

About EXT

Built by green pros for green pros.

Co-founders Ed Hansen, a landscape business owner, and Tom Murphy, a veteran software builder, combined decades of real-world experience to solve the daily challenges contractors face — from chaotic scheduling and paperwork to communication gaps and inefficient routing.

The result is EXT: a simple, powerful platform designed with the people who use it every day. We’re the crew behind your crew — helping you streamline operations, improve communication, and run a more profitable business, without getting in the way of the work.

At EXT, we’re more than a platform — we’re a partner. We listen, iterate, and build in step with real operations, delivering a tool that finally works the way you work.

Ed Hansen built his career on grass, soil, snow, and seasons. As the founder of Hansen Lawn & Gardens in Ottawa, he grew a full-service design, build, maintenance, and snow business — and learned firsthand that what you can’t see, you can’t improve. Spreadsheets, paper forms, communication gaps, and inefficient routing were costing valuable time and money.

Tom Murphy came from the other side: software.
With years of building mobile platforms and apps — including as Director of Consumer Applications at BlackBerry — and later founding Distill Mobile, Tom knew how to design systems that scale and adapt to real-world demands.

Together, they built EXT from the ground up, applying the same practical logic that had powered Ed’s company for years. The foundation came from internal software designed to manage operations, estimates, routing, and more. By 2023, it was clear these tools could help the entire industry — and EXT was born.

From the start, EXT was created with the people who use it every day — not from a boardroom. We worked directly with owners, operations managers, crew leads, and admins to test features in real workflows, refine them in the field, and deliver only what makes work easier and faster. That’s why we call ourselves the “crew behind your crew” — software that acts as an extension of your team so you can simplify, organize, and transform how work gets done.

Since launching in 2023, EXT has quickly become a go-to solution for landscape and snow companies focused on profitability and growth. It streamlines scheduling, improves communication, reduces double-entry, and eliminates surprises between estimates, jobs, and invoices. Industry recognition — including the 2025 Bootstrap SaaS Award and Landscape Ontario’s “Supplier to the Trade” accolade — has followed, but success to us means one thing: crews spending less time talking about software and more time doing great work.