Justin Whitfield
Founder of OpenKey Technologies. Realtor and Team Leader at Whitfield Realtors in Billings, Montana. Husband to Krista Whitfield.
Two businesses, one principle
By day, Justin runs a Montana real estate team with his wife Krista — delivering white-glove service to buyers, sellers, and investors across Billings, Columbus, Laurel, and beyond. In parallel, he runs OpenKey Technologies: a one-person software studio shipping three products end to end.
The common thread between the two: do right by the people who trust you. That's a closing table philosophy and a software philosophy both.
What he's building
- PicVaultPro — a zero-knowledge photo and video vault with client-side encryption, AI tagging over encrypted media, and native apps on web, iOS, and Android.
- LiftUP — a workout tracker built around progressive overload, with a focus on honest data and a minimum of friction.
- CodeCrew — a coordinated team of AI agents (planner, builder, regression checker, QA signoff) that ship software with physical proof instead of vibes.
Justin & Krista
Justin and Krista were married in 2016. Nearly a decade in, they still run everything together — the real estate team, the household, and the long hours behind every new product at OpenKey Technologies.
If Justin is the mad scientist — three half-built products on the bench, a dozen ideas on the whiteboard, and another one incoming at 2am — Krista is the one who keeps the chaos together. She brings the calendar, the follow-through, the client relationships, and the steady hand that turns a pile of ambition into a working business.
Neither half works without the other. That's the whole model.
How he works
Privacy is the default, not a feature. Servers hold opaque blobs, keys never leave the device, and every product assumes the backend could be breached tomorrow. Shipping is continuous. Bug reports get read by the person who wrote the bug.