Lewis Byron De La Paz · Independent practice

I build businesses from the system and UX outward.

Operator, technologist and creative director. I design, build, launch and run the whole thing: strategy, operations, artificial intelligence, software and brand.

I like to make things. Whatever needs making.

Operations · AI · Software · Strategy · Design

Showreel Twenty seconds, silent

Independent practice. One operator. End-to-end execution.

  1. 01 Operator One person, accountable for all of it.
  2. 02 Systems Everything connected, nothing handed off.
  3. 03 Output Companies, products, software, brands and books.

What I do.

§ 01 · Do
Four kinds of work · One practice

Usually all four at once, on the same project. Each one points at the work that proves it.

  1. 01

    Build

    Products, software and AI systems.

    From the data model to the interface, shipped and then kept running. Nine products, each designed and engineered end to end.

    EvidenceLastAwarded · miya.life · Mnememory · Futurisca · Counterfirm · Gracekeeps · KindSplit · Kept Plans · Neural Sector Intelligence

    The products
  2. 02

    Operate

    Business systems, workflows and automation.

    The cadence, the controls and the tooling that let a small operation run like a large one, without the overhead of one.

    EvidenceThe BBD tool suite · Twenty-two internal systems

    How the work runs
  3. 03

    Direct

    Brand, design and creative direction.

    The stance a thing takes, and every surface that carries it: identity, type, interface, film and campaign.

    EvidenceIdentities · Lookbook campaigns · This site

    The visual work
  4. 04

    Advise

    Strategy, positioning and economics.

    What a business should be, what it should charge, and what to do first. Advice from someone who has had to build and run it.

    EvidenceBespoke Business Development

    The practice

Currently making.

§ 02 · Now
13 active pieces
The laboratoryProducts I designed, built, launched and run. The proof behind the advice.
№ 01 Ongoing
Federal contracting · The whole contract, start to finish Live

LastAwarded

Everything you need to win and run federal contracts, in one place. One system for the whole of it: find the opportunity, capture it, write and price the bid, win it, run the contract and the agreements under it, track the money with the records ready for an audit, and be ready for the recompete. Twelve public federal feeds, read daily and joined, so one industry code answers six questions at once and every pursuit carries eight facts. For any company that sells to the federal government, from one person to a contracts organization with many teams.

  • 83.2M+awards on record
  • 1,012six-digit industry codes
  • 18months of warning on a recompete
  • 8facts on every pursuit
№ 02 Ongoing
SaaS · Personal operating system Live

miya.life

A personal operating system with a native artificial intelligence assistant, consolidating seventy-eight life systems into one dashboard. Built for the web and packaged for the Microsoft Store. Hundreds of shipped rounds in its first months, and always being updated.

  • 78life systems
  • Hundreds of shipped rounds
  • 3ways to install
  • $9to $19 a month
№ 03 Ongoing
Language learning company Live

Mnememory

A language learning company built on mnemonics rather than drill. Every word gets a keyword picture and a hook you can actually see, gender is carried in the image on one fixed rule, and the scheduling underneath is a modern forgetting-curve model that decides when each word comes back. Ten languages at launch, built learner-first with the classroom layer in the schema from the start: classes, assignments, a gradebook, and a per-word view of what a class is losing. Both the product and the site around it are mine.

  • 10languages at launch
  • 8review styles
  • 5kinds of assignment
  • Learner and classroom in one schema
№ 04 Ongoing
Research company · A neural network of all human knowledge Active

Neural Sector Intelligence

A research company with one mission: the immortalisation of a person through neural link transfer. Under it sits a map of the whole of human knowledge, close to two billion nodes across 113 realms, crowned by continuity science, that researches ten fronts on its own every day and publishes what it finds. Searchable, with the reasoning path drawn before the answer.

  • 1.99Bnodes in the map
  • 3,927domains mapped
  • 10fronts, one goal
  • A report every day
№ 05 Ongoing
World simulator · A computational laboratory for the future Live

Futurisca

Explore the futures that could emerge from the decisions we make today. A world simulator over 238 countries and territories and 54,000 states, counties, cities and towns, with 169 ways to read the map. Change one thing and watch what follows: seven coupled blocks step a year at a time and return 250 futures per run, as ranges with the arithmetic under each one. Free, no signup, in the browser.

  • 238countries and territories
  • 169ways to read the world
  • 54,000places on the map
  • 250futures per run
№ 06 Ongoing
Simulation · A digital twin of your company Live

Counterfirm

A digital twin of your company, so you can test the decision before you make it. Upload a P&L and a customer list and it builds the model: fifteen kinds of agent, twelve of them on every twin, each with its own objectives, and 57 levers to pull. A standard run is 400 simulations. Back comes a range and a brief that says the answer, when it happens, what caused it, what to watch, and every assumption it used.

  • 400simulations in a run
  • 15kinds of agent
  • 57levers to pull
  • 0.1seconds for a year
№ 07 Ongoing
Household platform · The operating system for your home Live

Kinnomy

A household runs on seven apps and one person's memory: the group chat has the plan, the calendar has half of it, a payment app has the money, a notes app has the wifi password. Kinnomy is one private place for all of it, in six layers that answer the six questions every home asks: who is here, what is happening, what does it cost, what needs doing, what does the house know, and what is going on right now. Tell it a plan the way you would text it and it drafts the event, a task for each person, the shopping list, the expected costs and a thread. Ask it what your home knows and the answer comes back with the record it came from.

  • 6layers across the household
  • 15modules in the app
  • 9automations doing the follow-up
  • 30days of Household+ to start
№ 08 Ongoing
Care platform · A plan and a person for the hardest days Live

Gracekeeps

Nobody plans for the week after a funeral, the first month of caring for a parent, or the morning they go back to work. Five products in one secure app for those seasons: after a death, planning ahead, caring for someone, time away from work, and a tool for the advisor sitting beside them. Every plan is the right tasks in the right order, explained in plain words, and a trained care specialist is on it, answering in chat and joining the calls that get complicated.

  • 5products, one for each season
  • 1secure app for all of them
  • 4kinds of leave supported
  • 24hours to a first reply, as a goal
№ 09 Ongoing
Legal technology · The operating system for divorce Live

KindSplit

Divorce is an emotional event wrapped in an enormous administrative machine: forms, deadlines, disclosures, formulas, titles and accounts. Counsel is an artificial intelligence divorce lawyer that answers from your own state's rules and your own case, shows every source it used, drafts the documents and says plainly when a licensed lawyer is worth the hour. Fifty-one guides, one for every state and the District of Columbia, checked against the official court sources. Twelve documents drafted from the case. Nine kinds of professional available by the hour, with no retainers.

  • 51state and DC guides
  • 12documents drafted from a case
  • 9kinds of professional by the hour
  • 0retainers
№ 10 Ongoing
Social platform · Plans, kept Live

Kept Plans

Every plan starts in a group chat and most of them end there. Kept Plans turns the plan into a commitment: a time, a place, a group and a ten dollar hold that is released the moment you check in. Never a charge for showing up. Around that sit the parts that make a plan worth keeping: clubs for the things that repeat, a shared album afterwards, and a Kept rate, the share of plans you actually kept, which earns you smaller holds. Nineteen groups and a hundred and sixty activities, from coffee to camping. Open in six hundred and eighty-five cities across the United States, each one covering the towns around it.

  • 160activities in 19 groups
  • 10dollar hold, released on check-in
  • 10%platform fee, two dollar minimum
  • 685cities across the US
Also runningThis site, and one project still in confidence.
№ 11 Ongoing
Personal site Shipping

lewisdelapaz.com

This site. A multi-page portfolio of what I make, published as a single self-contained system so I can edit every section from one admin panel. Built in the open.

  • 14pages
  • 1settings screen
  • 2themes, both measured to AA
  • Updated weekly
№ 12 Ongoing · In confidence
Confidential Confidential

Private project

Something new, under mutual confidentiality with the people involved. I will say more when the project itself is public.

  • Under mutual confidentiality
The practiceAnd where the method becomes a client service.
№ 13 Ongoing
Consulting practice Operating

Bespoke Business Development

A curated consulting practice across strategy, brand, build, growth, and legal. Sixteen capabilities in five categories, run on a suite of purpose-built tools: a diagnostic, a plan builder, a client portal, a proposal builder, a finance back office. Value-based, no rigid packages.

  • 16named capabilities
  • 5categories
  • 267services mapped
  • 22internal systems

Live status for all of it

The common thread.

§ 03 · Thread
Laboratory · Practice · Output

I build the thing, and the system that makes the thing work.

  1. 01

    The laboratory

    LastAwarded, miya.life, Mnememory, Futurisca, Counterfirm, Kinnomy, Gracekeeps, KindSplit, Kept Plans and the Neural Sector Intelligence are where the method gets tested. I advise on what I have already had to build and run myself.

    The products
  2. 02

    The practice

    Bespoke Business Development is where the method becomes a client service: a diagnostic, a plan with a live financial model, the build, and a retainer to run it.

    The practice
  3. 03

    The output

    Three published books, films, art and brand identities. The same practice, carried out in other materials.

    The writing

What do you need?

§ 05 · Ask
Three honest answers

Most sites make you work out for yourself whether they are any use to you. Pick the one that is true, and it points you at the three places worth your time.

Then read the record, not the adjectives.

I have run operations, built the software, art-directed the output and carried the commercial risk, usually at the same time and usually alone. What that buys you is somebody who has already made the trade-offs your team argues about, and who will tell you which one is cheaper before the meeting rather than after it.

How I work.

§ 06 · Principles
Four of nine principles
I

Operations is the craft.

The best products are legible operating systems. If a thing cannot be run cleanly by one person, it was not designed enough.

II

Artificial intelligence is a material, not a strategy.

It is a substrate I shape, alongside code and copy and cabinetry. It gets a chair at the table, not the head of it.

III

Design is not a finish.

It is the argument the work makes without speaking. It arrives at the first sketch, not the last polish.

V

Ship every night.

The work grows by evidence, not intention. What shipped this week is the honest measure of a practice.

Read all nine

Further in.

§ 07 · Further
For the curious · Not required reading

Everything above this line is the work. Below it is the rest: a title sequence, a research mission, and the record of everything shipped so far. Take it or leave it.

LEWIS BYRON DE LA PAZ

A practice of one

Whatever needs making.

Scroll. The whole of it runs at the speed of your own hand.

Presented in
Nine parts
Crew
One pair of hands
Rated
Open to the public

The mission.

§ 08 · Mission
One question · Ten fronts

Neural Sector Intelligence · The mission

A person is a pattern, and a pattern can be kept. The Neural Sector Intelligence is a research company with a single mission: the immortalisation of a human being through neural link transfer and transmission, reading, preserving, moving and re-instantiating the pattern that makes a person. It stands on a map of the whole of human knowledge, close to two billion nodes, organised the way a mind is and crowned by continuity science, that researches ten fronts of the mission every day and publishes what it finds.

  1. I Connectome Mapping the wiring of a mind at the resolution that matters.
  2. II Interface The link between neurons and machines, in both directions.
  3. III Emulation Running a mind faithfully on a different substrate.
  4. IV Identity What has to survive the transfer for it to still be you.
  5. V Preservation Keeping the substrate intact until it can be read.
  6. VI Longevity Buying the time the other fronts need.
  7. VII Substrate What a mind could run on, and what moving it would cost.
  8. VIII Ethics Who decides, who consents, and who is protected.
  9. IX Machine mind What minds that were never biological teach about the ones that were.
  10. X Cortical circuits How the cortex computes, circuit by circuit.
Read the mission ↗ A research cycle and a report, every day

What is claimed: a research program and a daily record. What is not claimed: a result.

Continue.

§ 10 · Traverse
Where to next

LewisDe La Paz

Independent practice

Colophon
TypeFraunces · Instrument Serif · Inter Tight · JetBrains Mono
PaletteCream · Obsidian · Oxblood · Saffron
BuiltBy hand, in the open
RuntimeShared hosting · No third-party trackers
MotionLenis smooth scroll · WebGL atmosphere · Reduced-motion honored