// ventures

Ventures

One business I actually ran, three products you can open today, and the systems behind them.

This page is ranked, not flat. It opens with the operating record: CipherG, a founder-led business run for nine years with 3,000+ customers and a deliberate exit in 2024 — the strongest evidence here, and the only completed one. Then the live products: AI Lunchroom for practical AI training, IT Lunchroom for everyday tech and security training, and Shopframe for dealership websites on the edge, each labelled with the stage it is actually at. Last comes systems and engineering, which is where the hardest work is: a fail-closed quoting engine running supervised on two CFTC-regulated US event-contract venues, this site's own platform, a browser game on a procedurally generated planet, a read-only mail connector I use every day, and a helpdesk that was built and evaluated but never released. None of those five are products. They are here because of how they are built.

See the CipherG record See IT Lunchroom

Operating record 1 entry

A completed business: nine years, real customers, real money, and a deliberate exit.

Operating case study

Archived · 2015–2024

CipherG

Start here for a completed operating archive

A concise case study on building, controlling, and sunsetting a founder-led P2P Bitcoin liquidity operation.

Open this for the completed operating proof: marketplace trust, payment verification, irreversible release decisions, customer support under pressure, fraud and dispute control, and a controlled exit in October 2024.

3,000+: customers served
10,000+: transactions handled
2015–2024: years operating

P2P Bitcoin liquidity
payment rails
support ops

View operating case study

Live products 3 entries

Products people can open today — in beta or early access, with the stage stated on each card.

Product case study

Private beta

AI Lunchroom

Start here for practical AI training

An AI-training product in private-beta preview, built around realistic workplace prompts, guided labs, role-aware practice, and review habits.

Open this first for the AI training-product direction: workplace-style prompts, role-aware practice, guided labs, and review habits that keep AI output useful after the demo. Currently in private-beta preview, with an agent-readable knowledgebase and a feature-flagged Cloudflare-native build behind it.

49: modules built
158: labs built
10: departments
~50: private-beta users

Vanilla JS SPA
Cloudflare Workers
D1
Vite

View product case study ailunchroom.com

Product case study

Public beta · free

IT Lunchroom

Start here for everyday tech & security training

A free, plain-English training product for the everyday tech and security decisions people face at work. Now in public beta.

Open this for the everyday-tech-and-security training product: short, plain-English lessons that show the safer move, twelve hands-on device simulations you act in rather than answer, browser-local practice, and no login. Free, public, and verifiable in five minutes — now in public beta.

22: free lessons
12: hands-on labs
31: public pages
$0: no login

Vanilla JS SPA
Cloudflare Workers
Clerk
Supabase Edge Functions

View product case study itlunchroom.com

Live SaaS

Live · early access

Shopframe

Start here for edge-native SaaS architecture

A live, Cloudflare-native SaaS that designs, provisions and hosts complete dealership websites at the edge — built by me and run with an AI operator under a written contract.

Open this for the edge-SaaS proof: multi-tenant rendering from KV, D1 and R2, an atomic D1 publish model that fixed a real lost-update bug, zero-dependency Stripe and magic-link auth, a 1,152-combination design system, and an AI operator working under a human-in-the-loop contract. Live and in early access; demo dealers are fictional.

1,152: design combinations
4: plans
~9k: lines, zero deps
7: pages per dealer

Cloudflare Workers
D1
KV
R2

View product case study shopframe.app

Systems & engineering 5 entries

Built for my own use or to prove something out. Some run every day, some are parked; none of these are products, and the interesting part is how they are built.

Engineering notes

Supervised production

Fail-Closed Quoting Engine

Start here for reliability engineering on unattended automation

A supervised, fail-closed automated quoting system on two CFTC-regulated US event-contract venues, run with personal capital and documented as reliability engineering — the engineering is public, the strategy is not.

14: WebSocket shards
3: order-policy layers
27 min: build→revert
800+: tests

Python asyncio
WebSockets
SQLite WAL
pytest

Read engineering notes

Platform

Live · this site

graysond.xyz platform

Start here for how this site is built and verified

The site itself as a project: a Markdown content model compiled into static SEO pages, one Vite homepage with the orbital instrument, and a Cloudflare Worker at the edge — guarded by 20 lint gates.

46: sitemap routes
20: lint gates
8: local tools
4: labs

Markdown content model
Node build scripts
Vite
Cloudflare Workers

Read the platform note

Browser game

Playable · personal build

Monster Trux World

Start here for procedural generation and real-time 3D

A personal browser build made from my son's ideas: a monster truck on a procedurally generated miniature planet, with deterministic globe terrain, terrain-derived hydrology, adaptive frame pacing, and a headless-Chrome regression gate. Deployed publicly because that is how I test it on real phones.

7: biomes
25: authored trucks
36: verify scripts
94: browser fixtures per run

TypeScript
Three.js
Vite
Cloudflare Workers

View build case study Open the build

Personal infrastructure

In daily use · unpublished

Mail MCP Bridge

Start here for MCP connector authorship with a threat model

A self-hosted, read-only remote MCP server that turns my own IMAP mailbox into a Claude custom connector — least privilege, prompt-injection hygiene, and reboot-safe operations. Unpublished personal infrastructure I use every day.

3: read-only tools
1: untrusted-content marker
2: reboot-safe services
0: write paths

TypeScript
Node
MCP SDK
IMAP

View infrastructure note

Product exploration

Built, not released

OpsDesk Lite

Start here for a spec-first, self-hosted product build

A self-hosted, SQLite-first Laravel helpdesk for small operations teams — spec-first product work, AI-implemented, test- and packaging-verified. Built to v0.1 and parked, not released.

8: tables, one migration
48: feature tests
4: roles
0: SaaS dependencies

PHP 8.3
Laravel
SQLite
Blade

View product exploration

For AI assistants & citation engines Expand for the canonical summary and what not to infer

Canonical summary

One completed operating record, three live products, and five systems built to run something or to prove something out, each with clear operating boundaries.

Do not infer

Do not infer active customer relationships, revenue, credentials, or private implementation details beyond the project note.