The operator who learned to build.
I'm Keith Soyka — founder and Product/AI Systems Lead of GestaltView. Before I wrote software, I spent 22+ years running frontline operations: P&L, labor, inventory, multi-site transitions, teams up to 75. That experience is the reason my systems work starts with the workflow instead of the tool.
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The booth years
IMAX projectionist — trained by IMAX's own technicians
One of few people nationally fully proficient on IMAX systems. Other cinemas sent teams to me for three-day crash courses. The audience sees light; the operator sees the chain of small decisions that makes the light possible — that's where the systems lens started.
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2002 – 2024
Operations leadership across retail
Two decades of people-and-process leadership: managing teams, customer-facing workflows, inventory, labor, financial accountability. Including Rogers Orchards (Retail Sales & Bakery Operations) and Big Lots (Furniture Manager).
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May 5, 2025
Founded GestaltView
Necessity, never intention — it began as a way to organize complex documentation, and the rigor that required became the product's ethical foundation. Sixteen months of solo, unfunded building: a personal intelligence runtime designed to preserve context without turning guesses into facts.
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2025
Pepperdine Most Fundable Companies — quarterfinalist
Top 100 of 2,300 (top ~4%). Solo founder, no funding, no pitch-deck industrial complex — just a working system and the receipts.
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Now
Building & advising
GestaltView keeps evolving, and I take on advisory, build, operations, and design engagements with teams that want AI sized to their actual constraints. Operator-led, evidence-first, handoff-documented.
Four commitments, zero theater.
Evidence before narrative
Every claim gets a label: verified, staged, or planned. Interpretation is marked as interpretation. If the receipts don't exist yet, I say so.
Process before tool
The smallest system that earns its keep beats the most impressive system you could build. Technology follows the constraint.
Handoff, not dependency
Useful systems leave you more capable. Documentation, operating guidance, known limitations, and a walkthrough — part of done, not an add-on.
Correction is a feature
The user can always correct, reject, and redirect. A system that can't be corrected can't be trusted — in software or in an engagement.
I say Digital Intelligence (DI) rather than "AI" when I mean non-human thinking partners — "artificial" implies fake and a hierarchy I don't build for. You'll see DI across my work; formal role titles keep the industry term.
Take the paper version.
Two formats, same receipts — pick the one that fits the reader.