About Us
Operators who deploy. Not theorists who advise.
We built this firm because AI is now a CEO-level operational issue, and most companies are deploying it without a system.
Our Founding
Built on an Operator's Insight
Ivan Madrigal founded Synaptic Systems because he recognized a critical gap: Most AI initiatives fail not because the technology is unclear, but because they're not integrated into how organizations actually operate.
In his years building and scaling enterprises from the inside, Ivan saw the pattern clearly: companies were spending millions on AI tools and getting almost nothing back. The technology worked. The deployment didn't.
Ivan is an operator and transformation leader who, as a CEO, scaled a struggling $10M business into a $40M+ vertically integrated manufacturer, 4x revenue and 10x production volume. He authored the Lean Six Sigma program at a Fortune 200 utility, where the Black Belts he coached averaged $1.15M per project, 4.6x the industry benchmark, and he co-led $20M to $1B M&A integrations to 100% of IRR and EBITDA targets.
He has not just studied AI. He has run the transformation himself and put AI on the production floor. AI computer vision he deployed on a fabrication floor in 2025 classifies every action as value-added or non-value-added in real time, and identified a 20 to 30% improvement. That is the difference: the work needs an operator who has carried a P&L and commands AI, in the same head.
The solution was clear: AI transformation requires an operator's credibility, not a consultant's theory. Founder-led advisory work combining operational transformation methodology and Lean Six Sigma discipline. Built specifically for companies serious about AI as an operational transformation, not a technology initiative.
Synaptic Systems was founded on this insight.
Leadership
Founder-Led Advisory
Ivan Madrigal leads the firm as founder and managing principal, bringing operator credibility and deployment discipline to every engagement.
Ivan Madrigal
Founder & Managing Principal
Ivan Madrigal has spent twenty years as an operator across the whole business: Finance, Sales, Accounting, Manufacturing, Quality, Risk, Marketing, and IT. His conviction is simple: technology is not transformation. Transformation has always been a discipline, define, measure, analyze, improve, control, and AI does not replace that method. It compresses the clock on every phase and raises the quality ceiling. As a CEO, he scaled a struggling $10M cabinet distributor into a $40M+ vertically integrated manufacturer (4x revenue, 10x production volume), winning on first-time quality and putting computer vision on the production floor himself. Earlier, he authored the Lean Six Sigma program at a Fortune 200 utility, where the Black Belts he coached averaged $1.15M per project, 4.6x the industry benchmark, and co-led $20M to $1B M&A integrations to 100% of IRR and EBITDA targets. A former tech founder, he is a Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt. The work now is helping CEOs evolve to AI-driven operations in one to three years, and that work is mostly about people: finding the natural orchestrators and integrators already inside the business, augmenting them with AI, and leading the change at the pace of AI. The team that runs your future AI company already works for you.
Key Credentials
- SBTI Certified Lean Sigma Master Black Belt
- Former tech founder (founded, scaled, and lost an IT company)
- Scaled enterprise from $10M to $40M+ through horizontal and vertical integration
- Architected AOM (AI Operations Manager), a 32,000+ line platform, piloted and built for multi-office rollout
- Deployed AI computer vision on manufacturing floors for value stream analysis
- Fortune 500 operations and IT leadership
- P&L ownership, financial leadership, and business turnarounds
- Systems architecture: Dynamics, Business Central, Power BI, ERP implementation
- Software and hardware QA engineering
- M&A integration across $20M to $1B transactions
- Authored the Lean Six Sigma program at a Fortune 200 utility; coached Black Belts to $1.15M average per project (4.6x the SBTI benchmark)
- Recovered $800K in unbilled revenue by building the analytics system internal IT could not ship in three years
- B.B.A. Texas State University
Our Promise