I was the operator before I started building tools for them.
Two decades inside operations and finance teams — first as an analyst, then a systems lead, eventually running back-office for organizations where the gap between “what the spreadsheet says” and “what the team is actually doing” was the real bottleneck. Lightbard is what I built to close that gap for other operators.
Lior Bendat
Founder, Lightbard
The pattern I kept seeing — across real-estate operators, multi-family property managers, construction subs, and back-office teams at growing SMBs — was the same. A business that ran fine at one scale started leaking at the next. Spreadsheets multiplied. Zapier chains grew brittle. Tribal knowledge replaced systems. The fix wasn’t another tool. The fix was someone who could think like an operator and build like an engineer, in the same person.
That’s what Lightbard does. I build the internal AI tools, custom workflows, and operations systems that real-estate operators and back-office teams need but can’t easily buy — because the off-the-shelf software wasn’t designed for how their business actually runs. I work end-to-end: process mapping, data architecture, custom application development, integrations with the stack you already have, training and support after launch.
The “build like an engineer” half is earned, not borrowed. I spent six years shipping production SaaS — engineering manager at Knurld on voice-authentication microservices (Java + Python, Spark, Kafka, Akka), software engineer at Teachscape on a platform processing 300,000+ educator evaluations a day, and senior engineer at Telegraph Hill Software in San Francisco, where the Pinterest marketing application I helped build became Pinterest’s #1 third-party advertising partner. Before SF, I was founder and lead engineer at Lush Bounty in NYC, building the Rails/Mongo backend for an iPhone app from scratch.
The “think like an operator” half came after that. I moved into operations, financial systems, and business analysis roles — supporting enterprise platforms through requirements gathering, data workflow design, multi-team coordination, and the unglamorous work of making fragmented systems agree with each other. That decade-plus inside ops and finance is why I’m comfortable owning a project from “we don’t even know what we have right now” through to “your team uses the app every day.”
Background
- MBA, Finance — USC Marshall School of Business
- B.S. Operations & Information Management — The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
- Operating as LB3 Ventures LLC; engagements are NDA-friendly
Selected engineering experience
- Engineering Manager — Knurld (voice authentication SaaS, Redwood City) · Java + Python microservices on Spark / Kafka / Akka; managed five engineers
- Senior Software Engineer — Telegraph Hill Software (SF) · Pinterest marketing application that became Pinterest’s #1 third-party advertising partner; distributed-energy pricing APIs (Python, Celery, Flask, RabbitMQ)
- Software Engineer — Teachscape (EdTech SaaS, SF) · batch-processing system for 300,000+ educator evaluations daily; scoring engine that tripled services efficiency; cross-platform analytics dashboard
- Founder & Lead Engineer — Lush Bounty (NYC) · nightlife discovery iPhone app, Rails / Sinatra / Mongo backend, public API
What I bring to a project
Not every consultant in this space has the same skills. Here’s what I bring that the typical Zapier freelancer doesn’t.
Operator-first process design
Two decades inside operations and finance teams. I design systems the way operators actually run them — not the way a software vendor thinks they should run.
Real estate & construction native
Property managers, multi-family operators, real-estate investors, specialty contractors. I know the stack — AppFolio, Buildium, Yardi, Procore, QuickBooks — and where it breaks at the seams.
Custom software, not just glue
When Airtable and Zapier can't carry the load, I build real internal tools: AI-powered intake, document-processing agents, ops dashboards. You get software your team owns, not another 12-step Zap.
Data modeling & integration
Relational data design, ETL pipelines, API and webhook integrations between the systems you already use. The plumbing that makes the rest of the stack actually agree with itself.
Finance-literate operations
I read your P&L. I understand cash conversion, margin pressure, owner reporting. Useful when the system you're building has to roll up to financial decisions.
Systems integration & migration
Connecting modern tools to legacy systems and pulling data into one source of truth. Safe migration paths that don't break the business during the transition.
How I work
Most engagements start small and earn the next step. I’d rather diagnose a real problem honestly than sell you a build that doesn’t solve it.
Walk me through one workflow
Free 30-minute teardown. You show me one workflow that’s costing you the most time — tenant maintenance, bid-to-billing, owner reporting, document chaos. I tell you what I’d build and what I wouldn’t, on the call. You keep the recording.
Paid Operations Audit (optional)
If the teardown surfaces enough to warrant a deeper look, I spend a couple of weeks mapping your actual processes, your stack, and where the real leverage is — and deliver a written audit with prioritized recommendations. This is its own deliverable, not a sales pitch dressed up as one.
Build the system
Once we’ve agreed on scope, I build it — the custom app, the integration backbone, the dashboards, whatever the audit pointed to. End-to-end: process design, data model, software, integrations with your existing stack, training and documentation for your team.
Stay close while it matters
After launch I stay engaged through monitoring, support, and the inevitable round of “now that we use it, here’s what we wish it did.” Retainer-based for operations that need ongoing iteration; fixed-term for projects that just need to ship and run.