About Kognova
Kognova began in 2023 with hard documents and real experts. Three years of building across healthcare, legal, real estate, aviation, accessibility, and mission-driven operations distilled into one repeatable way of working.
How we got here
Our work spans commercial and nonprofit settings, especially where human judgment, adoption, and operational trust matter. The method was learned on real documents, real decisions, and real operations, and it carries to any team whose work matters.
Kognova started with expert-guided document intelligence on real healthcare and legal document sets: recurring questions applied across whole contract collections, with scoring, summaries, and answers that cite their sources. Expert review stayed firmly in the loop.
We carried the method into real-estate and organizational decision support, mapping how teams actually research, decide, and operate. The lesson that stuck: the durable problem is translating expert practice and institutional knowledge into explicit, buildable workflow.
Kognova's work expanded into working systems built alongside operating teams. We delivered data services with traceable sources and reviewable outputs, reporting workflows adopted into recurring operations, and coordination systems tested across roles and real handoffs.
Every engagement runs the same way: see the system, build the working version, test it in use. Human review, source provenance, and organizational authority stay visible in the product itself.
The human layer matters as much as the technical one. Trust, judgment, and adoption determine whether a system works in practice.
What we hold constant
People remain accountable for consequential decisions. We make permissions, required review points, source records, and audit history explicit so teams can see how the system reached an output and control what happens next.
We build early because real behavior teaches faster than plans. The people who own the work deserve something they can actually try.
Honest maturity labels, stakeholder testing, and clear boundaries about what a system is and is not yet. We publish what we can stand behind.
Operating leadership
The division of labor is simple. Jack finds the real problem from inside the operation. Ryan turns it into a working system. Together they learn from the people doing the work, build something real, test it in use, and carry what they learn into the next release.
Jack founded Kognova in 2023 and leads the operational side of the work. He works with the people closest to a workflow to uncover the real problem, align stakeholders around what matters, and make the need precise enough to build. He stays hands-on through testing, adoption, and handoff, making sure the result works in practice rather than only in a demo.
Ryan leads architecture and engineering. He turns operational insight into working systems through applied AI, data and API integration, and rapid versions that stakeholders can test early. He combines product judgment with production discipline, building reviewable, maintainable systems designed for real use. He previously co-founded Letter, acquired by Substack.
Extended delivery network
Kognova is principal-led. Jack and Ryan stay directly accountable, supported by a trusted network of engineers, product builders, researchers, and domain specialists who join when the work calls for their depth.
Full-stack software, applied AI, data systems, APIs, integrations, infrastructure, and deployment.
Workflow research, interface design, QA, stakeholder testing, release management, and operational handoff.
Trusted technical and domain collaborators join when an engagement needs context or depth beyond the core team's own.
Advisors
Kognova benefits from seasoned technical and legal perspective. Jack and Ryan lead day-to-day delivery, with Jeremie and Ramon contributing to the company's direction as senior advisors.
Jeremie created Jabber, whose protocols became the foundation of the XMPP messaging standard. WhatsApp, used by more than three billion people, is among the messaging systems descended from that work. Today he leads Sol PBC, building open-source, privacy-respecting tools for personal memory and AI agents. He brings more than 25 years of judgment in open, distributed systems to Kognova's architecture and direction.
Ramon has practiced for more than 30 years as a corporate attorney and legal innovator. As a senior legal advisor, he brings governance, contracting, and risk judgment to how Kognova is built and run.
Kognova is not a law firm. Any legal analysis or contract services are delivered through partnerships with licensed legal professionals under separate engagement.
Start with one consequential workflow