About

I'm David López Simpson — Spanish-American, raised between cultures, and comfortable operating in the in-between. I decommitted from a four-year university path because it wasn't the fastest route to the life I wanted to build. I'd rather take real risk on something that compounds than optimize for a credential.

At 25 I'm in Rome, running a real company with my brother — not playing startup theater. I care about execution, cash flow, and customers who feel the difference when something actually works in the field.

I'm co-founder and COO of Luda AI— an AI automation company focused on US trade businesses (plumbers, roofers, HVAC, and similar). These companies lose revenue every day to missed calls, slow follow-up, and fragmented ops. We ship voice AI receptionists and workflow automation (including tools like Retell and n8n) so owners capture more of the demand they already paid to generate.

The vision isn't "AI for AI's sake." It's reliable systems in the real world — fewer dropped balls, faster booking, cleaner handoffs to the crew — so a local business can compete like a much larger operation without hiring a call center.

My default stack is practical: Next.js, Supabase, Retell for voice, n8n for orchestration, deployed on Vercel with Tailwind and Framer Motion when the UI needs life. I prototype fast, ship to real users, and iterate from what breaks in production — not from slide decks.

I also believe in building in public: documenting the messy middle — Rome, the business, the product bets — so other builders can learn from the same signal I wish I had earlier.

Substack and YouTube aren't a marketing funnel bolted onto the side — they're part of how I think and ship. Writing and video force clarity: if I can't explain it, I probably don't understand it yet. They're also the receipts for anyone following the journey from the outside.