Thesis / Edition 01 / 2026
We build systems
disguised as businesses.
Most companies design experiences. Few operate them. We do both, on purpose.
01 · Where we come from
Ten years as an agency. This is what we saw.
WAOF® was, and still is, a creative and digital partner to operators in retail, health, hospitality and institutions. Seven years working with Farmacias Benavides. Two years with the FDA. National rollouts with Soriana. Across all of them, we kept seeing the same problems.
Brand decisions broke down at the operational level.
Software was built too far from the people using it.
Strategy moved faster than the systems needed to execute it.
Communication, operations and software rarely worked as one.
What we built next stopped looking like agency work.
A decade in pictures
02 · The problem
Modern experience is fragmented.
Physical businesses now depend on data, software, service and AI. But the people responsible for each rarely work from the same system.
- Agencies focus on the message.
- Consultancies focus on the strategy.
- Software is often disconnected from daily operations.
- Operators deal with the gaps between all three.
03 · The approach
We build inside the systems we design.
We launch and run real businesses, physical and digital, so we can find the problems firsthand and build around what actually happens.
Observe
Work inside live operations, not from a brief.
Prototype
Build real systems in real environments with real customers.
Operate
Run them long enough to see what works and what breaks.
Productize
Turn what works into infrastructure others can use.
Lab 01
A retail R&D lab disguised as a coffee shop.
We study retail from behind the counter.
Atlético is a real business with real customers. It is also where we study the parts of modern retail you only understand by operating them: service, payments, screens, throughput and all the small frictions in between.
Everything we learn here becomes infrastructure elsewhere.
We built
- Brand and narrative
- Physical space
- Operational systems
- Point of sale
- Screen experiences
- Service flows
- Digital identity
- Customer behavior loop
We observe
- How service systems behave under load.
- Where physical and digital experiences fall out of sync.
- Which operational problems create friction no one documents.
- Where AI can reduce decisions, not add complexity.
Viral without a campaign.
During its first soft-opening week, Atlético went viral through customer content alone.
That attention also exposed the operation: long lines, a saturated kitchen and a customer experience under pressure. Those are the problems we're working on now.
- @como_comiInstagram+3.3K likesVideo
- @emmyelizondoInstagram+10K viewsReel
- @novoagzzInstagram+5K viewsReel
- @eddierogelioTikTok—Video
+40K organic views in the first week
Lab 02
Infrastructure for physical presence.
Local search infrastructure is broken.
For years, retail chains in Mexico told us the same thing: local-search tools are built for marketers, while the people responsible for hundreds of physical locations need something different.
Mapboard is WAOF®'s first SaaS product. It already supports real multi-location operations and is evolving toward a more agentic way of working.
A physical location changes constantly. Its digital presence should keep up.
- 01
Reputation
Reviews across every location, understood as one signal.
- 02
Visibility
A real-time view of how each location appears to customers.
- 03
Escalation
AI-assisted routing that gets issues to the people who can act.
- 04
Consistency
A measurable view of the local customer experience across the network.
Lab 03
Training infrastructure for high-turnover workforces.
Everyone ships the catalog. Nobody finishes the course.
Frontline teams are hired constantly. They don't sit at desks, turnover is high, and companies still need proof that training happened. Most corporate LMS platforms were not built around that reality.
Neo started inside Soriana in 2023 and now runs at national scale. We're opening it to more operators.
The platform handles distribution and evidence. The content gets people through it. We take care of both.
- of assigned classes completed
- 91.8%
- employees trained in 12 months
- 16,084
- in production, national scale
- 3 yrs
- 01
Assignment
Training assigned at hire based on role. No catalog to browse.
- 02
Content
Five-minute videos made for people working on the floor.
- 03
Evidence
Verifiable training records for operations that need proof.
- 04
Hierarchy
Compliance tracked by operational unit, not just individual users.
08 · Ecosystem
Four companies built under one thesis.
Atlético informs Nara. Years inside client operations led to Mapboard and Neo. What we learn in one business changes what we build in the others.
Client operations
Retail · Health · Institutions
Atlético Café
Our own operation
Mapboard
Local presence
Born from operators running hundreds of locations.
Neo.education
Frontline training
Born inside Soriana's training operation.
Products return to real operations, where we keep testing and improving them.
09 · Proof
Proof of capability.
Client work that tested the same approach at institutional scale, under regulation and in high-pressure environments.
A national LMS, built inside the operation.
A custom corporate LMS with a streaming-style experience, built to centralize operational knowledge across a national retail network. The work eventually became Neo.education (Lab 04).
- LMS
- Scale
- Operations
- registered users since 2023
- 58,146
Narrative architecture for a media moment.
After the Maui fires, the world was looking for answers. We built the platform that had to hold that attention: +1M monthly unique visits, +520% lead generation. Media relations were led by another team.
- Platform
- Conversion
- Narrative
- monthly unique visits
- +1M
Seven years inside a national health network.
From campaigns to communication systems across a national footprint: sustained collaboration on the points of contact where trust in health is built.
- Retail health
- National scale
- Long-term
- years inside the network
- 7
We don't theorize the systems.
We operate inside them.
Let's operate together.
WAOF® Thesis · Edition 01 / 2026