Non-Tech SMBs with Authority
Small and medium-sized businesses that are not tech-native, still make decisions with real authority, and need a partner who can move without multi-layer approval theater.
The Origin
Named for the move that changed the board
In March 2016, the world watched the impossible unfold on a Go board in Seoul. After three straight defeats at the hands of DeepMind's AlphaGo, legendary player Lee Sedol faced elimination in a best-of-five match that had already been called for the machine. Then came move 78 — a central wedge of startling originality and low statistical probability. Commentators called it divine. AlphaGo's evaluation collapsed; it played poorly thereafter and resigned.
Level 78 Consulting was named for that exact moment. We exist to engineer equivalent breakthroughs for organizations: the improbable, context-shifting moves that reframe entire competitive landscapes. We do not pit human against machine. We create the conditions where their interaction produces results that were previously off the board.
Move 37 begat move 78, begat a new way of seeing the game.
Move 37 showed that AI could produce genuinely creative, previously unseen strategies. Move 78 showed that humans, when pressed by such systems, could respond with moves of even greater improbability and impact. Level 78 operates in that lineage — building the partnerships, tools, and interventions that allow leaders and their AI systems to co-evolve toward outcomes neither would have discovered alone.
The operational origin is more recent. In early 2026, a Silicon Valley PR firm asked for help understanding how AI could raise the capability of their team and operations — not merely accelerate existing work or follow the hype. The consultation produced unexpected strategic value: a concrete path to capabilities the firm had not previously imagined. That work led directly to the formation of Level 78 Consulting, LLC in May 2026.
The same pattern of finding friction and collapsing cycle times appears across nearly thirty years of prior work in semiconductor manufacturing and design automation — environments where multi-day or multi-week processes were reduced to minutes and throughput gains exceeded fifty percent. The tools change. The underlying judgment does not.