My name is Robert W. Lederhilger III — most people call me Rob.
I grew up in a suburban town in New Jersey, near Paterson. I didn’t grow up with much and my parents divorced when I was young. From early on I learned how to take care of myself. I taught myself how to cook by reading cookbooks so I could eat, and how to figure things out because there often wasn’t anyone else to do it for me.
I was a curious kid. I took things apart to understand how they worked and learned how to put them back together. I was also rebellious — drawn to challenging norms and questioning why things were done the way they were. I became interested in business early, shoveling snow in the winter and selling candy bars and greeting cards door to door to make money.
In the late 1990s, when the internet first became commercially viable, I was drawn to technology. At nineteen, I started an ecommerce business with two friends. We didn’t know what we were doing, but we learned as we went. I taught myself web development and web hosting, and eventually built our own data closet with racks of servers because third-party hosting was unreliable and constantly failing.
That experience shaped much of what followed. I’ve always been interested in making business easier for small businesses, and I’ve spent much of my career building and operating technology systems with that goal in mind.
Over time, I came to see that outcomes are rarely about individuals alone. They are shaped — often quietly — by systems: the rules, incentives, and structures that guide behavior. When systems are designed well, they can enable people. When they are poorly designed, the consequences can be significant.
I’ve seen this across many domains. In technology, automation can be incredibly helpful when it works, but fragile as complexity grows. In agriculture, we rely on a global food system that functions until something breaks — as many people experienced during the pandemic. In business, I’ve learned firsthand that technical systems can function perfectly while business systems fail in ways that carry serious consequences.
I’ve also been impacted by the criminal justice system. That experience changed how I think about accountability, incentives, and the long-term effects systems have not just on individuals, but on families and communities. I’m not writing here to argue or litigate the past. I’m writing from inside the work of responsibility and learning.
Today, my primary focus is being a good husband and father to my two daughters while navigating a season of uncertainty. Alongside that, I’m working on several things that may appear unrelated but are connected by the same underlying questions.
Through SOLUENCY, I continue to build technology systems, including VITAL, an AI-powered “employee” designed to help small businesses handle calls, messages, and scheduling so owners can focus on their actual work. My interest in AI isn’t abstract — it comes from years of working with systems and from personal experience using technology to support cognition after a concussion.
At the same time, my wife and I are laying the groundwork for Restore Creation, a long-term vision for a regenerative farm rooted in stewardship, patience, and restoration. Neither of us grew up planning to become farmers. We felt called to this work over time — through questioning the quality of our food, the complexity of modern life, and what it means to live more closely aligned with the land. What makes this meaningful is that we each felt drawn to it independently, without initially knowing the other was experiencing the same thing. For now, this work is mostly vision, learning, and preparation.
Being impacted by the justice system also led me to think more deeply about what people need in order to rebuild. In 2024, I helped start Kingdom Business Builders, a nonprofit aimed at helping justice-impacted individuals find dignified work or build businesses of their own. It’s still early and modest in scope, but it reflects a conviction that punishment alone does not restore people.
Faith is an anchor in all of this. I trust in God — not because outcomes are guaranteed, but because there are moments when doing the work faithfully is all that’s available. I’ve learned patience, service, and the limits of control. I’m trying to follow God’s plan, even when the path is unclear.
This site is where I write through these questions in public. It’s a place for systems thinking, reflection, and documenting work in progress — across technology, land, justice, and life. I don’t have all the answers, and I’m not writing from a place of arrival.
I’m writing to understand how systems can be built — and rebuilt — in ways that serve people better.