Founder

Jaeden Doody

Founder of StillAwake Media · Creator · Developer · Problem Solver

Jaeden Doody is a creator and developer based in Montreal, Quebec, and the founder of StillAwake Media — the company through which he builds software, digital products, and the business systems underneath them.

He did not start in software. He started in mechanics, and that is still the most useful thing about how he works.

Work With StillAwake →See the Work →Connect on LinkedIn →Version française →

Who is Jaeden Doody?

Jaeden Doody is a creator and developer from Montreal, Quebec, and the founder of StillAwake Media, a studio that builds software, websites, ecommerce systems, and AI infrastructure. He came to technology from a background in mechanics, and he builds and operates his own ventures — including ZylX, a business intelligence system for AI; BankDeMark, a connected financial platform; and Blackwater Aquatics Canada, a live ecommerce business — which is where the expertise behind StillAwake's client work comes from firsthand.

Background

From mechanics to software.

Before Jaeden was building software systems, he was working on mechanical ones. Mechanics enforces a discipline that is hard to fake: you cannot reliably fix something without understanding how it actually works. A part either moves or it does not. The engine either runs or it does not. There is no version of the job where you talk your way past a fault.

So you learn a sequence. When something fails, you trace it. You inspect the components. You work out which one is actually responsible, as opposed to which one is easiest to blame. Then you repair it, or you decide the design was wrong and rebuild it.

That sequence turned out to transfer almost completely. The objects changed; the thinking did not. Mechanical systems became software systems. Troubleshooting became debugging. Components became services, databases, APIs, and workflows. Rebuilding an assembly became product development.

It is also why a lot of standard business advice does not land well with him. A recommendation with no mechanism behind it is just a guess with confidence attached — and in mechanics, guessing confidently is how you replace the wrong part twice.

Approach

Building is how I learn.

Jaeden does not treat learning and building as separate activities. The projects are the study — each one is a practical environment for understanding customers, software, operations, finance, marketing, search, automation, AI, data, and infrastructure at the same time, under real conditions where being wrong has consequences.

The result is a loop rather than a straight line: find a problem, investigate what is really causing it, build something, operate it long enough to see where it strains, discover the next problem that was hiding underneath the first one, and improve the system.

He has been known to create problems for himself deliberately — taking on a build he does not yet know how to finish, because having to finish it is what forces the learning. It is a habit of curiosity more than anything else.

Problem→Investigate→Build→Operate→New problem→Improve

The Hours Nobody Sees

A shipped product hides most of the work.

The visible part of a build is the launch. The real part is the night before it, and the fifty nights before that. An illustrative sequence — not literal timestamps, but a night any builder will recognize:

11:47 PMOne bug left before this can ship.
12:38 AMThe bug isn't a bug. The architecture is wrong.
1:26 AMArchitecture rewritten. Half the tests now fail — good, they were testing the wrong thing.
2:14 AMTests pass. Deploy.
2:17 AMWatching it run, notices what it could do next.
2:18 AMOpens a new file.

That last line is the important one. The name StillAwake has come to represent exactly this — not sleep deprivation as a badge of honor, but the state of being genuinely unable to leave a problem alone once the next solution is visible. The finished systems on this page are made of hundreds of those small, invisible loops: build, break, trace, learn, rebuild.

Companies & Products

What I've built.

Four things, with different relationships to each other. They are not all the same kind of venture, and it is worth being precise about which is which.

Founded by Jaeden Doody · you are here

StillAwake Media

The company Jaeden founded, and the umbrella the rest of the work runs through. StillAwake Media builds software, intelligent systems, and digital infrastructure for modern businesses — identifying a real operational problem, understanding the system producing it, then building a practical solution. It exists because he kept running into those problems while operating businesses and got tired of stitching together tools that were not built for the job.

More about StillAwake Media →

StillAwake Media product · created by Jaeden Doody

ZYLX.ai

The Business Brain for AI

A StillAwake Media product, created by Jaeden. ZylX connects a business's systems once, builds persistent context from them, and makes that context available to authorized AI assistants through MCP — so an assistant answers with real business knowledge instead of guesses. It is the clearest example of the pattern behind everything else here — the problem was real, it was hit repeatedly while operating other businesses, and the fix became a product.

zylx.ai →

Founded by Jaeden Doody · separate organization

BankDeMark

Connected financial management platform

BankDeMark connects personal and business financial records, transactions, invoices, and financial intelligence through its Command and Invoice products. BankDeMark runs as its own organization rather than as a StillAwake Media product — Jaeden founded and builds it, but the two are separate entities.

bankdemark.com →

Founded and operated by Jaeden Doody · separate business

Blackwater Aquatics Canada

Canadian aquatics ecommerce business

A Canadian ecommerce business selling live fish food, bettas, shrimp, and aquarium livestock — run day to day, not just built and handed off. This one matters for a specific reason: it is a real ecommerce business with real customers, inventory, shipping, and search competition, operated day to day. The experience behind StillAwake's ecommerce, SEO, and automation work is firsthand rather than theoretical. It is a separate business, not a StillAwake Media property.

blackwateraquatics.ca →

Built, Not Claimed

The work, with numbers attached.

Adjectives are cheap; measurements are not. These four client builds are documented in full case studies where every number carries its source and date.

TravelDesign By Lisa

An 834-URL trilingual travel platform — custom CMS, client portal, CRM, and an automated eSIM store — taken from zero organic clicks to page-1 rankings, covered by 412 tests.

Read the case study →

BankDeMark

A financial platform whose money math is verified against 26 golden test cases, holding average position 1.3 in search with a measured 100/100/100 Lighthouse score.

Read the case study →

NAVTRL / Stalkr

A real-time location app — 10,947 lines of TypeScript, sub-3-second sync, hold-to-activate SOS — taken from first commit to TestFlight-ready in 24 days.

Read the case study →

Blackwater Aquatics

An education-led Shopify store where 64 content pages power 17 products: a page-1 product page at 8.6% CTR and a repeat-customer rate up from 5.9% to 27.8%.

Read the case study →

Technical Range

The stack, and what it's for.

Every technology below is in production in the projects on this page — none of it is résumé decoration.

Web platforms

TypeScript, React and Next.js — the foundation of StillAwake's sites and platforms, including this one. Used for server-rendered, SEO-sound systems rather than single-page demos.

Mobile

React Native with Expo — one codebase shipping iOS and Android, proven by Stalkr's real-time location engine.

Data & security

Supabase and PostgreSQL with row-level security on every table — including location data and financial records, where a missing policy is not a detail.

Payments & commerce

Stripe for subscriptions, checkout and reconciliation; Shopify and Liquid for ecommerce, operated firsthand through Blackwater Aquatics.

AI systems

AI model integration with engineered guardrails — ZylX connects business systems to AI assistants through the Model Context Protocol, built so assistants answer from real data instead of guessing.

Search & measurement

Structured data, entity graphs, hreflang architecture, Search Console and Lighthouse — treated as engineering, with published, dated measurements.

Areas of Work

What I work on.

Areas Jaeden builds and researches in. Some of these he has worked in for years; others are current and actively being learned.

Artificial intelligenceAI agentsModel Context ProtocolBusiness intelligenceSaaSSoftware developmentBusiness systemsAutomationFinancial technologyEcommerceSearch and SEOData infrastructureWebsites and digital productsProduct development

Principles

How I approach problems.

Understand the system first

Patching a symptom before you understand what produced it usually just moves the failure somewhere less visible.

Question assumptions

“That’s how it’s done” is a description of a habit, not an explanation. It is worth asking who decided that and whether the reason still holds.

Build to learn

A working system tells you things theory does not. Most of what I know about software, search, and operations came from running something, not reading about it.

Follow the problem deeper

The obvious problem is often a symptom. The interesting work is one or two layers underneath it.

Rebuild when it is warranted

Improving a fundamentally broken system forever costs more than rebuilding it properly once. Knowing which situation you are in matters.

Stay curious

Every system has something in it worth understanding, including the ones that look boring from outside.

In His Own Words

“I've always wanted to know how things actually work. Mechanics gave me somewhere to start, and it was honest work in one specific way: if something was broken, you couldn't talk your way around it. You had to go find the problem.”

“That followed me into software and business. These days instead of pulling apart an engine I'm pulling apart workflows, APIs, financial systems, search problems, and AI infrastructure. Same instinct, different objects.”

“I like building things. What I like more is understanding what I've built and why it works — because that's the part that transfers to the next thing.”

— Jaeden Doody, Founder, StillAwake Media

Currently Exploring

What I'm building now.

The current center of gravity is ZylX and the question underneath it: how do you give an AI assistant real, verified business context — so it answers from what is actually true about a company instead of improvising? That pulls in AI agents, the Model Context Protocol, business intelligence, and the guardrail engineering that keeps an assistant honest.

Alongside it: StillAwake's async-first client system — an acquisition, onboarding and delivery pipeline that runs in English and French without mandatory sales calls — and the ongoing research into AI-search visibility (AEO) that StillAwake publishes and applies for clients.

Last updated: August 12, 2026

Writing & Research

Written by Jaeden Doody.

Articles Jaeden authored in The StillAwake Times. Authorship on this site is literal — pieces he wrote carry his name; everything else is credited to the studio.

AI Integration vs AI Automation vs Custom AI: What You're Actually Buying

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AI Website Redesign: What AI Does Well and Where It Fails

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How Canadian SEO Companies Actually Differ (A Comparison Framework)

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The Five Google Search Console Reports That Change a Decision

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Intelligent Document Processing, Explained Honestly

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SEO Consultant vs Agency vs Doing It Yourself

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Shopify Partner vs Expert vs Freelancer: What the Badges Actually Mean

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Shopify Theme Store Requirements: What Actually Gets Themes Rejected

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Web Development Companies Compared: Agency, Studio, Offshore, Freelance

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Website Builders vs Hiring Someone: The Honest Math

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Website Maintenance: What Actually Breaks, and What It Costs

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Website Redesign Companies: What to Look For Before You Sign

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What a Website Quote Should Include (And How to Audit One You Already Have)

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When You Actually Outgrow Shopify (And When It's Just Your Theme)

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Which Business Processes Are Worth Automating (And Which Are Traps)

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What Custom Software Development Actually Costs in Canada

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Why Isn't My Website Ranking on Google? A Diagnosis Order

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Can ChatGPT Recommend My Business? How AI Assistants Choose

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Core Web Vitals: What They Are and How to Actually Fix Them

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How Much Does SEO Cost in Canada? (Real Numbers, 2026)

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Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) and AEO: The Complete Guide

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How Google Actually Crawls and Understands Websites

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Why Internal Linking Is One of the Most Powerful SEO Strategies

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Google Business Profile Optimization: Complete Guide for Businesses

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How to Rank Higher on Google Maps for Local Businesses

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Shopify SEO: How Ecommerce Brands Actually Grow Organically

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What Is Technical SEO? (Complete Business Guide)

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Why Custom-Coded Websites Outperform Templates

Read article →

Why Local SEO Matters More Than Ever in 2026

Read article →

Questions

Common questions.

Who is Jaeden Doody?

Jaeden Doody is a creator and developer based in Montreal, Quebec, and the founder of StillAwake Media. He builds software, digital products, and business systems, and came to technology from a background in mechanics.

Who founded StillAwake Media?

StillAwake Media was founded by Jaeden Doody. It is the company through which he develops software, intelligent systems, and digital infrastructure for modern businesses.

Who created ZylX, and is it part of StillAwake Media?

ZylX is a StillAwake Media product, created by Jaeden Doody. It is a business intelligence system — a Business Brain for AI — that connects a company's systems and makes that context available to authorized AI assistants through MCP.

What is BankDeMark?

BankDeMark is a connected financial management platform founded by Jaeden Doody. It links personal and business financial records, transactions, invoices, and financial intelligence through its Command and Invoice products. It operates as its own organization rather than as a StillAwake Media product.

What is Jaeden's relationship to Blackwater Aquatics?

Jaeden founded and operates Blackwater Aquatics Canada, an ecommerce business selling live fish food, bettas, shrimp, and aquarium livestock. It is a separate business from StillAwake Media, and it is where a lot of his ecommerce, SEO, fulfillment, and operations experience comes from firsthand.

What is Jaeden Doody's professional background?

He started in mechanics, working on physical systems, and moved into software, websites, AI, automation, and business systems. The diagnostic approach carried over: understand the system, trace the failure to its actual cause, then repair or rebuild it.

Keep exploring.

See the work, read the strategy, or start a project with StillAwake Media.

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