About

Architect-led. Senior only. No junior rotations.

PrizeWerkz LLC is a Wyoming-registered consultancy founded on a simple idea: the people who scope the work should be the people doing the work.

Lance Saxerud
Founder

Lance Saxerud

Architect & Systems Engineer. Ten years of production software at Solera, Pedigree Technologies, and Global Overview's Amazon-advertising platform.

Deep stack: Spring Boot, React, AWS, Kubernetes, dbt, OpenSearch, Redshift, Postgres/pgvector, FastAPI, Ollama. Equally comfortable writing the SQL that saves the query, the CloudFormation that provisions the cluster, and the React that ships the UI.

"Engineer. Drummer. Director." — the site says it plainly. Three careers. One discipline: show up, keep time, make it work.

lancesaxerud.com — the long-form portfolio.

The Network

Not one guy. A working network of operators.

PrizeWerkz is architect-led, but never alone. Every engagement pulls from a small, tight circle of senior specialists — each running their own LLC, each chosen because we've shipped together and paged each other at 2am.

Lance Saxerud Founder · Principal Architect
PrizeWerkz LLC · Wyoming

Ten years of production software across Solera, Pedigree Technologies, and Global Overview. Spring Boot, React, AWS, Kubernetes, dbt, OpenSearch, Redshift. Also twenty years on the road as a professional drummer. Runs the build, carries the architecture, keeps time.

John Arneson Growth · Partnerships
Independent LLC · Partner

[TODO — 2-3 sentence bio pending John's approval. Core positioning: marketing, business development, go-to-market for SaaS and services. The person who makes sure we're solving the right customer problem, not just the most interesting one.]

Juan Carlos Ghiringhelli Security · Engineering Advisor
Independent LLC · Partner

[TODO — 2-3 sentence bio pending Juan Carlos's approval. Core positioning: senior security and systems mentorship, CTO-level review, the person on the line when a production call needs a second set of eyes.]

Principles

How we work — and why.

01 / Ownership

You own the work.

Code, designs, runbooks, diagrams — all delivered to your repos and your cloud. No lock-in. No licensed-from-us components you can't replace.

02 / Honesty

We tell you when to stop.

If the fee won't beat the savings — or the rewrite won't beat the rewrite-your-team-can-do — we'll say so. The job is the right outcome, not more billable hours.

03 / Durability

Built for the next person.

Every system we ship is documented so the engineer who comes after us — your engineer, or ours — can extend it without archaeology.

04 / Operators

We've run what we ship.

Our own products (askbrad.app, Baron Mind, Funnelcake) run on the same stacks we recommend. We've paged ourselves at 2am to learn the lessons we pass to clients.

05 / Tight loops

Small PRs, weekly demos.

No six-month deck cycles. No surprise reveals. You see what we ship as we ship it, behind flags, with the ability to call "stop" at any milestone.

06 / Independence

Built for independence, not permission.

This is how we built our own company. It's also how we build yours: on infrastructure you own, with documentation you own, on a bill you can explain.

Company

PrizeWerkz LLC

Legal entity: PrizeWerkz LLC, a Wyoming limited liability company formed March 2026. Registered agent on file. EIN on file.

Practice areas: Web and product design, infrastructure modernization, cloud cost optimization, custom SaaS, AI/RAG systems.

Engagement: Discovery call first, always free. Paid one-week architecture review if we're a fit. Fixed-scope projects or monthly retainer from there.

Geography: Based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Remote-first. Clients across the United States and Europe.

Let's find out if we're a fit.

Thirty minutes on the phone. You'll know by the end whether we can help.

Book a call