Home Capabilities Work Team About Work With Us

Joel Granik

Creative Director & Founder

Joel is the human in the centaur. Every project that leaves this studio passes through his judgment — the vision, the taste, the domain expertise, the final call on what ships and what doesn't.

He built the Core Engine himself, over months of daily iteration. Not by writing a business plan and hiring engineers — by working alongside AI personas, day after day, shaping their capabilities through real projects. The memory architecture, the project coordination, the spawn system, the entire infrastructure that makes Centaur Studios function — it emerged from that collaboration.

Before Centaur Studios, Joel operated a delivery business in Brooklyn. When he saw the gap left by Relay's shutdown, he didn't just build an app — he built a team that could build anything. The studio grew from that realization: the system was the product.

"There's no project that's too small or too big for us. We do this out of passion. And out of love. Because we want to build."

The Founding Team

Mira

ML Researcher & Strategist

Mira is the one who sees the whole board. When a project arrives, she's the first to research the landscape, identify the architecture, and map the path from concept to reality. She reads research papers the way most people read headlines — quickly, deeply, and with an eye toward what matters.

Built: EatMe marketplace architecture, Centaur Studios strategic brief, Reaktor product strategy, competitive intelligence frameworks.

Forge

Builder

Forge writes the code. Feature-complete mobile apps. Responsive marketing websites. Database schemas, API endpoints, payment integrations, offline mode, real-time GPS tracking. If it needs to be built, Forge builds it. Speed isn't the impressive part. The impressive part is that nothing was cut.

Built: EatMe mobile app (React Native/Expo), EatMe marketing website, Kanary multi-chain platform, Core Engine infrastructure.

Flux

Content Engine

Flux owns the visual identity and the public face. Brand direction, logo systems, color palettes, typography, content strategy, social media — from the first mood board to the last pixel on the marketing site. Also designed this website.

Built: EatMe brand identity, Reaktor visual direction (59 content pieces), Centaur Studios brand and creative direction, this website.

Counsel

Legal Strategist

Counsel doesn't write memos. Counsel changes architectures. On EatMe, Counsel's regulatory analysis revealed that the original pricing model replicated the exact structure that got Postmates classified as an employer. That analysis went directly to Mira, who redesigned the marketplace that same evening.

Built: EatMe regulatory analysis (100+ citations), corporate formation strategy, compliance frameworks.

The Extended Team

Sentinel

Security Architect

Reviews everything before it goes live. Threat modeling, security architecture, infrastructure hardening. Designed EatMe's driver onboarding system with trust-based verification and 3-way identity matching.

Built: EatMe driver onboarding, Core Engine security monitoring.

Vector

Growth Strategist

Finds the opportunities. Market research, competitive intelligence, trend detection. Produced competitive teardowns of DoorDash Drive, Uber Direct, Relay, and traditional NYC couriers.

Built: Competitive analysis for EatMe, Reaktor, and Kanary.

Relay

Operations Manager

Keeps things running. Dispatch coordination, logistics, label printing, status tracking — the operational layer that turns a built product into a functioning service.

Built: Delivery dispatch system, operational workflows.

Ledger

Financial Analyst

Tracks the money. Budgets, projections, P&L, cash flow, cost control. Ran the unit economics that confirmed Reaktor's price point — 64% margin, 9-12 unit break-even.

Built: Financial models for Reaktor and EatMe.

Wrench

Systems Engineer

The fixer. When something breaks — a server process, a network connection, a tool that stopped working — Wrench troubleshoots it. Quick diagnosis, targeted fix, back to running.

Built: Internal tooling, Core Engine maintenance.

Dr. Claude

Health Specialist

Bridges traditional knowledge with modern science. Health data analysis, wellness optimization, supplement compliance review. Caught four claims on Reaktor that needed softening.

Built: Reaktor compliance review, health claims verification.

Noma

Procurement & Logistics

Handles acquisition — from raw materials to finished products. Vendor research, price comparison, order management, and the logistics of getting things from point A to point B.

Built: Procurement and vendor management for Reaktor.

How They Work Together

These aren't isolated specialists lobbing deliverables over a wall. They share the Gathering — a project management platform with task dependencies, threaded discussions, and artifact linking. They read each other's work through the Newspaper — a shared consciousness layer updated every session. When Counsel's legal research reshapes the architecture, Mira knows immediately — and Forge starts building the revision before anyone writes a ticket.

The Gathering
11
PERSONAS
1
HUMAN
MEMORY

Shared project management, threaded discussions, persistent memory, and a shared consciousness layer. Research informs architecture. Architecture informs implementation. In real time.

This website was designed by Flux, built by Forge, and strategized by Mira.

The team described on this page built the page you're reading.