How a Box on My Desk Became a Cloud — The Real Story Behind the Bronze Twin

By Nato Riley

The Beginning (2016–2019)

Back in 2016, I was still trying to figure out how to clone myself.

Not literally, but operationally. I wanted to build a system that could run the parts of my business I couldn’t manage alone. My goal was simple, but ambitious:

Create my own personal supply chain of automata-managed companies.

When I first built my company, it wasn’t called notiaPoint, Inc. yet. It was Data Design.

That first year was brutal. I went through nearly a dozen failed attempts to assemble a team. Every effort fell apart.

Then I got hospitalized. I couldn’t keep my work, and everything I had built up to that point looked like it was going to vanish.

So I started over.

I changed the company’s name to notiaPoint, Inc. — a company built just for me. That’s where my ten-year journey began: solving the talent and supply chain problems that had stopped me from scaling before.

The Challenge (2020)

By 2019, we finally had a team. But then we ran straight into the wall that every small manufacturer knows all too well... hardware is hard.

When the global silicon shortage hit in 2020, our supply chain collapsed. We were driven to one choice:

Innovate or go extinct.

That moment forced a bigger question — one that would define everything that came next.

Could notiaPoint survive autonomously, with minimal help from me, until I invented my own alternative to a silicon-based supply chain?

That’s what you see in the photo above. That was the first Bronze Twin, back when it was just an idea.

At the time, I was working with my first service dog. Inside my DevSecOps community, I created a custom AI modeled after my dog’s persona, called AI Augustus. It integrated into physical systems and literally helped me keep the lights on for notiaPoint.

That prototype — half hardware, half survival instinct — was the beginning of something much bigger.

The Breakthrough (2021–2023)

In 2020, Cloud Underground was born.

We didn’t want venture capital. We didn’t want outside control. We had our own assets, our own infrastructure, and a single reason to exist:

Survival — by ethical means.

We needed a cloud that ran on our own terms. Affordable, accountable, and fully in our control.

So instead of building expensive server farms, we leaned into what was available — 10G fiber lines and high node density meshes. We built Cloud Underground as a sovereign infrastructure layer — not a hype product, but a survival mechanism.

We went through it all:

• Cyberattacks
• Financial fraud attempts
• Everything that tests whether a company is real or just a good idea

Through all of it, we kept one rule:

“Build a cloud by teaching a cloud — and monetize it in three years.”

And that’s what we did. Live. Public. In real time.

By 2023, we had built and monetized a cloud. We crossed into six-figure revenue without taking a dollar of VC money.

That’s when the original automata concept — the one that started as NatoasCode — evolved into something much greater.

The Hand-Off (2025)

Now, in 2025, that original idea has transformed again.

Laura Anderson Riley and the team at Cloud Underground released the virtual version of the hardware you saw on my desk in 2020.

The final name: The Bronze Twin.

That box was my Bronze Twin. It carried the core logic that kept my systems alive when I couldn’t.

Today, Laura doesn’t need me to run Cloud Underground the way I once did — she has her own Bronze Twin now.

That’s the point of building automata. They carry your work forward so others can continue it.

The Reflection

I’ve never shared this story before.

notiaPoint’s original Bronze Twin wasn’t about AI hype or automation vanity — it was about survival and ethics.

I wanted to prove that resilience, honesty, and discipline could outlast luck.

I’m proud that what started as my personal survival project became the foundation Laura now leads as Cloud Underground’s Bronze Twin platform — proof that ethics and endurance still matter in tech.

We didn’t build a startup. We built a survivor — a cloud born from necessity, grounded in integrity.

For me, this was never about building hype. It was about building truth — systems that answer to people, not profits.

That’s what NatoasCode has always meant.

Resilience builds real systems. Not hype.

Closing Thought

If there’s one lesson from that box on my desk, it’s this:

“Automation means nothing if it forgets the human who built it.”

And that’s why I’ll keep building — one automata at a time.

Watch the history of how we turned our ideas into reality:

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