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Lake Holdings, LLC

Lake Holdings

A holding company operating businesses in western North Carolina. Begun January 13, 2007, and operating since.

2007 2026

The founder's operating record begins in 2002. Read the prologue.

19 years

Lake Holdings in continuous operation, begun January 13, 2007 U

Maddison Lake, first person

44 companies

Companies founded or operated across the full record since 2002 I

Count across company records, the archived web and the company property list captured March 4, 2025

$237M+

Revenue generated across brands to date U

Consolidated internal operating records, 2014–2023

The record

Why forty-four brands is one business

Every business in this portfolio was built on the same asset. Not a product, but a proprietary research capability about a specific population of physical assets or people, verified by hand, and monetised from whichever side of the transaction paid better.


Cinema Preservation Group knew which theatres held which projection equipment and where the owners were. Storage Unit Auction List knew when fifty thousand storage facilities were holding auctions. Boost Liquidation knew what a pallet of Amazon returns was actually worth, item by item. Arrest Record Marketing knew who had been arrested yesterday.

The operating doctrine

Operating today

4 operating of 44 brands

What the company runs now


Print on demand manufacturing behind category-defining storefront domains, a vertically integrated direct mail stack, and the services built to run them.

  • Archer Group
    Archer Group logo

    Archer Group

    A direct mail marketing business under Lake Holdings, at archer.group

    Active archer.group
  • Moderra.ai
    Moderra.ai logo

    Moderra.ai

    Guardrails, human review and audit-ready evidence for AI products

    Active moderra.ai
  • Person.ai (2025)
    Person.ai (2025) logo

    Person.ai (2025)

    Executive briefing tool: dozens of data sources turned into a daily briefing

    Active person.ai
  • CanvasPrints.com
    CanvasPrints.com logo

    CanvasPrints.com

    Hand stretched canvas wall decor, manufactured in the United States, rebuilding after the Hurricane Helene facility flood

    Rebuilding canvasprints.com

Twenty four years

Eight chapters


Recovered marks

18 of 24 recovered marks

A design record, 2002 to 2026


A selection of brand identities recovered from the company's own media library and from third party web archives. Several are print resolution originals; the full set is in the archive.

Every recovered mark

News & milestones

Significant events, dated and sourced


Key moments in the record, from the founding through the most recent expansion and its aftermath.

Independently confirmed

An $11.5 million expansion and 96 new jobs, recorded by the county, not by us.


Announced in December 2021 and completed in 2023 at 145 Cane Creek Industrial Park Drive in Fletcher. The figure comes from the Henderson County Partnership for Economic Development's own December 14, 2021 announcementV, which is why it leads this section: it is the one number here that a third party put its own name to.

The following year Hurricane Helene put roughly forty inches of water through that building, in a location outside the flood plain. What happened next is the most instructive part of the record.

$11.5 million

Taxable investment announced in Henderson County in December 2021, completed in 2023 V

Independently confirmed Henderson County Partnership for Economic Development, 2022 Annual Report

96 new jobs

Announced with the same expansion, in Henderson County in December 2021 V

Independently confirmed Henderson County Partnership for Economic Development, 2022 Annual Report

The moments the record hangs on

  1. L.E.D Moonlit Productions founded V

    Maddison Lake started a video production company with two friends at sixteen, and by his own later account it grew from the living room to having secretaries at his high school taking business calls for him. An August 2002 capture of the site advertises weddings, insurance videos, commercials, corporate films, infomercials, training videos and animation, which is not a hobby page but a small production house pitching corporate work.

  2. Lake Holdings begins as a sole proprietorship U

    Maddison Lake dates the start of the business to January 13, 2007, in his own words, and describes running it as a solo entrepreneurship until 2010, when the operation had grown enough to require a registered entity. The date rests on his own statement rather than a state filing; the North Carolina register shows no Lake Holdings entity formed in 2007. Everything else on this timeline traces back to this start.

  3. The company registers its LLC V

    Storage Unit Auction List, LLC was formed with the North Carolina Secretary of State on May 19, 2010, under SOSID 1149663. The founder describes the years before this filing as a solo entrepreneurship that had grown enough to require a registered entity. This is the legal person that would be renamed Intelifact, LLC in 2011 and Lake Holdings, LLC in 2016, and it is the entity that trades today.

  4. Storage Unit Auction List launches V

    Maddison Lake launched the service on New Year's Day with colleagues from Cinema Preservation Group. Its legal entity, Storage Unit Auction List, LLC, had been formed the previous May, and that entity, renamed twice, is the company that trades today as Lake Holdings, LLC. Storage auctions had just become a national television phenomenon, and the information about when and where they actually happened was fragmented, unreliable and valuable.

  5. Boost Liquidation, LLC is formed V

    The entity was created well after the business itself began operating. It would file three documents in its entire legal existence and be dissolved sixteen months later.

  6. Boost Liquidation, LLC voluntarily dissolved V

    The dissolution was voluntary rather than administrative, which means the entity was closed properly and paid for rather than abandoned to unfiled reports. In sixteen months of legal life it filed exactly three documents: articles of organization, one annual report and articles of dissolution.

  7. Lake Holdings contracts with Lob U

    Lake Holdings signed a contract with Lob, a direct mail infrastructure provider, in 2017. The relationship established a programmatic capability for producing and delivering physical mail at scale, and it is the root of the direct mail technical competence the group later formalized in the Archer and Everest stack.

  8. CanvasPrints.com is founded V

    Maddison Lake founded a print on demand canvas business whose work is hand-stretched and hand-finished in the United States, and it is the first venture in the portfolio that manufactures rather than intermediates. After fifteen years of businesses defended by an information advantage, this is a business defended by making something.

  9. Archer Group founded U

    Maddison Lake founded Archer Group in 2020, building one of the first LLM and AI-based foundational website listing models of its kind. The group also developed state-of-the-art malware detection and labor poster compliance products. By March 2025 the company's own public record describes Archer Group's positioning as a direct response and direct mail marketing firm, reflecting an expansion and repositioning from its founding work.

  10. $11.5 million expansion and 96 new jobs V

    On December 14, 2021 the Henderson County Partnership for Economic Development announced the expansion: $550,000 in real property and $11 million in business personal property over 24 months, totaling $11.5 million in new taxable investment, with 96 jobs to be added by 2025 to a baseline of 63 employees. It is the largest capital commitment in the company's history and the only figure of that scale here confirmed by a third party rather than self-reported.

  11. Three facilities consolidated into one U

    Before the buildout, the company ran three locations in Henderson County, with trucks shuttling between them on three shifts a day. In 2021 the company identified 145 Cane Creek Industrial Park Drive as its permanent home and undertook a twelve-month renovation and buildout, which the founder describes as an upgrade from a class C manufacturer to a class A operation. The county-verified investment figure for the expansion is $11.5 million in new taxable investment.

  12. Cane Creek production facility opens V

    The expansion was completed in 2023 into a production facility at 145 Cane Creek Industrial Park Drive in Fletcher. The county's December 2021 announcement set the baseline at 63 employees, with 96 additional roles to be added by 2025 as the expansion matured.

  13. Hurricane Helene V

    Helene struck western North Carolina on September 27, 2024, and the main facility took roughly forty inches of water in a building that was not in a flood plain, by the account of the auction house that later handled the equipment. The majority of the equipment suffered water damage, and the former assets of Epic Print were sold at auction in October 2025 after a year of onsite repair work.

  14. The workforce is laid off within 24 hours U

    In the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Helene, the company laid off its workforce within twenty-four hours of the storm. The company's own fundraiser, opened days later, describes 60 full-time employees needing immediate assistance; the founder attests the total workforce before the storm exceeded 100 across three shifts, most full time and some part time. The founder's own home was destroyed in the same event, and the layoffs were the most acute single human consequence of the flood.

  15. A public fundraiser for employee income V

    Within days of the storm, Maddison Lake launched a public fundraiser whose stated purpose was to cover income for employees rather than company losses. It is the first public act of the recovery, and it was taken on behalf of the workforce before anything was done about the balance sheet.

  16. Person.ai announced V

    Maddison Lake announced Person.ai with a public waitlist and an alpha, describing it explicitly as part of the pivot away from Epic Print after Hurricane Helene, built by a team that had been heads-down for the past eight months. Roughly a year after the flood, the next venture required no building.

  17. A fighting company in the AI era U

    Nearly two years after Hurricane Helene, the company is rebuilding operations without having filed for bankruptcy. The founder describes the moment as comparable to 2009 and 2010, when the business survived the financial crisis and came into its next wave. The AI era, in his framing, gives the company more recovery power than it has ever held: products that require no building and no flood plain, and a leverage ratio unavailable in any previous era.

  18. Fifteen years of the same instrument C

    From fifty thousand storage facilities verified by telephone in 2011 to AI output reviewed, scored and logged with a reason a regulator can read in 2026. The industries share nothing. The instrument is identical: a graded check that shows its work, sold to whichever side of the transaction valued it more.

The operator

Maddison Lake


He founded his first company at sixteen. L.E.D Moonlit Productions was a video production business started with two friends, and it grew, in his own account, from the living room to having secretaries at his high school taking business calls for him.

He dates the start of Lake Holdings to January 13, 2007, a solo entrepreneurship by his own account until the LLC was registered in 2010. On New Year's Day 2011, in the mother-in-law apartment that served as Cinema Preservation Group's office, he and several colleagues launched Storage Unit Auction List, which grew within two years to list over ten thousand auctions a month and became the financial engine underwriting everything else.

The Boost Liquidation period was the portfolio's most ambitious and most expensive lesson. He sought a million dollars to industrialise the item-level resale of Amazon returns, did not obtain it, and closed the entity voluntarily and properly rather than abandoning it. What he did next is the part the record supports most strongly: he converted the failed operation's knowledge into products.

The full biography

Latest news

Announcements


  1. The AI era, and why it is the same business

    The presses are gone and the method survived them: the instrument the company has sold since 2011 is unchanged.

  2. Person.ai: what the record shows

    The 2025 executive briefing product is well documented; what the person.ai domain serves today is a different product, and the connection is unresolved.

  3. CanvasPrints.com sets a reopening target

    The print operation maintains a public landing page and a stated intention to reopen before the fourth quarter of 2026.

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