Built by people who got tired of the alternative.
Two-person Iowa company. Founded 2026 to fix a structural problem: small businesses get websites that don’t perform, don’t protect customer data, and don’t actually belong to them. So we built one that does.
Local businesses got
the worst deal.
If you run a restaurant, an auto dealership, a clinic, a service business — your website is almost certainly built on one of three things: a template platform, a WordPress install, or a custom agency build. All three optimize for the same thing — getting a site live quickly using the tools developers already know — and all three force the same compromise.
You can have mobile performance. You can have dynamic localized content. You can have user privacy. Pick two. Most page builders ship with embedded tracking scripts. Most modern CMSes pull data client-side, which destroys Core Web Vitals on mobile. And most custom agency builds get compromised in the last 48 hours of the deadline.
We thought that was worth solving. So we built a framework that doesn’t spy on anyone, doesn’t depend on a vendor’s platform to render, and scores 95-100 on Google’s own tools — every time, every page, every vertical.
Two people.
A framework. An obligation.
Trent Sliefert
30+ years in automotive retail. Built the framework architecture, the LLM orchestration layer, and the integration plumbing. Quit the dealer side in March 2026 to build DARKHORSE full-time.
Jenifer Sliefert
Deep restaurant-operations background. Leads commercialization, the restaurant vertical, and client relationships. Knows what operators actually need from a website because she spent decades on the floor.
Four convictions.
The whole framework comes from these.
- Businesses should own their websites, not rent them. No monthly platform subscription. No vendor lock-in. You keep the domain, the code, the content, and every digital asset from day one.
- Performance is a baseline, not an upsell. If your site loads in 8 seconds, half your visitors are already gone. 95-100 Google PageSpeed is the floor, not a premium tier.
- Privacy is architectural, not a feature toggle. Most page builders ship with embedded trackers. Our framework has no client-side cookies, no tracking tokens, no user databases — by structural property, not by checkbox.
- The data Google verifies beats anything in a logo grid. Anyone can claim performance. Our claim is reproducible in 30 seconds in Google’s own tools, on any URL.
Questions about us.
Answered.
Who built DARKHORSE?
DARKHORSE is Darkhorse Data Solutions LLC, a two-person Iowa company founded in 2026 by Trent Sliefert (founder and CEO, 30+ years in automotive retail) and Jenifer Sliefert (co-founder and VP of Sales, with a long background in restaurant operations). The framework was built over the preceding year with AI-assisted development.
How big is the team?
Two people. Trent handles engineering, framework architecture, and the technical build. Jenifer leads commercialization, restaurant-vertical sales, and the client side. The build process is AI-assisted but human-directed; AI accelerates code and content production, it does not replace the operator judgment behind what gets built and why.
Why did you build a framework instead of using an existing platform?
Existing options force a compromise: template platforms (Wix, Squarespace, Toast) ship with embedded tracking and weak mobile performance; WordPress installs depend on plugins maintained by strangers; custom agency builds get rushed at deadline. None of them deliver mobile performance, structured data depth, and architectural privacy simultaneously. We built the framework specifically to remove that compromise.
Where are you based?
Iowa. Phone is (712) 227-3530. Email is hello@projectdarkhorse.ai. The framework serves clients across the US and is hosted on Vercel.
Skip the deck.
Just talk.
15-minute conversation. No discovery form. No drip sequence. If we’re not the right fit, we’ll tell you who is.