About · The Founders
Three Latino founders. One mission: better websites for our community.
TopWebLA didn't start in a co-working space in Silicon Beach. It started in East LA — three friends who kept meeting the same small business owner over and over. The tia with a taquería. The barber who ran everything through Instagram DMs. The mechanic whose "website" was a Yelp page from 2019. All losing customers to competitors with better sites. All quoted $8,000–$15,000 by agencies that didn't speak their language. This is the story of why David Schmitd, Alex Castro, and Misael Nava teamed up to fix it.
The origin story
In 2024, David was building websites solo for LA restaurants and coaches. He kept getting the same questions from clients: "Can you also help me with my Google listing?" "Do you know someone who can shoot photos for my menu?" "My brand looks like it was made in 2011 — can you fix that too?"
Alex, an NPC Classic Physique coach running alexcastroteam.com, was one of those clients. When his site launched and his DMs went from 20 daily "how much?" questions to zero, he called David: "Bro — other coaches are asking me who built my site. There's a real market here."
Misael, founder of AMN Producciones in Los Angeles, had spent years running events and video production for Latino businesses across LA and Orange County. He knew every taquería owner from Boyle Heights to Anaheim, every salon manager in the Valley, every mechanic in South Gate. What he kept seeing was worse than bad websites — it was no web presence at all. And the businesses that did have one were paying $200/month to Wix and getting nothing for it.
The three met over tacos at a spot in East LA (yes, really). By the end of dinner they had a whiteboard photo on their phones and a name: TopWebLA. The premise: package what LA's Latino-owned small businesses actually need — bilingual site + Google Business Profile + brand identity + local growth — at a price a family taquería can pay in one shot, not on a $500/month agency retainer forever.
According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, there are more than 5 million Hispanic-owned businesses in the United States, generating nearly $800 billion in annual revenue. The Stanford Latino Entrepreneurship Initiative's 2024 State of Latino Entrepreneurship report found that Latino-owned businesses have grown 44% over the past decade, more than double the rate of non-Latino businesses. And U.S. Census Bureau data shows California is home to the largest concentration of Hispanic-owned employer businesses in the country. Yet less than half of those businesses have a professional website beyond a social media page.
That gap is what TopWebLA exists to close.
5M+
US Hispanic-owned businesses (SBA)
$800B
Annual revenue (SBA)
44%
Latino biz growth 10-yr (Stanford)
48%
LA County Latino population (Census)
Meet the founders
David Schmitd
Co-Founder · Head of Web Strategy
David is the technical spine of TopWebLA. Every site the studio ships passes through his hands for architecture, SEO, and performance. He's built and launched sites for CarpenDiem Wellness, Alex Castro Coach, LaBarra Co., Heatline VIP, and dozens more across LA and OC.
He's bilingual (born to a Colombian mother and German-American father), lives in East LA, and treats every client site like a portfolio piece. Before TopWebLA he freelanced solo — which is where the studio's obsession with "no middlemen, no account managers" comes from.
"If you're paying $8,000 for a website in LA in 2026, you're paying for a project manager, an overseas developer, and an office in Culver City — not for the site. We cut all of that."
Alex Castro
Co-Founder · Head of Brand & Creative
Alex leads brand identity, storytelling, and creative direction. He came in the door as a client — an NPC Classic Physique coach whose DMs were drowning him — and stayed because he saw how many other Latino founders were making the same brand mistakes he had.
His specialty is what he calls "brand that speaks like tu prima, not like an agency." That means copy that sounds human in both English and Spanish, visual identity that respects working-class Latino aesthetics without turning into a stereotype, and story angles that get shared on WhatsApp, not just LinkedIn.
Alex still coaches (alexcastroteam.com) and brings that "results or refund" energy to every brand engagement. If a client's site launches and inquiries don't move, he's the one calling to fix it.
Misael Nava
Co-Founder · Head of Local Growth
Misael runs local business development, Google Business Profile setup, and partnerships. He's the founder of AMN Producciones (amnproduc.com) — an LA-based video and events production company — and knows LA's Latino small business network deeper than anyone else on the team.
When a client's site launches, Misael is the one who sets up their Google Business Profile in both languages, connects them with photographers for menu shoots, and gets them into referral networks with adjacent businesses. He's why a TopWebLA site doesn't just look alive on day one — it actually generates calls, DMs, and walk-ins by week two.
Misael grew up between LA and Mexico, speaks both Englishes (the professional one and the callejero one), and is TopWebLA's single point of contact for anything local: photographers, printers, event partners, community sponsorships.
Why 3 founders and not 1 big agency?
The honest answer: because most small businesses don't need an agency. They need three specific things done well — a site that ranks, a brand that feels like them, and a local growth engine that starts producing calls. If we tried to hire those as employees inside a traditional agency, the overhead would push our starter price from $797 to $3,500 overnight. By staying three founders + a small extended network of trusted collaborators (photographers, translators, developers), we keep the price accessible and the work personal.
You call TopWebLA and the person who picks up is one of us. Not a sales rep. Not an "account executive." Not a chatbot. Whichever founder owns your project — David for strategy and build, Alex for brand and story, Misael for local growth and GBP — is the person who ships your project and answers your text at 8pm.
"I was quoted $12,000 by an agency in Culver City and $600 by a guy on Fiverr. TopWebLA charged me $2,000, delivered in 10 days, and my Google Business Profile ranks #1 for 'taqueria near me' in my zip code. That's the whole story."
— Verónica R., taquería owner, Boyle Heights
How TopWebLA works with you
Regardless of which founder is your primary contact, every TopWebLA engagement follows the same rhythm:
1. Free 15-minute consult. Bilingual. Zero pressure. We tell you honestly whether you need a website right now or whether you should fix your Instagram bio first (yes, we send business away when it's not the right fit — it costs us nothing to be honest).
2. Flat-price proposal in 24 hours. No hourly billing. No scope games. You know what you're paying before you sign anything.
3. Design mockup before code. You approve the look before a single line of HTML gets written. Two rounds of revisions included in every package.
4. Build & launch in 5–14 days. Landing pages in 5 business days. Full sites in 10. Bilingual sites in 14. If we're behind on your project, we tell you before the deadline — not after.
5. Local growth handoff. Site launches, Google Business Profile goes live, tracking configured, you get a 30-minute onboarding call to learn how to update your own content. Then Misael's post-launch check-in at day 14 to see what's converting.
You own everything at the end: the domain, the code, the hosting account, the content. No vendor lock-in. If you ever leave TopWebLA, we hand you the keys with a smile. That policy has cost us maybe three clients in two years — and earned us dozens more through referrals from clients who tell their friends: "they don't hold your site hostage."
"Small businesses are the backbone of the US economy, and digital presence is no longer optional — it's foundational infrastructure. A well-built local website returns 5–10x its cost in the first year through Google-driven organic discovery alone."
— Google Economic Impact Report, 2024 (economicimpact.google)
Our commitments
Bilingual by default. Every strategy call, proposal, and support message is available in English or Spanish. This isn't a checkbox — two of us grew up speaking Spanish at home. It's how we work.
Latino-owned businesses are our focus, not our niche. We serve non-Latino small businesses too (and love them), but we optimize our packages, timelines, and pricing around what a family-owned taquería, salon, mechanic, or clinic actually needs. That's why our starter tier is $797 and not $4,997.
Ownership always. You own the domain, the code, the hosting, the content, the analytics accounts. Everything. Period.
Local means local. All three founders live in the LA / OC area. We meet clients in person when it helps. We know the LA market because we are the LA market.
Ready to work with the team?
Small business in LA or OC?
Bilingual websites from $797. 5-day launch. Direct contact with the founders. No agencies, no middlemen.
Talk to David, Alex or Misael →