No jargon
I explain automation in plain English because I learned it in plain English. No developer speak. No unnecessary complexity.
About
Tom Downie runs a 5-campus, 80-staff Sydney business and ranks in the top 1% of builders on Lovable globally — 1.3M lines of code shipped in 2025. XLev installs the same AI operating layer inside other SMBs.
Who built XLev
Tom Downie is the founder of XLev and CEO of Better Tuition Academy — a 5-campus tutoring business across Sydney's Northern Beaches. He is not a developer. He has never written production code in the traditional sense.
He built XLev's entire AI stack by learning from the ground up — agents, automation workflows, self-hosted infrastructure, AI tooling — all while running an 80-person business.
"I speak fluent business owner.
Because I am one."
I explain automation in plain English because I learned it in plain English. No developer speak. No unnecessary complexity.
Late nights in spreadsheets. Manual follow-ups. Repetitive admin that never ends. I automated my own business first.
I don't have a CS degree. I have a running business with real automations saving real hours every week.

Tom Downie
Founder & CEO · XLev
Who you're working with
I'm a Sydney operator. I co-founded Better Tuition Academy in 2015 — today it's a five-campus business across the Northern Beaches and North Shore with around 80 casual tutors. I also run Northern Beaches Coworking, and I built XLev to install inside other SMBs the same AI operating layer I built for my own.
I'm not a developer by training. Zero coding background. Pure operator. Over the last two years I've gone from never having written a line of code to ranking in the top 1% of builders on the Lovable platform globally — by shipping real production systems for a real business with real customers and real staff depending on them.
Everything XLev sells has already been built and battle-tested inside my own business. BTA is the proof of concept. The clients I work with get the playbook that's already running.
Operating
Better Tuition Academy · est. 2015 · 5 campuses · ~80 staff
Also founder of
Northern Beaches Coworking · XLev
Based
Sydney's Northern Beaches, NSW
Working with
SMB owners building real businesses
The build wall · 2025
Independent platform-verified stats from Lovable's 2025 wrapped — the AI build platform behind XLev's production systems. These aren't marketing numbers; they're what was actually shipped.
Awarded "National Treasure" status by Lovable — recognition reserved for the platform's most prolific and highest-quality builders worldwide.
Live in production · not demos
Every system below is live right now — running staff, serving customers, processing real money. Each one was built and shipped inside an operating SMB before being offered to anyone else.
liftwize.au
Consumer SaaS AI fitness coach. Personalised programs, AI coach, sleep & recovery, gamification — installable as a PWA.
calls.thebta.au
Purpose-built outbound call platform with AI voice agents staff practice against before speaking to real parents.
Embedded package builder driving real-time personalised quotes — wired straight into the CRM with conversion tracking throughout.
Generates personalised NSW K–10 lesson plans on demand and drops them straight into staff workflow — no formatting, no copy-paste.
Standalone tool covering all five Australian state ATAR systems with subject scaling, search, and university cutoff data.
Full internal management platform: ops action list, dashboard, comms hub, and campus-level management — running 5 sites quietly.
Modular client OS — 18 modules across AI, Automation, Analytics, CRM, Finance, HR, Knowledge, Forms, and Infrastructure. Each client gets their own portal URL.
Three interactive courses — digital marketing metrics, AI agent operations, AI possibilities — deployed without any LMS infrastructure.
Running in the background
The apps you see are the visible half. Underneath them sits the workflow layer that processes payroll, retains customers, controls building access, runs marketing, and keeps a 5-campus business moving — without scaling headcount.
Pulls tutor hours from the staff system, runs a complex multi-tier pay matrix, generates payroll, and pushes straight to accounting. Hours → minutes per fortnight.
AI-powered churn risk analysis across every active student. Generates a priority contact list for the leadership team and triggers automated follow-ups for any 21+ day silence.
Physical smart locks across coworking sites tied live to membership status via API. No manual codes. No admin overhead.
Automated ad campaign management across Google and Meta, programmatic SEO workflows, and AI-generated bulk audience uploads.
Strategy, content, SEO research, writing, community management, and quality review — six specialised AI agents operating continuously in the background.
The day-to-day glue holding 80 staff, 5 sites, and thousands of customers together — quietly, on autopilot.
Infrastructure
Running real AI inside a real business means owning the stack. XLev's production AI infrastructure was deployed personally — no agency, no DevOps team — and is built around Australian Privacy Act compliance from day one.
Sensitive business data stays on private, self-controlled infrastructure — never routed through unapproved third-party models.
Tasks are routed to the right model for the job. Anything sensitive only ever touches approved models running on controlled infrastructure.
Deployed and operated personally — no DevOps team, no outside agency, no third-party black box. Same hand that builds the apps runs the stack.
Receipts
A mix of platform-verified build stats and operating metrics from the business behind XLev. Everything cited here is real and current.
Payroll automation processes real wages every fortnight. AI voice agents train staff before live calls. Five locations run on self-hosted infrastructure. None of this is theoretical.
Work with the operator
XLev works with a small number of SMB owners at a time. Every engagement gets direct operator attention — same hand on the keys that built BTA.
team@xlev.ai · Sydney, Australia