Today we’d like to introduce you to Kevin Leyes.
Hi Kevin, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
Honestly, my story starts a long way from any of this. I grew up in González Catán and later Pontevedra, two working-class neighborhoods on the west side of Buenos Aires. My mom taught at a public school and gave private lessons in the afternoons so there would always be a plate of food on the table. My dad drove a bus until he lost the job during a recession, and after that, things got tight fast. My little sister and I shared a room with no beds. We slept on mattresses on the floor.
I started hustling early. By nine I was cutting grass and reselling sneakers I would buy after riding the bus four hours round trip to the other side of the city. Twice a week I made that same kind of trip downtown for a free English course, because something told me the language would be my way out. Around that same age I got obsessed with computers and taught myself to code. I did not have much, but I had time, curiosity, and a chip on my shoulder.
The first real door opened at 17, when the U.S. State Department selected me as a Youth Ambassador. That experience, and later a program in Silicon Valley, planted an idea I still build on today: skill plus systems can beat circumstance. In 2017 I launched my first company, a custom jewelry line serving Argentina’s trap scene, working with artists like Khea and Ecko. Those profits funded what became Leyes Media in 2019, my marketing and PR agency.
In 2021 I moved to Miami and brought everything under one roof: LeyesX. Today LeyesX is the holding company, and our focus has sharpened around AI and cybersecurity, protecting the digital lives and reputations of founders, family offices, and even governments. Leyes Media remains the engine for the storytelling and press side. The two work in tandem: one builds visibility, the other protects it.
I am 26 now, and I will not pretend it has been a straight line. But every part of it traces back to that room with the mattress on the floor, and a promise I made myself to never forget where I came from.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Not even close to smooth. If anyone tells you their road was, they are editing out the hard parts.
The first real struggle was being young and underestimated. I was sitting across from people running corporations and family offices that were older than me, and my age was the first thing they saw. There is no shortcut around that. I had to out-prepare and over-deliver on every single project until the work spoke louder than the number on my ID. For a long time, that meant saying yes to too much and sleeping too little.
The second one cost me more personally. Early on I bet on the wrong people. I poured energy, money, and trust into a team that did not match my level of commitment, and watched it fall apart over misaligned values. That taught me a lesson I now treat as a rule: talent is easy to find, alignment is not. Today I would rather move slower with people who actually believe in the vision than fast with people who are just along for the ride.
There was also the move itself. Relocating to Miami in 2021 meant leaving my mom, my sister, and everything familiar to start over in a country where I had no safety net. The O-1 visa I earned at 21 was a milestone, but behind it were months of proving, documenting, and being told to wait.
The strangest challenge turned out to be the one that built my company. The more visibility I created for clients through Leyes Media, the bigger a target each of them became. A great press hit can also hand a hacker your address, your phone number, your patterns. Watching that play out is exactly why LeyesX leaned hard into AI and cybersecurity. We turned our biggest problem into our actual product.
None of it broke me, but it definitely reshaped me. Every one of those struggles is now baked into how we operate. I think coming from nothing gives you a strange advantage here. When you have already slept on a floor, the fear of losing it all loses a lot of its grip.
Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
LeyesX is the parent company, and Leyes Media is the agency that started it all. They sound like two separate worlds, marketing on one side and cybersecurity on the other, but to me they have always answered the same question: in a digital world, how do you build a reputation and then actually keep it safe?
Leyes Media came first, in 2019. It is a full-service marketing and PR agency, and over the past few years it has grown into something I am genuinely proud of. We have placed clients in outlets most founders only dream about, worked with everyone from high-growth entrepreneurs to billionaire-level portfolios, and collected more than twenty industry awards and nominations along the way. What we are really known for is making people undeniable. We do not chase vanity clips. We build narratives that hold up, rank on Google, and move business.
LeyesX is where the bigger vision lives. It is the holding company, and our sharpest focus right now is AI and cybersecurity. We protect the digital lives of people who have a lot to lose: founders, public figures, family offices, and even government leaders. That means leak detection and takedowns, identity and privacy protection, threat modeling for high-profile individuals, and AI that helps us see risks and narratives before they break. If you are visible, you are a target. We exist to make sure that being seen does not make you vulnerable.
What sets us apart is that we run both sides under one roof. Most agencies make you famous and then walk away. Most cyber firms wait until something has already gone wrong. We do both, on purpose, because we learned the hard way that visibility and security are the same conversation. One builds you up, the other keeps you standing.
Brand wise, what I am most proud of is the trust. Our clients hand us the most sensitive parts of their public and private lives, and that is not something you earn with a logo or a pitch deck. You earn it by delivering, quietly, over and over.
If there is one thing I want your readers to take away, it is this: we are not in the business of hype. We are in the business of building things that last, and protecting them once they do. That mindset traces straight back to where I started, with nothing, learning that the only thing worth building is something nobody can take from you.
Where we are in life is often partly because of others. Who/what else deserves credit for how your story turned out?
So many people, and it starts with my mom, Eliana. She was a public school teacher who gave private lessons in the afternoons just so my sister and I would never go without a meal. She taught me discipline before I had a word for it, and she did it while we had almost nothing. Everything I built sits on the example she set. My little sister, Paloma, deserves credit too. We shared that room with the mattresses on the floor, and being the older brother in that situation gave me a reason to keep pushing that was bigger than myself.
The early clients matter more than people realize. When I was a teenager making custom jewelry, the artists who took a chance on a kid from Buenos Aires, people like Khea and Ecko, gave me my first real proof that I could deliver at a level above where I came from. That confidence carried into everything after.
Then there is my team. I run an international group of people across different countries and time zones, and I do not take that lightly. I learned the hard way that the wrong people can sink you, so the ones who stuck around and actually believe in the vision are the backbone of both Leyes Media and LeyesX. I delegate a lot, which only works because I trust them to operate without me in the room.
I have also been lucky to earn support from people and institutions far bigger than me. Being recognized by the Government of El Salvador, through Ambassador Milena Mayorga, as an International Entrepreneur of Distinction was humbling, and roles like sitting on the Forbes Business Council or judging international awards opened doors and put me around people I learn from constantly.
But if I am honest, the real credit goes to everyone who believed before there was any evidence to believe in. Anyone can support you once you have made it. The ones who back you when you are still sleeping on a floor, those are the ones you never forget.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.leyes.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kevinleyes
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kevinleyes
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinleyes
- Twitter: https://www.x.com/kevinleyes
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@kevinleyes
Image Credits
Kevin Leyes
