Unit economics and funding · 01 GTM strategy

Every figure here is an internal estimate or hypothesis, never for sellers or partners.

Gross margin is a range. The commercial model (v6, 7 October 2026) puts running cost at 1,000 seats at £25,000 to £78,000 a month, still open as at 14 October. Against about £107,000 of revenue at full fill, the implied gross margin is about 27% to 77%. The model's claimed cost to serve of £8 to £10 a user does not reconcile with that range; July working numbers said £30 to £40 all in. A £69 Spark seat runs between a loss of about 13% and a margin of about 64%. Narrowing it is the most valuable open commercial question: split fixed from per-seat cost and move costs paid personally (a LinkedIn invoice of about £10,000 to £11,000, development tools) onto the company's books.

Payback target (recommendation). Under 12 months on gross margin for any channel that costs cash, using 50% margin as the planning hypothesis. Worked illustration: a six-seat Spark account (£414 a month, about £207 gross profit) justifies up to about £2,500 to win; the same account at Standard about £9,000. Founder-led channels cost time: track hours per qualified conversation.

Funding the planned hires. Permanent developer: £65,000 a year (about £5,400 a month before on-costs), agreed 24 August, with Neil funding it until profitable. Future team (developer, DevOps, product manager): about £20,000 a month, unfunded. Head of sales target: £70,000 to £80,000, unfunded. Customer success cover: no figure on record. The base case (about £5,200 a month by 31 December) roughly equals the developer's salary alone; funding £20,000 a month at 50% margin needs about £40,000 of monthly revenue, about 580 Spark seats or 160 at Standard. The founding cohort cannot fund the hiring plan inside 12 months on the base case.

Is a raise needed? The notes carry two unreconciled raise sizes (£2m to £5m verbally; £500k to £1m pre-seed then £1.5m to £3m seed in strategy documents). A competitive Series A sits at $2M to $5M ARR with net revenue retention of 110% to 120% (investor expectation), beyond any 12-month case here. Recommendation: plan six months on no raise; narrow the margin range first; decide by 31 March 2027 on three milestones (two weekly cohorts at 40% activation, a majority of paid seats meeting the posting habit in days 60 to 90, five Standard-price wins). If they do not hold, a raise would price the company on founding-band economics.