2026-06-15-offering-pricing-fundraise

Decision: offering, pricing & fundraise posture (June 2026 retro)

Set in the 2026-06-15 Vincent + Elliot strategy retro (calendar title “brainstorming names”, but the brand/name choice itself was deferred). Driven by the realisation that the platform alone can’t sustain the company, with the Wani Wani raise as a market signal (wani-wani).

Current truth

• One brand, one narrative. Consolidate everything under a single offering — NOT “ghostteam” and “Agent Discovery” in parallel. Which brand wins is still open (leaning Agent Discovery); the brand/website session was deferred to 2026-06-16.
• No free tier — everyone pays from day one. Sole exception: Dara. A lead-magnet / “primitive view of your category” is allowed, but nothing consequentially useful is given free. Rationale: free = no urgency, no signal, no learning; a paying customer who churns at month-end is the most valuable signal there is.
• Offering shape = full-service “get discovered”, build-then-optimize. If a prospect has no ChatGPT app / Claude connector, we build it; if they have one, we layer performance testing, optimization and discovery on top. The enterprise/optimized tier is the real revenue target, sold as a full-service engagement (our data + knowledge, forward-deployed). This re-opens app-building — but only as the build tier inside the discovery offering, not as a standalone app agency (refines 2026-06-focus-discovery-niche). Tiers now named (Q2 goals doc, 2026-06-16): Visible / Compete / Optimize — one productized, priced offer, plus a wider “wrapper” agent-services offer beyond the Optimize tier. Services priced ~$5k–$10k/engagement (the run-rate model assumes ~10×$5k or 5×$10k services MRR + 30×$79 platform). Pricing reference is 2026-06-app-build-pricing-delivery.
• Refined 2026-06-17: the near-term services story is explicitly two-flow: (1) optimize / improve / monitor for companies that already have an app/connector, and (2) get present for companies that do not — build the MCP server / AI app as the first billable step, then pull them onto Ghostteam’s measurement endpoint/platform. Working packaging lean: ~$10k is the floated simple-client build price for a lighter build, with enterprise still scoped separately by complexity.
• Crystallized 2026-06-22 (offering = a circle, not a line): the full-service offering is the end-to-end agentic-distribution journey, sold as one loop: Strategy (which channels — Claude/ChatGPT/Gemini — given the company profile) → Build (conversion-optimized MCP server, industry templates) → Host/deploy (on manufact, alpic, or own infra) → Submit (registry-optimized across platforms) → Seed first users (incl. cannibalizing their own base for early traction) → Monitor & optimize (full funnel, intent tracking, invocation data, recommendations). Vincent: “it’s a circle, not a line” — Build is the get-present on-ramp, the optimize loop is the recurring engine.
• The outcome we sell = found → used → sold (the differentiator), framed as two discovery layers plus conversion: organic / pre-connection (“Found”: connection-picker visibility, only measurable by our live prompt runs — our built core) and post-connection (“Used”: invocation/tool-call optimization over time — a roadmap gap, see roadmap), plus “Sold” (the full intent→conversion journey). Positioning line: “we nail the agentic customer journey and conversion / show up and sell”; “if you’re not showing up, what’s the point of the channel?” “Discoverability” may be too narrow a word now (ties to the open name decision in 2026-06-16-q2-goals-gtm).
• Buyer personas (agreed 2026-06-22): Cindy (CMO) + Father Smith (product marketer — the primary) sign the contracts and own distribution; Amanda (engineer) is secondary/in-the-room. Proven pattern with current customers: engineers build, marketers own distribution. Messaging targets marketing/product, not engineering leads.
• Sell the vision now via the landing page. We can sell the full-service offering today even before the platform fully supports it (“fake it till you make it”) — a landed full-journey client is deliverable manually via our existing client-delivery process on our proprietary platform. The landing page should sell the channel outcome and FOMO first: show brands competitors already showing up in AI clients, use case studies, and route through a score/domain-entry funnel. Build capability stays lower as the get-present on-ramp, not the headline. Pricing reaffirmed: full-service $100k+, or ~$50k upfront + retainer. The build-margin-on-$10k question is the market-size hinge (good margin → huge market; no margin → very hard) and gates the first hire (architecture not affected; this is offering/GTM). Differentiate from wani-wani and noodle-seed on journey + conversion. Loop framing captured in the product repo draft docs/drafts/ado-loop-architecture.md (a MADE artifact — pointer only).
• ADO score / agent-readiness audit = the sales-pipeline entry point. The audit surfaces gaps; every gap is a billable action. (Score vs a broader “agent-readiness audit” may converge — see ado-score-model.)
• Platform pricing alone cannot sustain the business. At $79/mo per connector, capturing the entire ecosystem is only ~$150K ARR — can’t fund a hire, can’t bootstrap to scale. The path to sustainability is raising, not bootstrapping at platform pricing.
• Fundraise posture: raise on a data-moat narrative (paying customers + proven conversion lift — the Direct Booker case study, see pipeline — + a visible data moat), targeting US smart money (explicitly not Dutch/French/EU ecosystem money). Realistic window: mid-to-late fall or early winter 2026. Raising now is possible but rejected — too early, would lock in a direction before the market is understood. Warm investor/advisor relationship tracking lives in investment-fundraising.
• Capital strategy = advisor-first (refined 2026-06-16). A senior advisor is the critical near-term capital priority (more directly useful than an angel — “to test our thinking”). Ideal profile: Google/SEO-era or AEO background, or OpenAI/Anthropic connections; US/California network preferred over London. Outreach: Sandra (direct), Sanjay’s board contacts, and mapped LinkedIn cold-reach (~5–10% response; advisors often convert to angels). Angel raise = must-have but lower urgency, Q3/Q4, gated on proof points + pipeline. Both run as ongoing ~1–2 hr/week workstreams, not panic-mode. Vincent owns the financial/pipeline model. The Q2 goals doc commits to a written 12-month financial model (runway, revenue trajectory, hire/raise trigger points), key hires (a founding engineer / data scientist so the build isn’t bottlenecked on Vincent; a delivery lead experienced in MCP; possibly client-success), and a raise-readiness exercise (practice the pitch, a view on valuation + target raise, advice on when/why to raise).
• Fundraise mechanics refined 2026-07-02: oisin’s advice shifts the near-term work from generic advisor search to active angel pre-warm: new site/rebrand first, then Bridge/warm intros, with a possible late-August/early-September rolling SAFE angel blitz. Working envelope: $500K-$1M to hire elite engineering/growth talent, with $1-2M possible if the valuation/story supports it. This refines the route and timing; it does not remove the requirement for proof points or smart-money fit. Reusable mechanics live in fundraising-playbook.
• November market-bet deadline. If there are no paying / consistently-paying customers by November 2026, reassess the whole market bet — a deliberate falsification checkpoint for product-thesis. Replaces the old ChatGPT-apps deadline (dropped when Claude shipped organic discovery).
• Ways-of-working reset: fewer goals, ~100% confidence of hitting the core ones; next ~6 weeks = nail the v1 product + talk to customers + selective BD only. Restore the old cadence — daily standups, sprint planning, fortnightly retros, Linear for tasks. Hiring: freelancer-first as the test (Cam — parted ways), never hire ahead of a clear business case + pipeline (Ethico/Steve and Web3 Audience are the cautionary near-bankruptcies).

Open questions

• Which single brand wins: ghostteam vs Agent Discovery? Still open as of 2026-06-16 (decided-to-decide; “ADO” as a term also being reconsidered; SEO blocked until resolved) — see 2026-06-16-q2-goals-gtm.
• Service tiers now named (Visible / Compete / Optimize) in the Q2 goals doc; exact per-tier scoping + final pricing still to lock.
• Founder sustainability vs bootstrapping: Elliot needs ~£5k/mo; both founders carry ~£4.5k outstanding company loans — a financial model + payment schedule is to be built (week of 2026-06-15). Part of why raising, not bootstrapping, is the chosen path.

Timeline

• [2026-07-02] (call — oisin) Fundraise posture refined from “eventual Q3/Q4 angel raise” into a more concrete playbook: pre-warm smart angels now, hold off on introductions until the new website/rebrand avoids mixed signals, then run a concentrated rolling SAFE round around late August / early September if ready. Oisin recommended leading with second-time founder credibility + bootstrapped revenue + platform-shift narrative, using “AppTweak at the start of the App Store cycle” as the analogy, and being willing to raise enough to hire elite people rather than optimizing solely for minimal dilution. Reusable advice extracted to fundraising-playbook.
• [2026-06-30] (call — monday demo) First concrete platform price quoted: base $149/month (prompt tracking + visibility data + team access + base prompts); enterprise managed service = paid add-on, waived for early partners in exchange for a closer partnership + Slack product feedback (same early-partner deal as direct-booker / manpowergroup). Sharpens the earlier $79/mo-platform + $5–10k-services placeholders into a real monthly figure.
• [2026-06-23] (internal discussion — Vincent + Elliot standup) Elliot met a well-connected London investor with a strong contact roster — flagged as a useful resource when/if we raise (still a future priority, not now). Note vs the US-smart-money preference above: a London relationship to keep warm, not a change of posture. Elliot also reaffirmed BD as a daily non-negotiable, and Elliot’s framing that Vincent owns product strategy/roadmap once v1 ships (see roadmap).
• [2026-06-22] (internal discussion — Vincent + Elliot, website/narrative/strategy session) Crystallized the full-service offering as a circle, not a line (Strategy → Build → Host → Submit → Seed users → Monitor/Optimize) selling found → used → sold; agreed the buyer personas (Cindy CMO / Father Smith product marketer primary / Amanda engineer secondary); decided to sell the vision via the new landing page now (“fake it till you make it”). Surfaced “discoverability” may be too narrow (“show up and sell”). Partnership + competitor context in manufact, alpic, metatuner, noodle-seed; post-connection optimization added to roadmap.
• [2026-06-19] (internal discussion — duplicate recordings from Elliot + Vincent) Website/product direction sharpened before the fuller 06-22 strategy session: landing page should lead with channel value and case-study FOMO, not “build a ChatGPT app”; build is a starter step / get-present on-ramp, while the core product value is continuous monitoring and optimization of the AI-client distribution channel. Homepage domain-entry score/onboarding idea surfaced: enter a domain/app, show visibility and competitors already live, then triage to optimize vs get-present/build.
• [2026-06-17] (call) Elliot gave rodrigo-mallo / Outsized a fundraise-progress update and platform demo. Rod reacted strongly positively, asked how build/infrastructure competitors affect customer acquisition, and asked to be kept posted when Ghostteam decides to raise. This adds a warm investor relationship but does not change the proof-gated raise posture.
• [2026-06-17] (internal discussion — merged Vincent+Elliot “Service offering” notes) Reaffirmed the two-flow services model: optimize existing presence vs get present by building. Vincent pushed a broader “agent-ready web” wrapper as a possible market-expansion page; Elliot pushed back on scope creep and held the line that the real near-term revenue bet is discoverability-focused builds + optimization inside ChatGPT / Claude / Gemini. Also surfaced the lighter ~$10k simple build idea and the explicit lock-in path: build the capability, then attach the customer to Ghostteam’s endpoint/platform.
• [2026-06-16] (internal discussion) Capital strategy refined to advisor-first (see Current truth); Vincent takes the financial/pipeline model. Q2 goals + the still-open brand decision are in 2026-06-16-q2-goals-gtm.
• [2026-06-15] (internal discussion — Vincent + Elliot retro) All of the above agreed. Triggered by Wani Wani’s $8M seed raise (wani-wani) and a sustainability reckoning (platform caps at ~$150K ARR). Brand choice + tier definitions deferred to 2026-06-16; Linear adopted for task tracking; fortnightly retro cadence to resume.