How do we charge
Updated: May 1, 2019
If you want to start a company, there are costs. You need to develop a product or service, market it, and get clients.
This will typically run you anywhere from $50-150k.
We‘ve broken down these costs into sprints with clearly defined deliverables.
First, pay $5k or give us 10% of your company and we will deliver your first $1 in revenue. While symbolic, MANY early stagers never get this far. They dump money into building websites, buying business cards, attending events etc., only to never even make the first dollar. Furthermore, when we know how to make the first, we can make a second....you get the picture. So, where you might invest $5k into a website, getting a professional deck, or attending a conference, instead you invest it in making your first $1.
Second. With your first dollar, we can work on generating profit. We think of things in terms of MRR, monthly recurring revenue. You’re next goal is $5k MRR. How to get there from $1 requires a lot of support and testing. You could easily sink 20-30k into marketing, advertising etc., in the hopes of reaching this target. Instead of spending that money on a hope, we make $5k MRR our deliverable. Pay us $15k or select the equity option and give us another 15% of the company, and we will get you to $5k MRR.
Where will the 15k come from? Well now that you have a business that generates revenue (remember you made $1), you should feel confident in scraping together the money or raising from friends and family...I like to say that a founder spends 95% of their time raising money and 5% talking to clients - nothing else. However you do it, once you bring us back, we will not stop until we make $5k over 30 days. That could take us 6 monhs to achieve, and we will be with you each and every day, available 24/7.
Now that you’re at $5k MRR, some doors start to open. You can borrow against your business, attract more investors, and maybe even feel comfortable borrowing money against yourself. It’s also time to invest some real cash into the business. We can make a robust online platform, build applications to scale, attend some BIG conferences and buy some expense advertising. But the next goal must remain focused on MRR.
Third. Pay us $40k or give up anther 25% of the company and we will get you to $15k MRR.
If you paid all cash, you will now have paid us $60k - low end of market rate - but did so over time and only for specific, growth oriented deliverables....not a “consulting” fee. OR, you’ve given us 50% of the company, exactly as if you had brought in a cofounder at the start. Being a 50% owner of the company, we now have a huge interest in seeing the company continue to grow, and have likely developed an affinity for you and the company we were integral in building. We have an incentive to get rich with you on this venture, and that is something MUCH harder to develop in a partner than you may realize.
In short, we charge market rates with specific deliverables and have an incentive to see you succeed. We don’t say that...it’s literally our business model.