What the money buys: milestones and where it goes

This round funds a team and a marketing engine for 18 months. This page shows what it is meant to achieve, month by month, and then exactly where the money goes.

Draft For the founder's review.

Part 1
The milestones

A milestone is a checkable result by a date. These are the results this round is meant to deliver, and the ones a next round would be priced on. The revenue milestones follow the realistic case of the customer model, starting from the six businesses that already pay Stapilo today.

Paying businesses and monthly revenue

Realistic is the plan we expect. Conservative is the same model if things go slower: fewer people reached, fewer of them buying, more leaving each month. It shows how bad a slow start could look, so investors can judge the downside.

The first customers are heavy users at about $350 a month; cheaper entry offers then widen the base, so the average falls from about $350 toward about $260 by month 18. Months 1–3 run lean on the first $100k (see Part 3), so growth starts a little slower and catches up once step 2 funds the full engine. The ads and guru channels are sized to this budget: about $100 of ads per new account (between the research's $50 low case and $267 middle case, because the first ads run partly in cheaper markets; Part 3 shows the $267 case), and about 30 masterminds where partners are met. The model counts only new subscribers plus today's six.

What has to be built and done to get there

The first 90 days, channel by channel

Step 1 runs lean on $100k: ads, the founder's content filmed simply, online guru rooms, the dollar checkout and affiliates. Its goal is 20 paying businesses from outside the founder's circle by month 3; the model expects about 35 new ones, from these channels, with what is measured every week:

The podcast, the studio and the masterclass pilot wait for step 2. Ads are the only channel that works from day one; the others start small and grow. If one channel underdelivers in the first weeks, budget moves to the ones that work, and the month-3 goal shows the result.

Part 2
Where the money goes

An 18-month budget built from the milestones above. Every line is priced from research (salaries from live job ads and salary surveys, event and mastermind prices from organisers' pages, equipment from retailer prices, ad costs from benchmarks and Stapilo's own campaigns) or measured from Stapilo's live system (servers, AI usage). The team is kept small: everyone needed, no one extra.

Spending and revenue, month by month

Months 1–3 run lean (about $28k a month) on the first $100k; month 4 is the heaviest, when step 2 brings the full team, the studio and the big guru rooms. In the realistic case revenue overtakes spending around month 11; in the slow case it doesn't within 18 months, which is why the raise is sized for the slow case.

The budget, line by line

The money milestone by milestone

Base plan and extras

All headline numbers use the base plan: the software business plus one masterclass pilot. It needs about $275k at its lowest point (month 10), earns more than it spends from about month 11, and has earned all of it back by month 18. If the extras prove themselves, the need falls to about $245k, break-even comes a month earlier, and month 18 ends about $320k ahead.

Part 2b
Unit economics: what a customer costs and what a customer is worth

Every dollar spent on winning customers (ads, masterminds, the campaign owners, partner commissions, production, the podcast) divided by the new paying customers it brings:

• Gross margin: what's left of a customer's payment after AI usage (~$15 a month, measured today at $10–30), payment fees (~5.7%) and servers (~$3). Partner commissions (~9%) and campaign owners' commission (3%) are not in it: they are counted in the cost to win a customer, so they are not left out, only counted once.
• Measured so far: of the six paying businesses, three have paid for more than 12 months, two for several months and one is new; none has ever left, and all six recorded customer activity in Stapilo within the past day. Too few to measure churn, but consistent with the model's 4.5% a month after the first three months.
• Value of one customer: monthly payment × gross margin × the months a customer stays. The customer model's churn is used: 10% a month in the first three months, then 4.5% a month, so a customer stays about 19 months on average (slow case: 6% after month 3, about 15 months).
• A value-to-cost ratio of 3× or more is considered healthy for software companies. The expected case starts below it (2.6× in months 1–6, while the channels are being built) and passes it from month 7 as they mature. In the slow case, the cut plan (ads held, fewer campaign owners, masterminds only the guaranteed part) keeps it at 1.9×, which is why the slow case is a reason to stop or slow down, not to spend more, with customers who leave faster (6% a month after the first three months).
• By year 3 the cheapest entry offers (around $60 a month) are worth about $800 per customer, so they are sold mostly through the existing list and retargeting, where winning a customer costs far less than through ads or events.

Part 3
How much money, and how it comes in

Step by step: how much does Stapilo need?

1. Money goes out before it comes back. In the first months Stapilo spends more than it earns: first a lean launch, then the full team, the studio, ads and masterminds, while paying customers are still few. Each month the gap is paid from the investment.

2. Then revenue catches up. As customers grow, monthly income rises until it is bigger than monthly spending. From then on Stapilo earns its money back.

3. So the amount needed is the lowest point of the line below: the most money that has gone out, in total, before income takes over.

What the plan depends on most

Two assumptions move the cash need more than anything else: what new customers pay in the first months, and what an ad costs per new account. Each was run through the same budget engine as the plan above, changing only that one input; the last row changes three inputs at once:

Why the plan starts at about $350. The six businesses paying today average $369 a month. The marketing is scheduled as a ladder: the first months aim at businesses that already sell and need the whole platform, backed by hands-on support for the first 500 customers; once that flow runs, the offer widens to smaller niches at lower prices, which is how the average falls toward the market's ~$110 over three years. The first customers are not average customers, by design.

Why this matters less than it looks for an investor. The price is tested within 90 days: step 1's goal needs 20 paying businesses from outside the founder's circle and about $6k of monthly revenue from them, which is only reachable at roughly $300 per customer. If the first customers pay much less, the goal is missed, step 2's price falls by formula, and below 70% of the goal each investor can stop. The cheaper ad case still breaks even within the year. Even with three things going wrong at once, the cut plan keeps the need at about $314k, inside steps 1 and 2; month 3 would show about 12 outside customers instead of 20, so step 2's price falls by formula and investors see the problem within 90 days.

Why not raise it all at once?

Because nobody knows yet which line Stapilo will follow. Asking for $400k or more at once would make investors pay for the worst case before anything is proven. So the money comes in three steps, from the same investors: a small first step of $100k at the lowest price, which proves the one thing nobody has seen yet (strangers buying), then $300k to run the full engine, then $200k for growth. Each step is released only when the one before has reached its goal, and steps 1 and 2 together ($400k) cover even the slow case.

Step 2 is committed once at least 70% of step 1's goal is reached; step 3 is committed and paid when the month-10 goal is met. Total if all three happen: $600k, of which $570k is new cash ($30k is the founder's past spending, see below). Prices before the money: $2.5M for step 1 (the earliest risk, before strangers have bought), $3.5M for step 2, $3.6M for step 3. Investors together would own about 3.8% after step 1, 11.4% after step 2 and 16.1% after step 3.

What happens at each step

An example

Part 4
After month 18

A short outlook rather than a second detailed budget: the further out a forecast goes, the less it should be trusted, so this part shows direction and value, not line items.

Where Stapilo stands at month 18, and what comes next

Around month 18 Stapilo raises a next round from new investors, sized to the plan at the time (typically $1.5–2M at this stage), to scale what is already working: more ads, more countries, a bigger team. In the expected case Stapilo is already paying for itself by then (from about month 11), so this money is for speed, not survival.

What it could mean for today's investors

Illustration, not a promise: values use the same revenue model and multiples as the valuation; real outcomes can be lower or higher.

How investors get their money back, and when

No promise of a billion-dollar sale. This is what usually happens to companies like Stapilo, and what it would mean for an investor.

Assumptions: the realistic plan ($4.0M of yearly revenue at month 36; $6M in the high sale case), a sale at 3× (ordinary) to 5× (good), the next round taking about 20%, and for dividends a 25% profit margin with half paid out (the last two are estimates, not plan figures). The stake: 0.38% after step 1 → 1.14% after step 2 → 1.61% after step 3 → about 1.29% after the next round (dividends assume no next round: 1.61%). Taxes on paid-out profit to be confirmed with an accountant. Full arithmetic and the list of deals with sources: research/exits.md.

Part 5
The team

Part 6
The main risks, and how they're handled

Valuation · Customer model · Price research · How Stapilo is built