For years the honest options for someone who already had buyers, and needed a product, were bad in two different ways.
An agency invoices whether or not anyone pays for what was built. A venture studio takes a quarter to two-fifths of the company before a single client is live. Both can be the right tool. Neither is the right tool if you can already sell, and the only gap is the product.
We used to be the first of those. We got paid to deliver. That is a clean business. It is also why an operator with a real market still has to find three hundred to eight hundred thousand dollars in cash, or give away the company, before the thing their buyers asked for exists.
The catch people assume
When we say we carry the cost, the next sentence in the room is usually “what’s the catch.” Hidden equity. A share that never ends. A cap we can move after the fact.
So the terms are public, and they are short. You pay nothing to start. We take no equity by default. Once you reach $25K MRR, or sign a paying enterprise client, we take 6% of gross revenue until we have been paid 2.5× the build value you signed, or 48 months have passed. Then it stops. If the product does not sell, you owe us nothing. The IP is yours from the first commit. You stay CEO.
That is not “free.” Free is a marketing word. This is a financed build with a written end. The catch, if there is one, is that we will not take the work if you cannot name the buyers. We fund every partnership from our own balance sheet. We cannot afford to be your discovery engine.
Why 6%, and why it ends
Six percent of gross is real money once a regulated product is selling. It is also cheaper, for an operator who will hit the cap, than writing a cheque they do not have, or giving a studio 30% of a company that might later raise. Run the numbers on the model page with your own figures. If the share looks expensive, it is usually because the alternative being compared is “keep 100% and magically have a product.”
The cap is the point. An uncapped share of revenue is a tax. We would rather be repaid and get out, and leave the equity with the person who owns the market. Optional equity exists only if we also put cash in, or stay embedded after product-market fit. It is never bundled into the build.
Who this is not for
We turn down idea-stage founders with no route to a buyer. We turn down people shopping for a cheap development quote. We turn down operators who want a cheque and a hired CEO. Those are not moral judgements. They are the people we cannot get repaid by.
If you are on the other list — domain, buyers, will sell, will not give away the company to get a product built — the next step is a conversation, not a proposal deck. We say no quickly when it is not a fit.
The commercial terms this essay refers to are on the model page.