PitchPad NLT Labs NLT Labs
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For Investors

Path to Product

Four phases from validation to a shippable product, with explicit go/no-go signals, use-of-funds breakdowns, and rollback triggers at each gate. The capital ask of $132,000 carries the team to the end of Phase 2 with eighteen months of operating runway.

Line items below are modeled cash uses, not GAAP forecasts. Open each phase’s drill-down for headcount and AI tooling (Claude / Cursor / LiteLLM). The full product-AI + delivery-AI thesis (Memory, Research Library, AgentForge, seats) is on AI & NLT Platform. Modeled

Why Phase 3 eng stays at $240K

NLT’s delivery stack — not a second DIY agent platform — is why Phase 1–2 stay at 1–2 product engineers and Phase 3 models 2 FTE instead of 4–5 plus DevOps (~$480–620K people+tools). AgentForge runs pe-evaluate / poc-ship / mvp-ship; Memory and Research Library compound decisions; seats and LiteLLM are explicit opex in the drill-downs below. Detail: AI & NLT Platform. Modeled

Four-Phase Roadmap

Phase 1 — current

Validate the porch-close motion

Build the minimum walk-through-to-signed-deposit flow with ten founding operators across the four launch categories. Tune the voice prompt library per category. Prove the on-porch close rate uplift versus quote-then-email.

Timeline
Months 1–4
Cost
$42,000
Go signal
6 of 10 founding operators close ≥15% more warm leads vs baseline; 4 of 10 verbal renewal intent at $79/mo

Phase 1 — Validate

Use of funds

  • Engineering: $24,000 — 1 founding engineer × 4 months @ $6,000/mo cash (founder rate; equity-heavy)
  • AI development tooling: bundled in eng — Claude Code / Cursor (~$200/mo) + LiteLLM inference for agent ship runs (~$100–250/mo); AgentForge host cost absorbed by NLT Labs platform in Phase 1
  • Concierge onboarding labor (Bill): $9,000
  • Voice/LLM product inference + Render: $3,000
  • Founding-cohort acquisition (trade-pub ads + association outreach): $6,000

Assumptions

  • Headcount = 1 product engineer, not a team — AgentForge + POC/MVP templates do research, scaffold, and smoke
  • Claude tooling is required opex, not an afterthought; tracked inside the $24K eng envelope rather than a silent founder credit card

Rollback triggers

  • Voice accuracy stays below 78% after 4 weeks of prompt tuning across two categories
  • Fewer than 4 of 10 founding operators see any close-rate uplift after 60 days
  • Stripe declines to underwrite the home-services deposit flow without restrictive caps

Phase 2

Harden + scale to the founding 100

Onboard operators 11–100. Harden the offline-tolerance, the Stripe reconciliation, and the QBO integration. Build the Crew tier (multi-truck) and the route-optimization layer. Hire the second engineer at the 50-operator mark.

Timeline
Months 5–14
Cost
$66,000
Go signal
60 paying operators, <5% monthly churn, ≥40% of new operators via trade-pub or association channel at CAC ≤ $4,000

Phase 2 — Harden + scale

Use of funds

  • Engineering: $48,000 — continues the founding engineer through months 5–14 and adds a second product engineer at the 50-operator mark (months 9–14). Together with Phase 1’s $24K, Phase 1–2 eng cash = $72K on the capital-ask table
  • AI tooling uplift: Claude + Cursor seats for up to 2 engineers (~$400/mo) + LiteLLM (~$300/mo) ≈ $7K over the phase — paid from eng + infra envelopes (explicit, not shadow spend)
  • Founding-cohort acquisition + association partnerships: $12,000
  • Infra + voice inference at scale: $4,000
  • Legal / Stripe carve-out / TOS work: $2,000

Assumptions

  • Peak Phase 2 headcount = 2 product engineers (not 3)
  • Second hire owns Crew tier / QBO / route layer — not a platform/DevOps hire (AgentForge already covers ship automation)
  • Comp remains founder-rate cash ($6K/mo) with equity; market-rate salaries would blow the $132K ask

Rollback triggers

  • Monthly churn exceeds 6% for two consecutive months
  • CAC exceeds $5,000 in the dominant channel for two consecutive months
  • Stripe imposes deposit caps that compress the operator's working-capital benefit

Phase 3

Repeatable revenue + dispatcher tier

Scale to 500 operators, ship the Dispatcher tier for multi-truck operators, open the cross-operator referral graph (opt-in), and introduce the Annual billing motion. Requires a Series A bridge or self-funded growth from cash MRR.

Timeline
Months 15–24
Cost
Out-of-band — Series A or organic
Go signal
$25K MRR, 90%+ annual logo retention, 5+ named association partners

Phase 3 — Repeatable revenue

Use of funds (assumes ~$500K Series A)

  • Engineering team build-out: $240,000 — see assumptions below (2 FTE + AI tooling, not a 4-person squad)
  • GTM hire (founding sales): $120,000 — 1 AE / founding sales (~$90–100K OTE cash + ~$20–30K tools/travel) for ~10–12 months
  • Trade-pub + association scale: $90,000
  • Infra + compliance: $50,000 — Render/Cloudflare at scale, SOC2 light path start, category counsel, pen-test retainers

Engineering $240K — assumptions

  • Headcount: 2 product engineers for Months 15–24 (10 months), not 3 or 4. A third “platform” FTE is not hired because AgentForge is the shared platform.
  • Cash comp: ~$9,000/mo fully loaded cash per engineer × 2 × 10 mo = $180,000 people cost (founder-lean cash; equity for upside). Modeled
  • AI development tooling (Claude / Cursor / LiteLLM): $24,000 — ~$1,200/mo blended: Claude Code Max / Cursor Team seats for 2 (~$400–600), LiteLLM gateway inference for ship agents + proposal LLM (~$400–600), eval/smoke buffer (~$100–200).
  • AgentForge / platform ops: $20,000 — dedicated PitchPad share of AF API + brain + observability for 10 months (keeps product eng off maintaining orchestration).
  • Contract / surge buffer: $16,000 — short contract frontend or mobile polish around Dispatcher tier launch.
  • Math check: $180K + $24K + $20K + $16K = $240K.

Why this is not a $500K+ eng line

  • Traditional path: 4 eng @ ~$12–14K/mo loaded × 10 mo ≈ $480–560K people alone, plus tooling.
  • AgentForge path: agents own eval loops, publish, smoke, dossier regen, and large chunks of feature scaffolding — two senior product eng own product surface + operator outcomes.
  • Risk: if AF capacity or model costs spike, the surge buffer and/or GTM pace are the first dials; headcount goes to 3 only after Dispatcher attach clears the go signal.

Rollback triggers

  • Dispatcher-tier attach below 20% of multi-truck operators
  • Annual-tier conversion below 15% of monthly base
  • Category-leader competitive parity shipped before month 20
  • AI tooling + AF ops exceed $5K/mo for two consecutive months without offsetting eng productivity (forces reforecast of the $240K envelope)

Phase 4

Standalone product line

PitchPad graduates from an NLT Labs POC to a standalone company with its own GTM team, a category-leader-grade product surface, and a defensible founding-cohort flywheel that funds the next 1,000 operators.

Timeline
Months 25+
Cost
Self-funded from cash MRR or Series B
Go signal
$100K+ MRR, 1,000+ paying operators, <3% monthly churn sustained two quarters

Capital ask — $132,000 (Phase 1 + Phase 2)

UseAmount%Confidence
Engineering (1 founding eng 12 mo + 2nd eng 6 mo; Claude/Cursor/LiteLLM inside envelope; AgentForge platform shared)$72,00055% Modeled
Founding-cohort acquisition$24,00018% Modeled
Infrastructure + integrations + voice inference$12,0009% Sourced
Legal + ops + Stripe carve-out work$9,0007% Modeled
Six-month runway reserve$15,00011% Modeled

Phase 3’s $240K engineering is out of band of this $132K seed ask — it rides a later Series A. Open the Phase 3 drawer for the 2-engineer + tooling math.