Chapter 03 of 05
The Launch Notes · Vol. 01 No. 04
The Ledger · 03
September 2026 · London
Why we charge fixed fees, not a percentage of raise · The motion
Application, proposal, deposit, close-lost
The sales motion is designed to make the commercial rule hard to “flex.” Application first. Screen before calendar. Thirty-minute qualification on a script. Written proposal within twenty-four hours of a qualified call. One proposal. Two timed follow-ups. Then close-lost. We do not keep a living Google Doc of discounts until the success fee feels inevitable.
The proposal names objective, owner, scope, exclusions, fee, SLA, acceptance criteria. It is a letter, not a teaser. Accepting it is against the pack. Deposit is a milestone payment that opens the workspace. Teams that want to start without deposit are asking for a gift. We already have a community brief for gifts. It is not the Sprint.
How money moves
If a step is missing, we are not in delivery. We are in a conversation.
- Apply
- Named founder, work email, ten dimensions.
- Qualify
- Human review. Call is not automatic.
- Proposal
- Within 24 hours. Fixed fee. Exclusions on the page.
- Deposit
- Opens the desk. No handshake work.
- Sprint
- Fourteen days. Read-out against the pack.
- Build / retain
- New statement of work. Prepaid retainer. Same boundary.
Renegotiation attempts cluster in two places: after the proposal, when someone “just wants a kicker if we raise,” and after a successful Sprint, when someone wants the Build paid in tokens. Both are declined with the same sentence. The sentence is already in the follow-up note so nobody has to be original.