For Sam Rivera

Picking up where we left off.

This room opens onto the shared surface; the note itself lives with the artifact.

The product

  • You're building booking for independent venues first, the way I heard it.
  • The incumbents priced them out and never really fit how those rooms run.
  • A booking layer built for how they actually operate, night to night.
  • You know the operators and the market better than anyone I'd bring in.
  • I can take the build side off your plate, what it takes and what it costs.

Closing the open piece

  • You said the plan is most of the way there, with cost and timeline still open.
  • That's the piece I'd help you close.
  • Happy to work under an NDA, whenever you want to walk me through it.
  • We'd pull the prototype out of the black box and write the version you raise on.

From the call

A part-time retainer to start, before a build team1099, part time

Napkin math from the call. Round numbers to show the shape, not a quote.

Baseline platform, web and mobile$200–350K
Full version, the operator tooling$500–700K
Integrations and data migration$40–60K

Two to four months to stand up.

I price in engineer-months. $12K a month per engineer, all-in.

A lot of this is built with code-gen tooling now, so an engineer-month goes further. Useful when you defend the number.

How I'd build it

Those numbers have a build under them. I sized the whole thing out, phase by phase, so the cost-and-timeline section of your deck stands on something real. Same napkin register, not a quote.

See how I'd build it

How I'd come in

I'd come on as an advisor, not a full-time CTO.

Two ways I could plug in, take one or both.

In your corner

Phase one. Strategy, architecture, the roadmap, the fundraise, the meetings. A flat retainer.

Building with you

Alongside your team later, if it's useful. Bigger and separate, and only if you want it.

Comp is your call

However you want to handle it. A cash retainer, or part equity over a cash floor. Never all equity. The ownership split stays yours, obviously.

The build, when you raise

  • No team spins up until you've raised and you're ready.
  • I'd staff the bench from people I've shipped with, sized in engineer-units.
  • Bring your own design lead in at day zero, and my crew builds around them.

Who I am

  • Yungsten's my shop, and I've shipped production systems soup to nuts.
  • Our mutual contact can fill in whatever I leave out.
  • You wouldn't pick a build partner off a website anyway, so let's just talk.

Your deck, rendered

I stood a place up for it while we talk. Drop your deck in, send investors a link, and see who opened it and where they lingered.

Associate, top-tier fund4m 12s
123456789

lingered on 4 · skimmed 6-7

Angel, ex-operator3m 32s
123456789

read to the end · sat on 8

a sample, so you can see the shape before your first real viewer · Vellum (fictional)

Open it

Next

  • Anyway, that's where I landed after our call.
  • Grab a time below whenever your week opens up.
  • I'll start on the cost and timeline in the meantime.
  • No clock on any of it.

— Paul