Hyrax Marketing Budget
Hyrax Marketing Budget
| Engineering and product | 7 full time | $2.0M |
| GTM, full time | 1 | included |
| GTM, part time | 4 | included |
| Account manager | hiring | not yet |
| People cost a year | $3.0M to $4.0M |
| Google Ads, last 30 days | $12.3K |
| Same rate over a year | $147K |
| Dedicated marketing budget | none |
| People | $3.0M to $4.0M |
| Everything else | $0.75M to $1.0M |
| We spend a year | $3.75M to $5.0M |
| Years of runway | 2 to 2.5 |
| The raise this backs into | $7.5M to $12.5M |
| Median seed round | $3.2M |
| AI company shipping product | $4M to $5M |
| Series A | $10M to $15M |
People cost from the Hyrax Budget Review, 4 September 2026. Everything else is non-salary operating cost at 25% of payroll. Google Ads billed $12,274 across the 30 days to 4 September, pulled from the account. Round sizes from Carta and PitchBook via Value Add VC, May 2026, and the H1 2026 State of Seed report.
| Company | Seed | Year | From | Where the money went | Inside marketing | Worth now |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Clay | $2.5M | 2021 | First Round Capital | Product first, then marketing | Creators, community, events, billboards, SEO | $5.0B |
| Factory | $5.0M | 2023 | Sequoia and Lux | Sales | Almost none | $1.5B |
| Glow | $20M | 2025 | Sequoia and Cyberstarts | Marketing before launch | Brand, content, agencies, advertising | $1.2B |
| Raised since | Revenue now | Team | How they sell | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Clay | $202M | $150M | — | Self serve, then enterprise on top |
| Factory | $220M | $60M | — | Enterprise sales team |
| Glow | $255M | — | 100 | Enterprise sales |
Clay: $2.5M seed led by First Round Capital in 2021, $202M raised, $150M revenue May 2026, $5B January 2026, per Sacra and First Round. Marketing detail from Clay's own team. Factory: $5M seed November 2023 led by Sequoia and Lux, $220M raised, $60M revenue March 2026, $1.5B April 2026. Glow: $20M seed March 2025 with Sequoia, Index and Cyberstarts, $255M raised, $1.2B July 2026, 100 people, per Seedtable. Collected 8 September 2026.
| Channel | Who ran it | What they did | What it produced |
|---|---|---|---|
| Creators | Gamma, Clay | Paid developers to post workflows and demos | Half of all Gamma signups |
| Organic | Clay | Comparison pages built for search | 60% of all their traffic |
| Events | Clay, Manus | Conferences down to small dinners and hackathons | Hundreds a year |
| Out of home | Clay | Billboards in San Francisco and New York | Named in every write-up of their growth |
| Community | Clay | Killed paid support, moved everyone into a public Slack | 15,000 to 20,000 members |
| Swag | Manus | Kit for the people hosting their events | A grassroots events team they did not employ |
| Paid ads | monday.com | Spent 5x revenue on ads, money back in 1 to 3 months | $700M revenue |
| PR | Nobody | PostHog publishes its budget and has never spent on PR | $0 at every size |
Gamma micro-creator flywheel from the Gamma growth playbook. Clay creators, SEO, events, billboards and community from Clay's marketing team and their head of marketing on the Ahrefs podcast. Manus Fellows programme and swag from the Manus case study. monday.com recycling from B2B Growth Insights. PostHog PR spend of $0 from their published budget.
| Channel | Month | Year | Starts | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Creators | $30K | $360K | October | Pay developers to post about Hyrax |
| Paid ads | $28.5K | $342K | September | Google, Bing and ChatGPT buy signups |
| Out of home | $20K | $240K | November | Billboards where engineers are |
| Events | $18.3K | $220K | September | GitHub Universe, LDX3, KubeCon |
| Organic | $14K | $168K | October | Comparison pages, video, motion |
| Community | $4K | $48K | October | Slack and Discord for users |
| Swag | $4K | $48K | November | Kit for people running our events |
| Tools | $2.6K | $31K | Running | Analytics, ads, posting, email |
| Total | $121.4K | $1.46M | — | Q1 $295K. Q2 $340K. Q3 $388K. Q4 $434K |
Every channel matches a move on the previous slide. No PR line, because nobody on that slide spends on it. The year runs September 2026 to August 2027 and monthly figures are the year average, ramping by quarter. Events are sized from the Hyrax Conference Plan: GitHub Universe booths start at $40K, LDX3 New York runs $15K to $40K, KubeCon Silver is $18K.