Hyrax

Capital Allocation Proposal

& Growth Funnel Model

Date
September 3, 2026
Prepared by
Tristan Benozer
Go-to-Market
Audience
Internal submission
and strategic discussion
The ask
$74,599 / month
toward a $10M ARR run-rate

Contents

Six sections
IExecutive Summary1–3
IIBottom-Up Reverse Funnel Model4–5
IIIItemized Marketing Execution Budget6–9
IVGranular Channel Attribution Strategy10
VSpecialized Software Stack Infrastructure11–12
VIPortfolio Unit Economics & Risk Governance13–14
SECTION I

Executive Summary

Objective

1 of 14
$10MARR run-rate
$833,333consolidated MRR equivalent
1,389paying customer teams to hold it
+150net new paid teams per month

Growth vector

  • Developer-first business line. Bypasses enterprise top-down friction.
  • Automated product-led growth, land and expand.
  • Generous freemium layer secures friction-free developer workspaces.

Constraint

  • The product is sold in its current state until it evolves.
  • Go-to-market is phased against product capability.

Teams required assumes a 20-seat settled account at $30 per seat, the smallest fully-penetrated deployment observed in the ICP band.

The Ask

2 of 14
$74,599per month
$895,188annualized
$19.89blended CPA per free signup
CategoryMonthlyShare
Paid Media$50,50067.70%
PR & Events$7,50010.05%
Professional Services$15,20020.38%
Software$1,3991.88%
Combined monthly operational cost$74,599100.00%

No permanent team payroll. Contractors and a nine-tool software stack at 1.88% of the total.

Phasing

3 of 14
Phase 1 · funded
Current product
  • Free developer workspace
  • Repository connected inside 72 hours
  • Upgrade to paid team at $30 per seat
  • Land at 8 engineers, settle at 20+
The full $74,599. Every channel and CPA target is sized against this product.
Phase 2 · on product evolution
New capability
  • New messaging, new buyer, new channels
  • Own funnel maths, own CPA targets
NEEDS PRODUCT INPUT. Capability, trigger, buyer.
Phase 3 · on product evolution
New capability
  • No channel funded ahead of the product supporting it
NEEDS PRODUCT INPUT. Capability, trigger, buyer.

Phase 1 reflects product behaviour in the current build: freemium workspaces, the 72-hour repository connection gate, and $30 per seat.

SECTION II

Bottom-Up Reverse Funnel Model

Reverse Funnel

4 of 14
1,875,000
Gross programmatic impressions
4.0% CTR
75,000
Unique web visitors / month
5.0% web-to-signup
3,750
Free developer signups / month
4.0% upgrade
+150
Net new paid customer teams / month

Standard developer-tooling parameters: 4.00% free-to-paid upgrade, 8 engineers at landing, 95.00% monthly logo retention.

Funnel Matrix Variables

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Target ARR run-rate baseline$10,000,000 / year
Target consolidated MRR equivalent$833,333.33 / month
Landed contract value per developer seat$30 / user / month
Seats at landing8
Seats at settle20
Average revenue per paid customer team$600 / month (20 × $30)
Paying customer teams required to hold run-rate1,389 teams
Net monthly upgrades target+150 teams / month
Free developer signups needed per month3,750
Blended target CPA per free signup$19.89
Unique web visitors required75,000 / month
Programmatic ad impressions needed1,875,000 / month

Settled seat count from published ICP-band deployments: Pomelo 200 of 200 engineers, LSports 150 of 150, trivago 133 weekly actives, SalesRabbit 20 of 20. Penetration once adopted runs 70–100%. Twenty seats is the floor of that range.

SECTION III

Itemized Marketing Execution Budget

Budget by Category

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Paid Media  ·  $50,500  ·  67.70% PR & Events Prof. Services  ·  $15,200
Paid Media — $50,500 — 67.70% PR & Events — $7,500 — 10.05% Professional Services — $15,200 — 20.38% Software — $1,399 — 1.88%
Major categoryMonthly cost% of total
Paid Media$50,50067.70%
PR & Events$7,50010.05%
Professional Services$15,20020.38%
Software$1,3991.88%
Combined monthly operational cost$74,599100.00%

Every active platform, contractor fee and software licence, un-consolidated line by line.

Paid Media — $50,500

7 of 14
Line itemMonthlyDaily% of total
Google Ads (SEM & Demand Gen)$20,000$65826.81%
Paid Developer Influencer Fees (1 video spotlight)$10,00013.40%
Product Hunt Sponsored Ads (fixed rolling slot)$5,000$1646.70%
LinkedIn Ads (conversion targeting)$4,000$1325.36%
Meta Ads (founder video retargeting)$3,500$1154.69%
Reddit Ads (developer subreddits)$3,000$994.02%
ChatGPT / AI search network placements$2,500$823.35%
TikTok Ads (short-form code demos)$1,500$492.01%
Bing SEM (enterprise long-tail intent)$1,000$331.34%
Paid Media total$50,500$1,66167.70%

Google is set at the current account run rate of $658 a day, measured 2026-08-31 to 2026-09-02. Observed cost per signup on Google over the last 14 days is $21.49.

PR & Events — $7,500

8 of 14
Line itemMonthly% of total
PR Agency Retainer & Tech Press Outreach$4,5006.03%
Developer Conferences & Hackathon Tiers$2,0002.68%
Product Hunt Launch Kit & Creative Design$5000.67%
Developer Swag & Onboarding Welcome Kits$5000.67%
PR & Events total$7,50010.05%

The launch kit pairs with the $5,000 Product Hunt sponsored slot carried in Paid Media.

Professional Services — $15,200

9 of 14
Line itemMonthly% of total
Video Editing Services (4 founder videos @ $2k each)$8,00010.72%
Organic Social Content Management (X / LinkedIn)$5,0006.70%
Gauge Media (ad creative validation)$1,2001.61%
Video & Motion Graphics Production (UI overlays)$1,0001.34%
Professional Services total$15,20020.38%

No permanent payroll. SEO technical documentation is produced in-house at no contractor cost.

SECTION IV

Granular Channel Attribution Strategy

Channel Attribution

10 of 14
PipelineShareSignupsVisitorsImpressionsTarget CPA
Paid performance — 55%
Google SEM & Demand Gen25%93718,740468,500$21.34
Paid Developer Influencers12%4509,000225,000$22.22
Product Hunt Sponsored Ads8%3006,000150,000$16.67
Social Conversion Arrays10%3757,500187,500$41.33
Compounding organic, SEO & AEO — 33%
SEO Technical Documentation15%56311,260281,500$0.00
AEO (Answer Engine Optimization)10%3757,500187,500$0.00
Thought Leadership & Organic Social8%3006,000150,000$16.67
Viral, direct & product-led loops — 12%
Direct Inbound & Product Loops8%3006,000$0.00
Dark Social & Private Communities4%1503,000$0.00
Total100%3,75075,0001,650,000$19.89

Social Conversion Arrays covers LinkedIn, Meta, Reddit, ChatGPT, TikTok and Bing SEM. SEO documentation is produced in-house. AEO is driven via the automated retrieval stack. Direct and Dark Social come from repository merge tags, engineer invite sharing, and link sharing across private developer Slack, Discord and community networks.

SECTION V

Specialized Software Stack Infrastructure

Software Stack — $1,399

11 of 14
ToolMonthly
PostHog (product telemetry & funnels)$450
Synter Media (AI media-buying optimization)$300
Perplexity Sonar / Agent API usage$150
Vercel (marketing site hosting)$100
Parallel (AI web data retrieval)$100
Exa AI (tech-link knowledge graph)$100
LinkedIn automation & management$100
Jina AI (markdown for crawlers)$50
Loops Email (lifecycle automation)$49
Software total$1,399

Orchestration path

Synter Media — $300Portfolio orchestration
and ad buying
PostHog — $450Telemetry pipeline,
clicks to repo map
Loops Email — $49Funnel nurture,
inactive workspaces

Perplexity Sonar evaluates semantic category definitions, Parallel retrieves unstructured web datasets, Exa AI maps technical developer links, Jina AI reformats documentation for LLM crawlers. Vercel secures landing page speed. LinkedIn automation drives cold outreach to engineering managers.

Tool Overlap

12 of 14
ToolsTodayOverlapRecoverable
Perplexity Sonar
Parallel
Exa AI
Jina AI
$150
$100
$100
$50
Four web retrieval APIs. Sonar searches and synthesizes, Parallel searches and fetches, Exa does semantic discovery, Jina converts pages to clean text. Two cover the job.$250
Gauge Media
Professional Services
$1,200Synter runs creative testing across the ad platforms and PostHog carries the funnel data. Gauge access lapsed 2026-08-30.$1,200
LinkedIn automation
vs Synter Media
$100
$300
Synter manages LinkedIn ad buying. The automation tool drives cold outreach. Separate jobs.$0
PostHog
vs Synter Media
$450
$300
PostHog owns product events, Synter owns platform spend. Reporting duplicates, data does not.$0
Recoverable$17,400 per year$1,450

Vercel and Loops have no overlap with anything else in the stack.

SECTION VI

Portfolio Unit Economics & Risk Governance

Unit Economics

13 of 14
$336.67blended paid CAC per team
$12,000lifetime value per team
35.6:1LTV to paid CAC
0.56months payback

CAC

$50,500 monthly paid media divided by 150 new conversions.

LTV

A 20-month average paid lifespan at $600 per team per month.

Yield

Reflects the zero-cost organic, AEO and viral loop traffic supporting the paid channels.

Payback under one month means acquisition cost is recovered within the first billing cycle. Fifth indicator, the kill-switch framework, follows.

Kill-Switch Framework

14 of 14

Automatic pause triggers

  • Cost per signup crosses the channel target threshold.
  • A platform generates accounts that fail to connect a repository within 72 hours.

Capital handling

  • Capital from a paused channel ports back to safety.
  • Automated performance gates run continuously via Synter Media.

Requested monthly operational marketing allocation: $74,599. Target: a $10,000,000 ARR run-rate.