Hyrax Marketing Budget
Hyrax Marketing Budget
| Engineering and product | 7 FTEs | $2.0M |
| GTM | 1 FTE + 4 PTE | $1.0M to $2.0M |
| Salary and benefits | $3.0M to $4.0M | |
| Total opex | $0.75M to $1.0M | |
| Annual cash burn | $3.75M to $5.0M | |
| Runway, years | 2 to 2.5 | |
| Implied round size | $7.5M to $12.5M |
| Median seed, all sectors | $3.2M |
| AI company shipping product | $4M to $5M |
| Series A | $10M to $15M |
| First Round Capital, average cheque | $3.5M |
| Everything we spend in a year | $3.75M to $5.0M |
| Of that, marketing | $147K |
| Our share | 3% to 4% |
| A seed company | 15% to 25% |
R&D spend from the Hyrax Budget Review, 4 September 2026. Total opex is non-salary operating cost at 25% of payroll. Round sizes from Carta and PitchBook via Value Add VC, May 2026, and the H1 2026 State of Seed report. Sales and marketing at 15% to 25% of capital from Startup Budget Template by Stage. Google spend pulled from the account 8 September 2026.
| Company | Seed | Year | Who led the seed | Where the money went | Worth now |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Clay | $2.5M | 2021 | First Round Capital | Creators, community, events, billboards, SEO | $5.0B |
| Factory | $5.0M | 2023 | Sequoia and Lux | Enterprise sales | $1.5B |
| Glow | $20M | 2025 | Sequoia and Cyberstarts | Brand, content, vendors and advertising, all live on launch day | $1.2B |
| Total raised | ARR now | Team | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Clay | $202M | $150M | — |
| Factory | $220M | $60M | — |
| Glow | $255M | — | 100 |
Clay: $2.5M seed led by First Round Capital in 2021, $202M raised, $150M ARR May 2026, $5B employee tender January 2026, per Sacra and First Round. Factory: $5M seed November 2023 led by Sequoia and Lux, $220M raised, $60M ARR March 2026, $1.5B Series C April 2026, per Factory funding record. Glow: $20M seed March 2025 with Sequoia, Index and Cyberstarts, $255M raised, $1.2B July 2026, 100 people, per Seedtable. Collected 8 September 2026.
| The move | Who did it | What it produced |
|---|---|---|
| Pay creators | Gamma, Clay, n8n, Manus | 1,000 small creators drove half of Gamma's signups |
| Build a community | Clay, Gamma, n8n | Clay's Slack is 15,000 to 20,000 members and replaced paid support |
| Run events | Clay, n8n, Manus | Clay runs hundreds a year. Manus funds local meetups and hackathons |
| SEO | Clay | 60% of all their traffic |
| Out of home | Clay | Billboards in San Francisco and New York |
| Swag | Manus | Kit for the people running their events |
| Share of spend on distribution | AI-native companies | 40% to 60%. Traditional SaaS is 30% to 40% |
Clay playbook from Clay's marketing team and their head of marketing on the Ahrefs podcast. Gamma micro-creator flywheel and Gammbassadors from the Gamma growth playbook: $100M ARR with 50 people, $2.1B valuation, $68M raised, profitable for two years. n8n community and creator flywheel from the n8n growth playbook: $100M+ ARR, $5.2B valuation, and they deleted their lead-generation target to protect it. Manus Fellows programme, swag, launch mechanics and the 40-60% distribution split from the Manus case study: $100M ARR in nine months with 78 people, then acquired by Meta.
| The move | Month | Year | Share | Starts | What we buy |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Creators | $30K | $360K | 25% | October | Paid developer creators on YouTube, X and LinkedIn |
| Ads | $28.5K | $342K | 23% | September | Google, Bing and ChatGPT for signups |
| Out of home | $20K | $240K | 16% | November | Billboards in developer cities |
| Events | $18.3K | $220K | 15% | September | GitHub Universe, LDX3, KubeCon |
| Content and SEO | $14K | $168K | 12% | October | Video, motion and comparison pages |
| Community | $4K | $48K | 3% | October | Slack and Discord, run in house |
| Swag | $4K | $48K | 3% | November | Kit for the people running our events |
| Software | $2.6K | $31K | 2% | Running | PostHog, Synter, Postiz, Apify, Ahrefs, Semrush, Gauge and Loops, already bought |
| Total | $121.4K | $1.46M | 100% | — | Q1 $295K. Q2 $340K. Q3 $388K. Q4 $434K |
Every line matches a move on the previous slide. 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. We hold no PR budget, which matches PostHog, who publish their spend and have never put a dollar into PR at any size.