Hyrax Marketing Budget
Hyrax Marketing Budget
| Engineering and product | 7 people | $2.0M |
| Go-to-market | 5 people | $1.5M |
| Founding AE | hiring | not yet |
| Everyone on payroll | $3.5M | |
| Software and everything else | $0.9M | |
| A year | $4.4M |
| Google Ads over the last 30 days | $12.3K |
| The same rate for a year | $147K |
| Approved marketing budget | none |
| A seed round | $3.2M |
| A Series A round | $10M to $15M |
| What we spend in a year | $4.4M |
People cost from the Hyrax Budget Review, 4 September 2026. Payroll runs $3.0M to $4.0M a year and software and everything else runs $0.75M to $1.0M; the figures here are the middle of both. Google Ads spend pulled from the account for the 30 days to 4 September. Round sizes from Carta and PitchBook via Value Add VC.
| We spend a year | $4.4M |
| Of that we spend selling | $147K |
| Selling as a share | 3% |
| Selling as a share | 15% to 25% |
| That would be | $750K to $1.4M |
| A year | $1.22M |
| A month | $101.6K |
| Starts | September |
| What we would then spend a year | $5.5M |
| Selling as a share | 22% |
A seed company puts 15% to 25% of everything it spends into sales and marketing, per Startup Budget Template by Stage, compiled from Scale Venture Partners and Glencoyne. The $750K to $1.4M is what 15% and 25% work out to once the marketing money is added on top of the $4.25M we spend on everything that is not marketing.
| What they did | Who | What kind | What it got them |
|---|---|---|---|
| Paid search | ElevenLabs | Tested keywords until they found the words buyers type | 1 in 4 of all new paying customers |
| Creators | Gamma | Paid 1,000 small creators instead of a few famous ones | Half of all signups |
| Ambassadors | ElevenLabs | Pays developers to run meetups and write tutorials | Events in cities where nobody works for them |
| Billboards | Artisan | One strange line on San Francisco billboards saying “Stop Hiring Humans” | NPR wrote a story about it |
| Brand film | Lovable | One film on YouTube and streaming TV | 8M users in under a year |
| Launch days | Manus | Ships the post and the page and the ads the same day as the feature | $100M of revenue in nine months |
| Ad team in house | ElevenLabs | Two designers making new ad versions daily instead of an agency | Enough ads to spend $100M a year |
| Slack group | Clay | Shut down paid support and put everyone in a public Slack | 15,000 to 20,000 members |
| Comparison pages | Clay | A page for every search that pits them against a rival | 60% of all their traffic |
| Conferences | Clay | Big shows down to small dinners | Hundreds a year |
ElevenLabs paid search, ambassadors and in-house designers from Better Launch and their ambassador page; on track to spend $100M+ on paid ads in 2026. Gamma creators from the Gamma growth playbook. Artisan billboards per NPR, March 2026. Clay Slack, comparison pages and conferences from Clay's marketing team. Lovable per TechCrunch, March 2026. Manus from the Manus case study.
| What we run | Do it | What that means | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| Paid search | Yes | Google and Bing and ChatGPT | Cost per signup already dropped from $60 to $34 |
| Creators | Yes | Pay developer creators on YouTube and X and LinkedIn | Half of Gamma's signups came from this |
| Conferences | Yes | GitHub Universe and LDX3 and KubeCon | Engineering leaders are already in the room |
| Comparison pages | Yes | A page for every search against CodeRabbit and the rest | Traffic that keeps arriving after we stop paying |
| Ambassadors | Yes | Pay developers to run meetups for us | Events without hiring anyone to run events |
| Slack group | Yes | One public Slack for users | Costs almost nothing and gives creators something to talk about |
| Launch days | Not yet | Ship the post and the page and the ads the same day as the feature | Needs a set release schedule that product owns |
| Brand film | Not yet | A film on YouTube and streaming TV | Year two |
| Billboards | No | Cancelled on 8 September | The money moved to ads we can measure |
Billboards were cancelled at the New Ventures meeting on 8 September, with all of the spend moved to the bottom of the funnel. Cost per signup is measured on the Google Ads account: $60 across 10 to 30 August on the old campaigns and $34 across 31 August to 2 September on the rebuilt ones.
| What we buy | A month | A year | Share | Starts | What it pays for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Paid search | $40K | $480K | 39% | September | Google and Bing and ChatGPT |
| Creators | $25K | $300K | 25% | October | Payments to developer creators |
| Conferences | $15K | $180K | 15% | September | Booths and travel for five shows |
| Comparison pages | $12K | $144K | 12% | October | Writers and video |
| Ambassadors | $4K | $48K | 4% | November | Meetup costs and swag for the developers who host them |
| Slack group | $3K | $36K | 3% | October | Run by us |
| Tools | $2.6K | $31K | 2% | Running | Analytics and ad tools and email |
| Total | $101.6K | $1.22M | 100% | — | Q1 $250K. Q2 $290K. Q3 $325K. Q4 $354K |
The year runs September 2026 to August 2027. The monthly figure is the average across the year and the quarters ramp. Conferences are sized from the Hyrax Conference Plan: a GitHub Universe booth starts at $40K, LDX3 New York runs $15K to $40K and KubeCon Silver is $18K. There is no PR line, because none of the companies on the blueprint fund one.