🧭 The plan, 2027–2029¶
In short
- Visualli® turns what people bring into a visual map they can walk into, on an open standard anyone can use.
- We grow community-led and product-led. The money goes into R&D, the ecosystem and our presence.
- Today: bootstrapped with €50k of the founder's own capital, ~6 months of runway left. Next: €100k or €400k, released in tranches tied to milestones.
- Targets: 1,200 paying users in 2027, B2B from 2028, €500k ARR in 2029 from consumers alone.
🔒 Confidential. Written for our advisors, to steer us. October 2026.
- €100k / €400k the next raise
- 1,200 paying users, end of 2027
- 2028 first B2B customer
- €500k ARR in 2029
Related background: Visualli in 5 minutes (problem, product, who it's for) · Market & Competition (where we sit, moat, market size, landscape) · Customer Signals (users today).
1. Go-to-market: community-led and product-led¶
We grow mainly through the product, the open standard and the communities around them.
Paid advertising plays a supporting role: modest and targeted, never the main engine.
Live today: the website (Start free: a short learning assessment, then instant sign-up) and our public launch on LinkedIn, X and Reddit (October 2026).
Channels for 2027, in order:
- Visualli inside AI chats: where the thinking already happens.
- Bring anything: deep integrations that bring notes in from Notion, Evernote and others.
- "View with Visualli": desktop launchers in the file explorer (right-click a file) and browser extensions.
- Product-led loops: every shared map or export says "Made with Visualli" and opens in the free viewer.
- A public map library: popular books, podcasts, papers and courses, mapped and found through search.
- Founder-led content: a weekly "map of the week" on LinkedIn, and building in public.
- Ambassadors: students and visual learners earn insight credits for bringing their study groups.
- Neurodiversity communities (ADHD, dyslexia): our comfort modes are a rare hook.
- Borrowed audiences: we map creators' podcast and YouTube episodes; they share them.
- Visual-learning and study communities.
Referrals: organic today. A referral programme with extra insights for both sides is on the table.
Schools: high school and pre-university. The head or learning team decides; we start with a free pilot of a few weeks.
Ecosystem: a DevRel intern in Q3 2027 builds tooling around the open standard.
2. Business model¶
| What you get | Price | |
|---|---|---|
| Free, forever | Lifelong vault (view only), Go deeper, a few insights a month | €0 |
| Base | Edit, add sources, every device, a starting allowance of insights | ~€0.99 / month |
| Insights | More insights, topped up like a prepaid card in ~€5 steps, with a monthly cap | Pay per use |
An insight is a connection between concepts that Visualli discovered: the value the user sees, not an AI token.
Average per paying user: ~€3.50 a month (estimate). The €0.99 is deliberately frugal: an entry point open to everyone.
Schools (current thinking): shared group insights on a monthly multi-user subscription.
Unit costs today: ~€0.30 per map; Go deeper costs a few cents. The AI engine is on its 3rd iteration, and costs keep falling.
3. Milestones and targets¶
| When | What |
|---|---|
| Nov–Dec 2026 | Paid plans built in November, live in early December, together with AI-powered ingestion of more sources. First note integrations. Funding decided. |
| Q1 2027 | Visualli inside AI chats live. Mobile app live. |
| Q1–Q3 2027 | Free open-source viewers · first school pilot · university partnerships (cognitive psychology, information architecture) |
| Q3 2027 | University research feeds a stronger spec; DevRel intern starts. |
| 2027 | B2B explored. Note integrations keep coming, driven by demand. |
| 2028 | Compliance for B2B (ISO, SOC 2, sovereign cloud); first B2B launch customer, as a visual delivery layer for enterprise data. |
| 2029 | Enterprise-ready, plug-and-play into any company. |
| Paying users | Money | Signal | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2027 | 1,200 (+100 a month) | ~€50k ARR at year-end (~€27k revenue in the year) | 50% retention |
| 2028 | ~3,600 | ~€150k ARR | ≥30% of new sign-ups via referral |
| 2029 | Consumers only | €500k ARR | B2B on top |
ARR (annual run-rate) is a snapshot: December's revenue × 12. Revenue is what came in during the year. Assumes 30% of free users convert to paid.
Tracked today: sign-ups · activated users · power users · retention.
Tracked from 2027: free → paid conversion · referral share · paying users · revenue · cost per map.
4. Team plan¶
Who we are today: Team.
| 2027 | Later |
|---|---|
| 2 engineers in India, full-time (Q1–Q4) | Head of Product Engineering |
| DevRel intern (Q3, 3 months) | Head of Platform Engineering |
| Part-time consultant for community-led growth |
Frugal by design: all engineering from India. Decisions are codified, so the company doesn't depend on any one person; a new intern contributes to the product by the end of day one.
Vivek goes full-time depending on how much we raise; his pay comes from the engineering budget.
Founder salary: €58,000 a year (the Dutch minimum), from 1 March 2027.
Advisors for specific areas are consulted case by case, as the startup's needs demand.
5. Money¶
Today: bootstrapped with €50k of the founder's own capital; no outside funding; ~6 months of runway left (to about March 2027).
The crossroads: raise €100k (to gain runway and speed until about mid-2027) or €400k (into 2028). Where the money comes from, friends and family or early investors, matters less than whether the tranches convince. The open dilemma →
€400k, in tranches¶
| Bucket | Total | Tranche 1 H1 2027 |
Tranche 2 H2 2027 |
Tranche 3 2028 |
B2B deal | Buffer |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total | €400k | €118k | €158k | €52k | €42k | €30k |
| Released when | Funding closes | ~600 paying · 50% retention | 1,200 paying · B2B go / no-go | A first B2B deal in progress | Velocity or growth asks | |
| R&D: universities, spec, DevRel | €100k | €50k | €50k | |||
| Founder salary (from Mar 2027) | €58k | €19k | €29k | €10k | ||
| Engineering, India (incl. Vivek later) | €55k | €15k | €15k | €25k | ||
| Compliance: GDPR, cyber, then B2B | €52k | €5k | €5k | €42k | ||
| AI and infrastructure | €50k | €9k | €24k | €17k | ||
| Community-led growth | €30k | €15k | €15k | |||
| Extra heads for velocity, growth | €30k | €30k | ||||
| Select conferences / events / travel | €15k | €15k | ||||
| NL operations, bookkeeping, tools | €10k | €5k | €5k |
Planned spend lasts to about February 2028 · the €100k path is roughly Tranche 1 · grants (Tools Competition, NLnet) are upside.
AI spend depends on conversion (8 maps a month per paying user, 2 per free user, €0.30 a map):
| Free → paid conversion | AI spend in 2027 |
|---|---|
| 30% (our assumption) | ~€33k |
| 10% | ~€67k |
| 5% | ~€118k |
6. Risks and how we handle them¶
| Risk | How we handle it |
|---|---|
| Funding arrives late | Tranche 1 (~€118k) is the minimum to keep going. Grants are upside, not runway. |
| Others are already inside the chat; Big Tech maps are free | Our map lives and grows with you, on an open format. The open dilemma → |
| Platform dependency (AI hosts change rules or copy us) | We don't bank only on AI platforms: desktop launchers ("View with Visualli") and browser extensions reach people directly. |
| Schools and minors | GDPR must-spend comes in Tranche 1, before the first school pilot. |
| Cyber security | We keep investing in resilience, and test regularly to prove the platform is resilient. |
Where we'd value your challenge: the open questions on B2C and B2B, pricing, geography and this plan are collected under Also on our mind.