Appendix
Every line item in the $500,000 ask, fully itemized.
My salary, year 1$175,000
12 months. Base + benefits, all in.
Running costs, year 1$137,000
Anthropic API (the dominant line) + Stripe payment processing + legal + accounting + banking + SF travel to build GTM motions (two one-week trips a year; extended stay only if accepted to an incubator) + Industrious office + Claude Code + Vercel + Neon + Stytch + GitHub.
My salary, year 2 (first 6 months)$95,000
~6% inflation built into the year-2 rate. Keeps me in seat through the first half of year 2 without re-raising.
Running costs, year 2 (first 6 months)$90,000
Anthropic API ~$70K (the Y1 cohort ages into low-cost maintenance use as new signups continue) + ~$10K Stripe payment processing (2.7% + $0.30/transaction on a growing subscriber base) + ~$10K for half a year of office, legal, stack, and one SF trip.
Maker discovery seed + cushion$3,000
Everything left after the 18 months of runway costs. A small cushion for the unexpected; maker channel research is funded from the operating cash flow once monthly revenue covers monthly costs (month 12). The engineer-only path is a viable venture business on its own; entering the maker market in scale is an investor decision once engineer GTM is proven.
Total ask$500,000
Year 1 running costs — itemized
Anthropic API$111,000
Payment processing (Stripe — 2.7% + $0.30/transaction)$7,000
Legal + accounting + banking$6,500
SF travel — two one-week GTM trips$5,000
Industrious office ($332/mo × 12)$4,000
Claude Code Max ($200/mo × 12)$2,500
Stack — Vercel + Neon + Stytch + GitHub + domain$1,000
Year 1 running costs total$137,000