Hyrax Marketing Budget

Where is Hyrax in our journey?

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Hyrax headcount and compensation. Carta State of Startup Compensation H2 2025 and median revenue at Series A 2025. Kruze Consulting loaded cost rates. PitchBook-NVCA and Carta Q1 2026 median round sizes. Hyrax signups from PostHog project 436309 for the 30 days to 2026-09-10, internal domains excluded. Series A payback: Bessemer State of the Cloud 2023. Series B net retention: ICONIQ 2025.

WHAT IS ALREADY COMMITTED

• Over $3M a year in salary and benefits, fully loaded

• 7 engineering and product, 1 marketing, 1 founding AE, and 4 part time GTM specialists

• Tools, media, cloud and model tokens are excluded from that figure

WHERE THAT PUTS US TODAY

Inception

$0 Raised

1 to 2 founders

No product

No revenue

Pre-seed

$1M Raised

2 to 3 people

A prototype

No revenue

Seed

$3M to $4M Raised

4 to 5 people

No product yet

No revenue

HYRAX TODAY

$8M to $10M Raised

13 people

682 signups in 30 days

23 new accounts a day

Series A

$20M+ Raised

$2.8M revenue

Growing 2x to 3x

Payback under 12 months

Series B

$50M+ Raised

$5M to $10M revenue

Growing 2x

Net retention above 110%

Our mandate: Reach $3.1M of ARR in twelve months on $856K of new money.

Hitting the $3M Series A bar in twelve months beats the twenty month median

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CRV on 24 to 30 months of runway from seed and opening the round with 12 to 18 months left. Carta and Peter Walker December 2025 on a median seed to Series A above two years and planning for 1,000 days. Bessemer State of the Cloud 2023 on 100% growth and a 1.2x burn multiple. a16z on the data room being complete before kickoff. First Round across 1,000+ rounds on four to twelve weeks of meetings. Y Combinator on six to twelve months of preparation. Full fund by fund detail in the appendix.

MILESTONES AND THE BENCHMARK EACH ONE CLEARS

Month 3

• $397K of ARR

• Activation at 30%, the level OpenView calls good

• Three consecutive months of growth, the accepted minimum

Month 6

• $979K of ARR

• Retention cohorts closed at M1, M3 and M6

• Signup to paid at 5%, the developer tools median

Month 9

• $1.8M of ARR

• Payback at 8.1 months against a 14.2 month median

• Organic above 30% of signups

Month 12

• $3.1M of ARR against a $3M median

• Burn multiple at 1.24x against a 2x ceiling

• Logo retention at 95% against 90% gross retention

RUNWAY AND THE RAISE WINDOW

Month 12

WE START RAISING

5 months

THE PROCESS RUNS

Month 18

WE MUST CLOSE BY

Month 24 to 30

RUNWAY ENDS

The median company takes twenty months and only one seed company in five arrives inside twenty four. AI companies raise nine months after monetization.

Seed investors fund founders and their vision; Series A requires proof.

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Top quartile figures as published. Bessemer State of the Cloud 2023 and State of AI 2025. ICONIQ Enterprise Five 2025 and 2023. Lightspeed Official SMB Software Benchmarking Guide, July 2023, US listed software under $12K of ACV. OpenView Product Benchmarks 2020 to 2023, up to 1,000 participants. Accel, Miles Clements. a16z Retention Is All You Need, September 2025. Craft Ventures, David Sacks. Matrix, David Skok. Fund by fund detail in the appendix.

TOP QUARTILE

Product market fit

Activation

40%

Daily over monthly users

40%

Month the retention curve flattens

Logo retention

95%

M12

Gross revenue retention

90%

M12

Net revenue retention

120%

M12

Traction and revenue

Annual recurring revenue

$4.0M

M12

ARR growth year on year

125%

M12

Free to paid on freemium

10%

CAC payback

6 mo

A repeatable way to grow

Visitor to signup

Organic share of pipeline

30%

Magic number

4.0x

LTV over CAC

M12

Burn multiple

1.0x

M12

Gross margin

80%

M12

ARR is the only line here the budget buys directly. Every other number follows from how we get there.

$3M of ARR at $30 a seat requires 8,333 paid seats over twelve months

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Pricing read live from hyrax.dev/pricing 2026-09-15. Ten paid seats per paying workspace is an assumption and is the largest single swing in the model. OpenView 2023 across roughly 1,000 product led companies puts the developer tools

subset at 10% median visitor to signup, 20% at the top quartile, and 5% signup to paid. Full thirteen rung ladder and the sensitivity are in the accompanying model.

$3,000,000

exit ARR at month 12

8,333

paid seats at $30

877

paying workspaces

17,544

signups

161,821

website visitors

HOW THE REQUIREMENT IS DERIVED

• $3,000,000 of exit ARR, divided by $360 a seat a year

• 8,333 paid seats, at ten seats a paying workspace

• 877 paying workspaces, at 95% logo retention

• 17,544 signups, at 5% signup to paid

• 9,709 of those signups from the website, at 6% conversion

• 161,821 website visitors required

WHY 6% IS ACHIEVABLE ON THIS TRAFFIC

• Developer tools convert visitors to signups at 10% median and 20% at the top quartile, so 6% sits 40% below the median

• The marketplace listing and the assistant surface deliver signups with no site visit, so the website receives intent traffic only

• The one published comparable funnel converts 0.625% of visitors, and would need 1.8M visitors for the same result

The website carries 65% of the requirement, and 6% sits below the 10% median for developer tools.

The Tier-1 VC Growth Playbook

We evaluated playbooks from the top 9 early-stage VCs and pulled the themes; this is what we found.

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a16z, Sequoia, Accel, Greylock, Bessemer, Index Ventures, First Round Capital, Y Combinator, Conviction, General Catalyst and Union Square Ventures, published 2022 to 2026. Benchmark, Founders

Fund and Kleiner Perkins publish nothing usable at this stage.

a16z Sequoia Accel Greylock Bessemer Index Ventures First Round Capital Y Combinator Conviction General Catalyst Union Square Ventures

THEME

WHAT THE FUNDS PRESCRIBE

FUNDS

Sequence

Narrow the target, build what converts, then prove one channel at a time

Who to hire

One senior generalist marketer, every specialist contracted

Channels

Paid search on job terms plus one owned channel on a real cadence

Mechanics

$100 a day to 50 conversions before scaling. A free diagnostic. The 50 named accounts

Tools

Low code pages owned by marketing, and lead tagging with real time alerts

Metrics in order

Accepted leads, pipeline, daily usage, organic share, payback, retention

Money

All performance under $1M. Then 70% core and 30% testing. Brand re-do, under $20K

Exclusions

No brand agency, no second channel early, no outbound before the target, no free trials

The next three slides cover where this playbook has already worked, what it costs and who delivers it.

The companies that reached hypergrowth built distribution into the product first

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Research dossier section D and company funding announcements; Accel 2025-05-13 and 2026-07-06; Greylock 2024-08-06 and 2022-04-06; Conviction 2024-10-08 and 2025-08-02; RethinkDB post

mortem.

CodeRabbit

$4M seed to a $16M Series A in five months

Free reviews on public repositories, two click install, and every review posted inside a stranger's pull request

Lovable

$100M revenue in eight months with 45 people

Open sourced the predecessor to 40,000 stars, building the audience before the product existed

ElevenLabs

One million users in five months

3,000 programmatic pages plus competitor pages, and a 22% affiliate commission producing 5,600 backlinks

Supabase

350% growth with virtually no salespeople

A launch every three months, each shipping the last cycle's feedback, announced as community requested

Clay

Seven years to $1M, then $1M to $100M in two

Narrowed to one segment, churned the rest, then hired that segment's most respected operator

THE THEMES ACROSS THEM, AND WHAT THE FAILURES SHOW

• Each proved one channel to exhaustion before opening a second, and each narrowed the target before increasing spend

• Snyk raised $4M against $100K of revenue on developers who would not pay, and Jasper ran strong search marketing over a thin product

None of them outspent a competitor. Each one made the product do the acquiring first, then bought reach against a target it had already proven.

The playbook costs $856K of new money

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Allocation rules: First Round 2023-10-25 and Index Ventures 2024. Brand design ceiling: Union Square Ventures 2025-01-16. Open source pledge: Accel 2024-11-11. No fund publishes a marketing

budget benchmark for a ten person company that just raised $10M, and the research file says so directly. Month by month detail is in the accompanying model.

WHERE THE MONEY GOES

YEAR ONE

WHAT IT BUYS

METRIC MOVED

Paid search

$319,266

Job terms only at $24 to $62 a conversion, never competitor terms at $218 to $825

CAC and payback

Paid social and creators

$134,351

A shareable artifact, then paid at the customer it reveals

Signups and blended CAC

Forums and communities

$140,351

Disclosed humans, a launch every quarter, maintainer sponsorship

Win rate and retention

Pages and comparison content

$115,000

The page system built once, plus competitor comparison pages

Visitor to signup

Contracted specialists

$95,000

Paid search and social, ad creative and video

Cost per signup

Brand design, once

$20,000

Logo, site and style guide, then stop

Hygiene

Tools and data

$32,400

Research, target lists, page builder, lead alerts

Measurement

Total

$856,368

Media $518,968, contractors and tools $337,400

BY QUARTER

$95,315

$193,465

$246,582

$321,006

Back weighted, because search and content are a nine to twelve month build.

Paid media of $518,968 stays below the $1M threshold, so all of it remains directed at performance. Search must reach $72 a conversion from $121 today.

The existing team plus contractors acquires a workspace for $976

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Team shape: a16z, Greylock, Accel, First Round and Index Ventures published guidance 2023 to 2025. CAC payback bands: Bessemer State of the Cloud 2023. Gross margin of 40% is the midpoint of the 30% to 50% band Cursor reports and sits between Bessemer's 25% Supernova and 60% Shooting Star cohorts. Live cost per conversion from the Hyrax Google Ads account, 2026-06-18 to 2026-09-15.

OWNER

WHAT THEY OWN

Marketer

Strategy, messaging, the site, nine channels and every contractor

Founding AE

Seat expansion, product qualified accounts and the largest accounts

Engineering and product

Four of the nine channels: install path, assistant surface, activation, artifact

Four part time leaders

The 50 named accounts, portfolio introductions, design partners, on camera

Contracted specialists

One per channel test, plus creative, the page system, community and forums

Never contracted

A brand agency, or the strategy and messaging themselves

WHAT THE MONEY RETURNS

$976

cost to acquire a paying workspace

$1,440

the ceiling at 40% gross margin

8.1 months

payback, against a target of twelve

$0.28

of spend per $1 of new ARR

At 40% gross margin the ceiling is $1,440 a workspace and $72 a signup. Blended cost per signup of $49 clears it; paid search at $121 today does not, which is why job terms carry the channel.

The ask

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All plan figures from the accompanying model. Comparison points: SVB via Carta on a $3M median ARR at Series A; Forth & Scale 2025 across 372 companies on $177K median ARR per employee at this stage and $247K at the top quartile;

burn multiple of payroll plus media over net new ARR against the 2x underwriting ceiling; Accel 2022-12-09; Greylock 2025-08-12.

$3,104,663

exit ARR run rate

8,624

paid seats

8.1 mo

CAC payback

63%

organic share of signups

$0.28

spend per $1 of ARR

MEASURE

PLAN

TARGET

Exit ARR

$3.1M

$2.8M median

Signup to paid

Visitor to signup

Organic share of signups

63%

above 30%

CAC payback

8.1 months

under 12

Logo retention

95%

Burn multiple

1.24x

under 2x

ARR per employee

$239K

$177K median

WHAT WOULD BREAK IT

• Seats per paying workspace lands at five, which doubles the funnel

• Gross margin falls below 30%, which pushes payback past twelve months

• Activation stays below 20%, which no channel can compensate for

Delivery rests on one paid channel proven inside three months and four compounding channels carried by engineering time. Payback holds at eight months on a 40% margin.

Andreessen Horowitz

Retention Is All You Need. Santiago Rodriguez and Alex Immerman. September 10 2025. Hundreds of AI companies, benchmarks drawn from dozens above $1M of ARR.

METRIC

THRESHOLD

MONTH

Retention must be rebased

From Month 0 to Month 3

Acquisition phase

M0 to M3. AI tourists sign up and churn inside it

Retention phase

M3 to M6 or M9. The curve should flatten from M3

Expansion phase

M9 onward

The ratio that predicts the rest

M12 divided by M3

A strong M12 over M3

Leads to long term net dollar retention above 100%

Why M3 and not M0

M3 is the true customer base after tourist churn

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Accel

Control Your Growth, Control Your Future. Miles Clements.

METRIC

THRESHOLD

MONTH

Organic inbound share of pipeline

Above 30% is excellent

Daily over monthly users

Above 40% is elite

Daily over monthly users

14% is the SaaS average

Daily over monthly users

30% is the SaaS 90th percentile

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Bessemer Venture Partners

State of the Cloud 2023. State of AI 2025, twenty AI companies, August 2025. Scaling to $100 Million, Bessemer Atlas.

METRIC

THRESHOLD

MONTH

ARR, year one

$3M Shooting Star. $40M Supernova

Revenue growth

75%+ good. 100%+ better. 125%+ best

Net revenue retention

100% good. 110% better. 120%+ best

Gross revenue retention

70% to 80% is acceptable for SMB cloud businesses

Logo retention

Above 85% good. Above 90% better. 95%+ best

Gross margin

65% to 70% average at any maturity. Middle 50% runs 60% to 80%

Gross margin, AI native

60% Shooting Star. 25% Supernova, often negative

CAC payback

12 to 18 months good. 6 to 12 better. 0 to 6 best

Burn multiple

1.2x at 100% growth

Efficiency score

Net new ARR over net burn. Under 0.5x good. 0.5 to 1.5x better. 1.5x+ best

ARR per FTE

$164K Shooting Star. $1.13M Supernova

Runway at the raise

12 months good. 18 better. 24+ best

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ICONIQ Growth

The ICONIQ Enterprise Five, 2025 scorecard. Enterprise Five 2023. Scaling SaaS: Forging Excellence Through Fundamentals.

METRIC

THRESHOLD

MONTH

YoY ARR growth

515% top quartile at $1M to $10M of ARR. 485% in the 2024 scorecard

Net dollar retention

110% to 120%

Gross dollar retention

Above 90% for top quartile, from churn below 10% at any scale

Net magic number

Above 1.0x for top quartile at any scale

Net magic number, product led companies

2.0x to 4.0x for top quartile

LTV over CAC

Above 6x for top quartile

CAC payback

Below 20 months for top quartile

Time to scale, AI native

Compressed 2x to 3x against traditional SaaS

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Scale Venture Partners

Benchmarking Startup Growth and Burn. Scale Studio, several hundred private and public SaaS companies.

METRIC

THRESHOLD

MONTH

Burn multiple at $0M to $1M of ARR

3.4 average

Burn multiple at $2.5M to $5M of ARR

Around 1.8 for top quartile growth

Burn multiple across the full dataset

1.6 average. $1.60 burned per $1 of net new ARR

Growth at $1M of ARR

50% is venture death

Why band matters

Growth rates are size dependent and only comparable within an ARR band

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CRV

Series A Metrics VCs Expect in 2026, March 31 2026. Startup Runway: How to Calculate It, Extend It and Time Your Raise.

METRIC

THRESHOLD

MONTH

ARR for a competitive round

$2M to $5M

Median revenue at Series A in 2025

$2.5M, around 75% above 2021

Net revenue retention

100% baseline. 110% to 120% competitive. 120%+ premium

Net revenue retention, top quartile at $1M to $3M of ARR

94%

Runway at seed

18 to 24 months

Runway when the round opens

12 to 18 months remaining

Start tracking metrics

12 to 18 months before the raise

Seed to Series A, recent cohorts

20 to 26 months

AI valuation premium at Series A

38% in 2025

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Craft Ventures

The Burn Multiple. David Sacks. April 23 2020.

METRIC

THRESHOLD

MONTH

Burn multiple under 1x

Amazing

Burn multiple 1x to 1.5x

Great

Burn multiple 1.5x to 2x

Good

Burn multiple 2x to 3x

Suspect

Burn multiple over 3x

Bad

Expected at seed

Around 3x

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Emergence Capital

Beyond Benchmarks 2025. The New Language of Startup Performance.

METRIC

THRESHOLD

MONTH

ARR, year one at Series A, AI native

$0 to $3M or $4M in the first year of monetizing

ARR growth, AI native median

100%

ARR growth, traditional SaaS median

23%

Burn multiple

Under 1x at the median

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Y Combinator

The Series A Guide. Built from work with 190 YC companies.

METRIC

THRESHOLD

MONTH

ARR range they have seen funded

$200K to $9M

Seed companies that raise a Series A

Around 30%

Preparation starts

6 to 12 months before the raise

Runway trigger to reassess

9 to 12 months remaining

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