Slide 11

Business Model & Revenue

Open-source core, paid enterprise features, consulting bridge. A proven playbook for developer infrastructure.

P2 Friends / Investors P4 Technical Investors
02 — The Model

The Open-Core Model

Click each ring to explore the tier.

ENTERPRISE PROFESSIONAL AG Framework Core FREE / OSS
Free / Open Source

AG Framework Core

The full attribute grammar framework: syntax definitions, AG instances, lazy tree evaluation, basic validation, and the complete authoring API. Everything you need to build working AG-based tools.

Syntax definitions AG instances Lazy evaluation Basic validation Tree construction Serialization
03 — Revenue Phases

Revenue Phases

Click each phase to expand details.

Phase 1

Foundation & Consulting

Now → 12 months

  • Revenue source: Consulting engagements ($150-300/hr)
  • Generates revenue while building the product
  • Teaches what customers actually need
  • Target: 2-3 consulting clients
Consulting is strategic, not just survival — it's customer development disguised as revenue.
Phase 2

Early Product

12 → 24 months

  • Revenue: Consulting + first paid features
  • Paid features: Compiled evaluator, advanced validation, priority support
  • Target: 10+ users, mix of free and paid
The lazy evaluator is free and good for development. The compiled evaluator is 10-100x faster and worth paying for in production.
Phase 3

Scale

24+ months

  • Revenue: Product subscriptions + enterprise deals + consulting
  • New: Cloud-hosted evaluation for CI/CD
  • New: IDE integration layer, team management
  • Target: 50+ users, enterprise contracts
Once teams build their tooling on this framework, switching cost is like switching databases.
04 — Why Open-Source?

"Why Open-Source?" — The Flywheel

OSS Adoption Community Ecosystem Lock-in Revenue INVEST IN & REPEAT
Open source isn't charity — it's the most efficient go-to-market for developer infrastructure. Every published grammar and AG increases the ecosystem value. Community contributions reduce development cost. Adoption creates the switching cost that enables monetization. The flywheel compounds: more users means more grammars, more grammars means more reasons to adopt, more adoption means more revenue to reinvest.
05 — Revenue Projections

Revenue Projection Scenarios

Year 1

$50-80K
Consulting only

Year 2

$150-250K
Consulting + early product

Year 3

$400-600K
Product-led + consulting

These are illustrative ranges. Actual numbers depend on adoption pace and market timing.

06 — Precedent

Comparable Companies

Companies that followed a similar open-core playbook. Click to expand.

Prisma

Open-source ORM for Node/TypeScript

Model: OSS core + paid cloud platform

Path: Solo creator → funded startup → $40M+ ARR trajectory

"Developer infrastructure + TS ecosystem + open-core = proven formula"

Temporal

Open-source workflow engine

Model: OSS core + paid cloud hosting

Path: Open source → $100M+ raised

"Deep infrastructure with high switching cost attracts enterprise"

Vercel

Open-source Next.js + paid platform

Model: OSS framework + paid hosting/enterprise

Path: Solo creator → $3.5B valuation

"Own the framework, monetize the platform"

Svelte / Rich Harris

Solo-created UI framework

Model: Solo creator → community → hired by Vercel

Path: Side project → industry standard → acquisition

"One person with the right tool can create massive value"

07 — Financial Profile

Key Financial Metrics

Capital Efficient

Solo founder, no office, every dollar goes to product. Low burn means long runway and high leverage on every dollar invested.

High Switching Cost

Like switching databases once adopted. Teams build grammars, validation rules, and evaluation pipelines on the framework. Moving away means rewriting everything.

Net Negative Churn Potential

Teams expand usage as they build more tools. One grammar becomes five. Development-time usage grows into CI/CD and production. Revenue per account increases over time.

Low CAC

Developer tools sell through content, community, and word-of-mouth. No enterprise sales team needed early on. The product is its own best marketing.

08 — The Key Lever

The Compiled Evaluator Is the Natural Upgrade

The lazy evaluator is free. It's good enough for development and small codebases.
The compiled evaluator is 10-100x faster. For production use — CI/CD pipelines processing millions of lines, IDE features that need sub-100ms response — it's essential.
This is the natural upgrade path: start free, grow into paid as scale increases.

Performance Comparison

Lazy Evaluator
1x
Baseline
Compiled Evaluator
10-100x
10-100x faster
Hand-Written
~optimal
Weeks of work