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Request access — admin@thecollective.icuThe Collective builds AI agents that take on a specific job a small business would otherwise pay a person for. Two agents are in production with our first paying customer. Maya, our voice leasing agent, is built and entering its alpha. We're raising $50K on a SAFE to land the first customer cohort and bring the next agents to launch.
Each agent handles a specific job a small business would otherwise hire for. Maya and Alex are in production today with our first customer. Cracyncia is in beta. Two more are in design.
The Collective isn't just a business, its a legacy project — the first agents opened the doors to more personalized agents.
That's why the work is careful. Every product we ship, every customer we sign, every milestone we hit is tied to something more permanent than a quarterly target.
"When you invest in The Collective, you're not just backing a startup. You're helping small companies and struggling franchises navigate the AI shift — businesses that need a way to lower operational costs without losing what makes them work."
That mission drives the rest: the quality of the products, the honesty of the economics, the refusal to cut corners on things that matter. The names are on the work. That changes how it gets built.
Full-stack developer building the platform end-to-end — backend, frontend, AI agent workflows, and integrations. Solo and capital-efficient by design. Every dollar raised goes to growth, not payroll.
Three reasons the math works at this stage — capital efficiency, market timing, and the gap between what AI tools promise and what they actually deliver.
Alex runs in production today on a real customer's live website. Maya's backend is fully built and entering alpha. This isn't a raise to build a product — it's a raise to distribute what already works.
Status: 1 paying customer · 2 agents in production · As of May 2026Carta's 2025 data shows AI startups command roughly 42% higher seed valuations than non-AI peers, with median pre-seed SAFE caps around $10M. We're entering at a $750K cap.
Source: Carta State of Pre-Seed 2025Solo founder, no payroll, infrastructure on usage-based pricing. Every dollar of investment lands in customer acquisition — not salaries, not office, not "fundraising consultants."
Burn: $0 payroll · Cloud + tooling onlyVoice minutes are the primary cost driver, so every plan includes a usage cap with paid overage beyond it. Below is the actual per-customer monthly margin at our current pricing and verified costs — not a projection, the real model.
Verified inputs, not estimates. Voice cost is $0.08/min (ElevenLabs) + ~$0.01/min (Twilio, from a real test call) + ~$0.02/min (LLM) = ~$0.11/min. Fixed infrastructure runs ~$93/mo total. Usage caps with $0.20/min overage keep heavy users profitable rather than a margin risk.
An AI chatbot on a website is not, by itself, defensible — the technology commoditizes every quarter. The Collective's advantage is structural, not technical. Three reasons it holds.
Competitors sell an AI chatbot as a bolt-on to a site the business already runs — or a website with no intelligence at all. The Collective builds the website and the agent as a single product, from one person, for one price. A small business gets what it needs in one decision instead of hiring a web designer and integrating a separate AI tool.
Lead product: Alex + Website bundle · $119/moA venture-backed competitor carries payroll, a sales team, and investor return targets — they cannot profitably sell a website-plus-agent bundle at this price point. The Collective can, because its only costs are infrastructure and founder time. Capital efficiency is not just a virtue here; it is a structural pricing moat at the small-business end of the market.
Solo founder · $0 payroll · usage-based infraA customer who buys the Alex bundle is not a one-product sale — they become a warm channel for Maya, and later the rest of the roster. The Collective lands a business with the easiest product and expands within an account that already trusts it. A competitor selling a single point tool has nowhere to grow. As the customer base concentrates by region, Maya's referral network compounds that advantage further.
Expansion path: Alex → Maya → the fleetOur 12-month target is $10,000 in monthly net profit. We lead with the Alex + Website bundle — the easiest sale and the highest margin (~$104/customer) — and layer Maya in behind it. At a 70/30 Alex-to-Maya mix, blended gross margin is ~$89/customer; against ~$93/month fixed costs, the $10K goal means roughly 114 paying customers.
| Metric | M1 | M2 | M3 | M4 | M5 | M6 | M7 | M8 | M9 | M10 | M11 | M12 | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| New Customers | 2 | 3 | 5 | 7 | 9 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 14 | 15 | 15 | 120 |
| Total Customers | 3 | 6 | 11 | 18 | 27 | 38 | 50 | 63 | 77 | 91 | 106 | 121 | 121 |
| Gross Margin / mo | $0.3K | $0.5K | $1.0K | $1.6K | $2.4K | $3.4K | $4.5K | $5.6K | $6.9K | $8.1K | $9.4K | $10.8K | — |
| Net Profit / mo | ($0.4K) | $0.4K | $0.9K | $1.5K | $2.3K | $3.3K | $4.4K | $5.5K | $6.8K | $8.0K | $9.3K | $10.7K | — |
Y Combinator post-money SAFE — the standard pre-seed instrument. No debt, no repayment schedule, converts to equity at the next priced round. Detailed conversion mechanics are in the brief.
Two earlier personal projects — not products, not for sale, not on the roadmap. They're where the founder learned to build multi-agent AI systems before any of it became a company.
These are personal projects, built solo and kept private — they are not part of the commercial fleet and are not for sale. They are mentioned here only because they are where the founder's experience building agent systems was earned.
A multi-agent reasoning system — several agents weighing a decision together before acting. Building it taught the founder how to orchestrate multiple agents reliably.
A real-time classification and routing system. Building it taught the cost-efficient model-routing approach the founder now applies to keep the commercial agents predictable to run.
The detailed financial model, sensitivity analysis, return scenarios, founder background, and SAFE document are sent on request to qualified investors. We share the full picture privately, not on a public page.
Always happy to walk through the products, the model, or the round in real-time. Email is fastest — usually a same-day reply.
Important Disclosures. This page is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any securities. Any offering will be made only to qualified investors pursuant to a definitive offering document and applicable exemption from registration. The financial figures shown — including revenue projections, subscriber growth, margin estimates, and break-even timing — are forward-looking statements based on internal modeling and current assumptions. They are not guarantees of future results. Actual outcomes may differ materially due to market conditions, execution risk, and factors outside our control.
Sources cited: Carta "State of Pre-Seed: 2025 in Review" (Feb 2026); Carta startup benchmarks (2025–2026). Pre-seed and AI valuation figures referenced are general market data and not specific to The Collective. Past market performance and industry-wide valuation trends are not indicative of any particular investment outcome.