The Founding 20 · Launch Cohort · 20 places
Most founders confuse hiring a CMO with running marketing.
A CMO hire takes six months to ramp and costs $300–500K. An agency retainer delivers content. The board asks for pipeline. The gap between those two things is where most growth budgets disappear.
We built Tommy and Spartan because we could not find the firm that closed that gap. Two named directors, one marketing and one strategy, running as one operating model, with seven quality gates ensuring every output reaches your desk at board standard.
Corporate Advisory · Autonomous · Agentic
Recent work
Two ways to work with us
For your marketing
The Marketing OS
Tommy and Spartan as your marketing and strategy team. From ICP to campaign, shipped weekly and measured against revenue. Start with The Founding 20, a retainer, or self-serve.
See how it works →For your people
Spartan Training
AI training systems. Coach your team on their real work, up a measured ladder, and keep a process-improvement library your own staff wrote plus capability your board can see.
Explore Spartan Training →The cost of the gap
$300–500K
CMO hire
Six months to ramp. The window closes while you wait.
$5–15K/mo
Agency retainer
Delivers content. The board asks for pipeline.
90 days
The window
The Series A data room fills with activity and empties of evidence.
Marketing should compound, not pulse.
The founders who close the loop, from ICP signal to signed mandate, win the category. Everyone else fills the gap with activity.
A new kind of firm
Tommy is your marketing director, built as software.
ICP definition. Brand narrative. Content strategy. Campaign mandate, from angle-first brief to ship. Tommy does not wait to be briefed. Tommy reads the signal and activates the team.
Spartan is your strategy director, built as software.
Business model interrogation. Unit economics. Competitive positioning. Every mandate Tommy proposes, Spartan tests. Nothing moves without both co-leads aligned.
Seven quality gates. Nothing ships without passing Simon.
Audience fit, factual integrity, brand consistency, visual quality, IP protection. All deterministic, all automatic. Quality is not a human bottleneck. It is a system guarantee.
Twenty places · No risk · Now open
The Founding 20.
Twenty founding client places. Thirty days of work, delivered in full and free. You pay only at Day 30, and only if we hit the success metrics we agree together in discovery. No retainer to sign first, no risk to carry. A development partnership, not a pitch.
$0
Discovery
30-minute diagnostic. One recommended starting point, sent in writing.
Free
30-Day Engagement
Thirty days of work, delivered in full. You pay the US$15K success fee at Day 30, and only if we hit the metrics we agreed in discovery.
$5–15K/mo
Operating Retainer
44 specialists live on every mandate. Signal-to-Revenue loop running monthly.
The self-service model
Launching late July 2026
When you don’t need a partner in the room.
The Founding 20 puts a senior partner on every engagement. Not every founder needs one in the room from day one. Some want to put the same team to work themselves, the team of specialist agents that does the marketing, not a chatbot that talks about it, and pay only for what they use. From late July 2026 you can start with a free SIGNAL Assessment, our 7-pillar diagnostic, then run a self-serve trial, pick a tier, and connect your CRM. The team starts shipping.
$299/mo
Launchpad
1,000 actions / month · 4 agents · 1 project. $249/mo billed annually.
$990/mo
Growth Engine
5,000 actions / month · 11 agents · 1 project. $790/mo billed annually.
$1,990/mo
Full CMO Suite
15,000 actions / month · 44 agents · 5 projects. $1,590/mo billed annually.
$990 one-time
Strategy Sprint
A single fixed-scope engagement. Unlimited actions for the project · 8 agents. Not a subscription; buy it when you need it.
One line sets the model: the software signs the work, or a senior consultant does.
Below the line you run the team as software, from $299 a month. Above it, the Founding 20 and the retainer, you get the same team plus a partner who signs every output. Nothing sits in between, because no one should have to negotiate for half a consultant.
Apply for The Founding 20.
Twenty places. Once they're gone, the no-risk founding engagement closes. Every Founding 20 application reviewed by a senior partner within 48 hours.