Charter Partner Program
Charter Partner Program
The charter partner is the first paying customer. The relationship is designed to validate the product under real operating conditions while giving the partner meaningful advantages in exchange for the friction of being first.
This folder contains the operational materials for finding, approaching, and closing the first three charter partners.
Contents
| File | Purpose |
|---|---|
| outreach-sequence.md | Message templates for all three outreach rings |
| first-call-script.md | Full discovery and pitch script for the first call |
| pilot-terms.md | What the charter pilot includes, costs, and guarantees |
Charter Partner Offer Summary
What the partner gets:
- Actual hardware kit (badges for their field crews, BLE tags for their equipment)
- 90-day pilot at a flat fee — not a monthly subscription
- Direct founder access throughout the pilot
- Full refund if the defined success metrics are not met
- Permanent charter pricing locked in for 24 months after pilot converts to paid subscription
- Co-developed case study (used with their explicit approval only)
What Actual gets:
- First real-world validation data
- Access to crew behavior in a live operating environment
- A reference customer for prospects 2–10
- The honest answer to: does this solve the problem we think it solves?
What is NOT expected of the partner:
- Technical expertise of any kind
- Software integration work
- Involvement in hardware setup beyond a 1-hour on-site walkthrough
- Changing how their crews work — the technology should fit the crew, not vice versa
Target Partner Profile
A charter partner is a landscape management company that:
- Operates 10–50 field employees across multiple crews
- Has an owner or operations manager who feels the payroll verification problem personally — not just abstractly
- Uses manual timesheets, honor-system clocking, or foreman-reported hours as their current method
- Has had at least one payroll dispute, buddy-punch event, or job-site no-show in the past 12 months they couldn’t definitively resolve
- Is familiar enough with technology to have a smartphone and use it for work, but does not need to be technical
- Is owner-operated or has a single decision maker who can say yes
Ideal geography: Southeast US (Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina) for founder access and on-site support. Will expand after first successful pilot.
Not a fit right now:
- Companies with fewer than 3 active crews (too small to demonstrate crew-level comparison data)
- Companies already using a digital timekeeping system they are satisfied with
- National franchises or PE-backed operations requiring procurement approval
Charter Pricing
| Component | Amount |
|---|---|
| Pilot fee (flat, 90 days) | $1,500 |
| Hardware deposit (refundable at pilot end if hardware returned) | $500 |
| Monthly subscription after pilot (charter rate, locked 24 months) | $149/crew/month |
| Refund policy | Full $1,500 refund if pilot success metrics are not met |
The charter pricing reflects the real cost of the pilot — hardware, cellular data, founder time, and support. It is not a loss leader; it is the honest price for a founder-supported, hands-on prototype deployment.
Pilot Success Metrics
These are the thresholds that determine whether the refund guarantee is triggered.
| Metric | Threshold |
|---|---|
| Badge uptime | ≥ 90% of active crew days produce a valid badge record |
| GPS accuracy | ≥ 85% of arrival/departure events within 30 meters of property boundary |
| Crew coverage | ≥ 95% of deployed badges produce at least one event per active day |
| Report delivery | Customer receives a weekly crew summary without manual data entry by Actual |
| Payroll discrepancy surfaced | At least 1 verifiable discrepancy identified vs. submitted timesheets |
| Customer confidence | Customer states they would use the data to resolve a payroll dispute |
If any three of these six metrics are not met by the end of the 90-day pilot, the customer receives a full refund of the $1,500 pilot fee.
What the Founder Does During the Pilot
- Hardware ships directly to founder first; founder tests each badge before it ships to the customer
- Founder or Field Ops Coordinator (if available) conducts the on-site badge introduction with the crew
- Weekly check-in with the customer owner (15 min, phone or text)
- Real-time badge uptime monitoring; customer is notified before they notice a problem
- Full debrief at day 90: data review, metric scorecard, decision on continuation