What a Founding Member actually gets (and why we capped it at 25)
Four tiers, locked pricing, direct founder access, and a hard cap. Here's what's behind the Founding Member program.
The Founding Member program isn’t a marketing line. It’s an operational decision: we cap the number of customers we can serve deeply at 25, and we offer those 25 a deal we won’t repeat at scale.
This is what’s actually inside.
Why a cap
Most software companies want as many customers as they can land. Simbotix wants 25 deeply-served customers more than it wants 250 partially-served ones — at least for the founding cohort.
The reason is calendar arithmetic. With our current operating shape (small team, high-touch delivery, founders involved in every relationship), we can serve roughly 25 businesses with the depth that makes the relationship worth recommending. Past that count, the math forces a trade: either the team grows (and the price has to absorb that), or the depth drops.
We picked depth. The cap is the consequence.
It also means: if you become a Founding Member, you’re not a customer in a queue. You’re one of 25 relationships we maintain at hands-on level for as long as you stay.
The four tiers
Pioneer — entry tier. Best for businesses just starting their move off SaaS, with a focused initial scope (one system, basic hosting, a small set of automations). Includes one pre-built or lightly-customized vertical system, basic managed hosting, and a defined number of workflows.
Builder — the most common tier. For businesses ready to migrate their primary operations stack (CRM, accounting, project management, customer comms) onto an owned foundation. More compute, more automation budget, more direct founder time.
Visionary — for businesses replacing significant parts of their existing stack and adopting AI workflows or BTC payments as part of the transition. Includes broader hosting, larger app catalog access, and dedicated infrastructure where it matters.
Legend — top tier. For businesses going all-in on the umbrella ecosystem — multi-brand deployments, custom development, full AI workforce integration, priority everything. Reserved for partnerships where Simbotix becomes the customer’s primary operations platform.
Specific pricing per tier lives on the Founding Members page. Three things are true across all of them:
- Pricing is locked. Whatever tier you sign at, that price stays for as long as you remain active. Future price increases — including ones driven by stack changes — don’t apply to Founding Members.
- Bitcoin discount. USD pricing is the headline; pay in Bitcoin / Lightning and the same package costs 40% less.
- No per-user surcharges, ever. What you pay at sign-up is what you pay at 5 employees, 50, or 500.
What’s actually included (across tiers)
Every Founding Member, regardless of tier, gets:
- Direct founder access — not a support ticket, not an account manager. The people building the company are the people you talk to about your implementation.
- Implementation included — we don’t charge extra for setup, configuration, or migration. The monthly fee covers it.
- All five brand surfaces — your subscription gives you access across the ecosystem. Need a SystemZ vertical product? Already in. Need to add an AppZ marketplace app to your environment? Already in (within tier limits). Want to wire up automation via BotZ? Already in.
- The 30+ open-source app catalog — every Founding Member can request any app from our marketplace; we deploy it into their isolated environment.
- Managed everything — patches, backups, SSL, monitoring, upgrade paths. Operational layer is ours.
- Migration support — moving from a SaaS or hyperscaler cloud is part of the engagement, not a separate project.
What you don’t get:
- A per-seat surcharge.
- A future price increase imposed unilaterally.
- A “you’ve outgrown your plan” conversation in year 3.
- Vendor lock-in. Your data is exportable on demand.
Why the program exists at all
Two reasons:
One: the businesses that join early help us shape what the rest of the products become. Founding Members aren’t beta testers — the systems are production-grade — but they’re the ones whose specific needs influence which doctypes, which workflow templates, and which marketplace apps we prioritize next. That input is genuinely valuable, and the program structure pays for it in locked pricing and depth of access.
Two: to make the umbrella ecosystem self-sustaining, we need a critical mass of customers who span multiple brands and bring real-world workloads. 25 such customers gets us there. They’re the proof points and the customer base from which everything else grows.
Who shouldn’t be a Founding Member
This list matters as much as the inclusion list:
- Businesses still pre-revenue. Founding Members are for operating businesses with paying customers. We’re not a stage for a stage-pre-validation team.
- Businesses that want a one-shot project. The program is a relationship, not a transaction. If you want a single migration or a fixed-scope build with no ongoing element, talk to us about a project engagement instead.
- Businesses who refuse to leave a specific SaaS for non-cost reasons. If you’re attached to a particular vendor’s UI and don’t want to migrate off, the Founding Member program isn’t a fit. We’d rather decline than under-deliver.
- Businesses who want to negotiate the structure. Tiers are tiers; locked pricing is locked pricing. The deal is consistent across all 25 founders.
Slot status
Pioneer / Builder / Visionary / Legend — slot counts and remaining availability are visible on the Founding Members page.
We update that page whenever a slot fills. If you’re considering it, the page is the canonical source of truth on what’s left.
What happens after the 25
Once all 25 slots fill, the program closes for new sign-ups. Existing Founding Members keep their terms.
After that, we move to the standard tier structure with regular pricing. The deal is materially different — same products, same underlying philosophy, different terms.
If owning your stack matters to you and the math we’ve shown elsewhere already adds up — the Founding Member tier is the cheapest way you’ll ever access the ecosystem.