Financial

SEND NO Never Fuller Demo DID +1 (650) 476-2005 only Web render · leads redacted

At a glance

Pricing tiers, per-minute cost stack, unit economics, margins, usage guardrails.

Updated 2026-09-20 07:12 PT · full detail in the sections below — jump straight to one:

1. Pricing (decided)
2. Per-minute cost stack (default config)
3. Per-call and fixed costs
4. Margin at $199/mo
5. Usage guardrails
6. Startup costs to customer #1
7. Two-line summary

Details

2026-09-19 (PST) · Sage@miniPC · LIVING Derived from: cost-model.md (Phase 0 step 0.5; Retell + Twilio public pricing fetched 2026-09-19). Estimates, not quotes — re-check before any pricing change.

Standing locks: no purchases without Barry · demo DID +1 (650) 476-2005 only.

1. Pricing (decided)

Tier	Price	Note
National	$199/mo	The pitch price: "one extra completed job pays the month"
Bay Area	$249/mo	Density/willingness premium
Test city	$99/mo	Pilot only — margin still fine (see §4)
Floor	$59/mo	Never discount below this, anywhere

No free trial. Voice only is priced; text assistant / web app / website are "contact us" until Barry sets the menu (SELLING-SYSTEM gap G7).

2. Per-minute cost stack (default config)

Component	Choice	$/min
Retell voice infra	required	0.055
TTS	Retell platform voices (not ElevenLabs at $0.040)	0.015
LLM	small tier ($0.008; premium option $0.025)	0.008–0.025
Telephony	US via Retell/Twilio	0.015
Total		$0.093–0.110

Planning number: $0.12/min (headroom for add-ons at +$0.005/min each and price drift). Speech-to-speech realtime models ($0.07–0.38/min extra) are NOT in the plan — the flow-based agent is fine for intake.

3. Per-call and fixed costs

Average after-hours intake call: 3 min (range 2–4) → ≈ $0.36/call at planning rate ($0.28 typical).
10-min max call duration on every agent — bounds ramblers and the two-AI-talk failure mode.
Fixed per customer per month: Retell DID $2.00 + Twilio-direct toll-free SMS ($2.15/mo + ~$0.02 per 2-segment owner summary) ≈ $4.15/mo. Never Retell SMS at $20/mo — Twilio direct is ~10x cheaper at our volumes.
Concurrency: first 20 concurrent calls free — a non-issue until ~20+ customers.

4. Margin at $199/mo

Calls/mo	Minutes	Variable (@$0.12/min + SMS)	Fixed	Total cost	Margin	Margin %
30	90	$11.40	$4.15	≈ $16	$183	92%
100	300	$38.00	$4.15	≈ $42	$157	79%
300	900	$114.00	$4.15	≈ $118	$81	41%

Break-even at $199: ~1,620 answered min/mo (~540 three-minute calls) — comfortable.
At the $99 test-city price: 100 calls/mo ≈ $42 cost → $57 margin (58%) — fine for pilot.
Customer value anchor: 33 booked jobs/mo × $500 avg = $16,500 captured vs $199 cost (≈ 82× before the first invoice).

5. Usage guardrails

Alert at 300 answered minutes/customer/month (matches ToS fair-use line) → fleet alert to Barry, then a pricing conversation — never a silent overage bill.
Hard cap: 10-min max call duration on every agent (set at provisioning).
Monthly cost-per-customer line in the daily report once customer #1 exists.

6. Startup costs to customer #1

Production DID: ~$2–5/mo (Barry authorizes purchase — money rule).
Stripe + Twilio accounts: $0 to open (Barry identity/bank; Batch #1).
Toll-free verification: fast path, low cost; A2P 10DLC: registration fees, needs entity/EIN — started in Batch #1, runs in background.
Everything else (agents, hosting, monitoring) rides existing infrastructure ≈ $0 incremental.

7. Two-line summary

100 calls/mo costs ≈ $42; margin $157 (79%) at $199. A heavy shop at 300 calls still clears $81 (41%) — pricing is safe with the 10-min cap + 300-min alert.

Web-version note: specific lead business and owner names are redacted here to “Lead A–K (metro, vertical)” labels. Full names live in the private repo registry (agents/leads/leads-data.json) and the live leads pipeline.

Generated 2026-09-20 07:12 PT from receptionist/docs/financial.md by bin/publish-docs.py. Republish: python3 ~/apex/bin/publish-docs.py then rsync docs/ per COS-DEPLOY.md. Never Fuller.