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, 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

EKIM AI Murfee AI EkkoSense

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 · Launch pricing · Now open

The Founding 20.

Twenty founding client places. Direct access to a senior partner on every engagement. One-time launch pricing. Every application reviewed within 48 hours.

$0

Discovery

30-minute diagnostic. One recommended starting point, sent in writing.

$15K

GTM Foundation

30-day sprint. Six deliverables. ICP, outbound, pipeline reporting. Yours to keep.

$5–15K/mo

Operating Retainer

50 specialists live on every mandate. Signal-to-Revenue loop running monthly.

Apply for The Founding 20.

Twenty places. Once gone, standard pricing applies. Every Founding 20 application reviewed by a senior partner within 48 hours.