This page contains no revenue charts, because we are pre-revenue-scale, and no projections, because we do not publish numbers we cannot defend. What it contains instead: the thesis, the exact metrics we run the company on, and how we govern ourselves while small.
[ 01 ]The thesis
Every durable ecosystem began as one narrow product that was unusually good. Our wedge is Y0, a cognitive runtime for individual professionals. It must prove three things — people return, people pay, and we can reach them at a cost we survive — before a second product exists.
The platform is then extraction, not speculation: the context graph and trust kernel become surfaces the day a second product needs them. Each later lane inherits the previous lane's assets — context, distribution, and a trust ledger in credit — so it enters cheaper than any cold competitor can. That inheritance chain is the investment case. It compounds slowly, which is why this page is titled what it is.
[ 02 ]How we measure ourselves
We publish the definitions now so that when we publish the numbers, no one has to ask what was counted.
RET.W8
Week-eight retained usage
definition
Share of a signup cohort that ran Y0 this week, eight weeks after starting, with zero paid or push re-acquisition.
why it matters
The only number that cannot be bribed. Signups respond to launch posts; week-eight unprompted return responds only to whether the product is genuinely useful. The height of the cohort plateau is, as far as we are concerned, the value of the company.
PBK.MO
Payback period, months
definition
Months of contribution margin required to recover the blended cost of acquiring one retained user — retained, not signed up.
why it matters
CAC is a tax our strategy assesses on us. A lengthening payback is the market invoicing us for weak differentiation, and we want that invoice on the dashboard, not buried in a marketing deck.
RUN.UW
Runs per user per week
definition
Median count of runtime sessions per retained user per week, measured on the retained base only.
why it matters
Retention says they came back; frequency says the habit is deepening. This is the leading indicator that the context graph is compounding — each run teaches the runtime something the next run uses.
TRS.INC
Trust incidents
definition
Count of confirmed events where data was read outside a user-initiated task, outside a granted scope, or over a read budget. Target: zero, permanently.
why it matters
Our entire lane sequence assumes trust earned in lane one funds entry to lane two. One incident re-prices every future lane. This KPI has no acceptable non-zero value and no grading curve.
[ 03 ]Funding posture
Mynd Labs is currently bootstrapped. We would consider a seed round — but only one sized to the wedge, from investors who have read the gates and accept that the sequence is not negotiable for a term sheet. Capital that arrives demanding lane-skips is more expensive than no capital at all.
Our capital discipline is constitutional, not seasonal: every dollar spent must generate evidence that justifies the next. Paid spend is instrumentation, not fuel — we buy just enough traffic to test positioning, then turn it off. Headcount follows retention proof, never precedes it. The burn is small because the team is, and that is by design, not by deprivation.
[ what we sell investors ]
Not a projection.
A sequence with gates,
and the discipline to wait at them.
[ 04 ]Governance
Founder-controlled, founder-accountable
One person writes the specs and signs the disclosures. Concentration of control is a fact of our stage, so we pair it with concentration of accountability — everything we publish carries a name.
The gates bind the insiders too
Lane-entry gates — retention floors, margin coverage, ledger balance — are published. Skipping one is visible to anyone with the URL, which is the point: drift should require a public act of betrayal.
No metric theatre
We do not report cumulative signups, annualized single months, or community size. Anything we report, we define first — the definitions above are the contract.
Bad news travels in writing
Misses are documented in the same founder letters as wins, in the same format, at the same cadence. The record at /blog and /newsroom is the audit trail.
[ 05 ]Founder letters
Until there are financial statements, the letters are the disclosures. Strategy, misses, and the reasoning behind both.
[ 06 ]Reach the company
The founder reads this inbox. Tell us which gate you would tighten — it is a better opener than asking for the deck.