We diagnose the three leaks AI founders almost never see: revenue priced on compute instead of value, AI-tourist churn inflating your logo count, and inference costs quietly eating your gross margin — to the dollar. Insight in hours, not weeks of discovery calls. Start free: a 2-minute Revenue Leak Snapshot sent to your inbox.
Median gross churn across early-stage AI startups sits around 43% — driven largely by "AI tourists" who try once, never commit, and quietly deflate your cohort. Investors now look past the logo count to which revenue is actually durable.
Source: a16z AI benchmarks 2025 · Bessemer State of the Cloud 2025
EU AI Act, NIST AI-RMF, and AI-governance gaps don't block you from selling — they block you from closing enterprise deals. We map which gap is parking which deal. Not an audit. Not a certification.
This is a readiness mapping exercise: we identify which governance or compliance gap is holding up which category of enterprise contract, and what you would need to address it. We do not certify you, we do not make you compliant, and we do not replace a specialist compliance consultant.
Included in your $450 Starter. Specialist AI governance and compliance consultants charge $15k–$50k for this scoping engagement alone — we surface the deal-blocking gaps in the same diagnostic. The scope we deliver is a map of which gaps exist and which enterprise deals they are parking. Actual compliance remediation is executed by your legal counsel or a specialist consultant; what we give you is the roadmap they need to start.
One-time. No retainer, no meetings. Start free with the Revenue Leak Snapshot. The $450 Starter is flat at any size; the full diagnostic is leak-anchored and follows the higher of your ARR or headcount — each tier lands at roughly 0.5% of what an AI startup your size is typically bleeding.
Priced to the value on the table. Your tier follows the higher of your ARR or headcount, confirmed at intake — so a larger company never buys a smaller tier. Each full-diagnostic tier is leak-anchored at roughly 0.5% of the revenue an AI startup your size is typically bleeding: Growth $9,000 ≈ 0.5% of the $1.35M–$2.25M you are likely leaking. The bigger the company, the deeper the pass and the more we recover. $50M+ ARR or 200+ people → direct enterprise scope.
Not a generic GTM lifecycle. The 3 most painful frameworks below are the exact questions your next term sheet is priced on. Your $450 Starter pins these 5; the full $4,500 Diagnostic runs all 18.
The five above are the sharpest for AI founders. They sit inside an 18-framework revenue system — 14 core revenue frameworks plus 4 AI signature frameworks. = the five your $450 Starter targets first.
Four inputs, one estimate. Not a substitute for the full diagnostic — a directional preview from AI startup benchmarks.
These are the five revenue leaks we find most often — and quantify, to the dollar — in the AI diagnostic.
Charging per token or per seat while the product removes a $90K analyst or a $200K agency retainer. The gap between compute cost and value delivered is almost always $200K–$600K a year.
High sign-up counts hide two very different customers: committed users who embed the product, and curious "tourists" who tried once and left. When tourists churn at ~43%, the retention number looks like a product problem. It isn't.
AI-native gross margins slide 8–15 points on inference and model spend — quietly turning a SaaS-grade business into a services-grade one. The ~45% AI-native median is the investor floor.
The most common AI go-to-market failure: selling to the technical champion who loves the demo, not the economic owner of the cost you remove. Wrong buyer means longer cycles, lower ACV, and a strong product that looks like a weak business.
The benchmark every term sheet is now priced on is 110%+ net revenue retention. Below that, growth is subsidised by new logo acquisition — and investors discount it heavily at the Series A and beyond.
From free scorecard to the full $4,500 diagnostic, the path is identical. Only the depth scales with the price.
5 questions for the free scorecard, 18 for the full Founder diagnostic. 5–15 minutes. No call required, ever.
18 frameworks anchored to your AI firmographics (stage, ARR, pricing model, inference spend, governance posture). Cited 2025-26 AI benchmarks. Dollar-quantified findings where your data allows; AI governance gaps mapped directionally to deal categories.
Board-grade PDF 6-hour VIP delivery — including the AI governance readiness map for EU AI Act & NIST AI-RMF. Depth scales by tier. Async, async, async.
A real preview of a 22-page Founder diagnostic — cited benchmarks, dollar-quantified findings, pricing-model verdict, AI-tourist cohort split, inference-margin teardown. No fluff.
Download the full sample report (PDF) ↓
Every comparable below is a real public price for the same category of deliverable. We sit below the floor of every one.
| The traditional alternative | What it costs (2025-26) | Intake Review |
|---|---|---|
| AI-GTM advisor / fractional (hourly) | $5,000 - $15,000 | $450 Starter |
| AI governance / compliance readiness consultant | $15,000 - $50,000+ | Included in $450 Starter |
| Boutique AI revenue diagnostic | $20,000 - $25,000 | $4,500 Founder |
| Fractional CRO / GTM lead retainer | $9,000 - $25,000 / month | $9,000 Growth |
| McKinsey / BCG / Bain engagement | $1.2M+ (8 weeks) | $18,000 Scale |
We say no to roughly 1 in 4 inbound requests. Here is why.
A report you can't act on is just a PDF. So your diagnostic isn't finished when we hit send — it's finished when it earns a place on your desk. If a finding doesn't hold up, a number needs sharpening, or you're missing an input to make it precise, we rework it for free until it's something you'd actually move on. No refund-and-run: we keep going until it's useful to you.
Used by SaaS companies at your stage to identify hidden revenue leakage.
Every dollar figure and ratio in our diagnostic is anchored to a public, verifiable source. Primary references:
a16z AI benchmarks 2025 · Bessemer State of the Cloud 2025 · OpenView AI pricing report 2025 · Sequoia AI market analysis 2025 · ChartMogul SaaS retention 2025 · Software Equity Group AI index 2025