Where we are, and what's left to knock out.

The three things that matter this quarter

Ignore 80% of the to-do list. As partners, these three are what make us real rather than merely scalable:

1. Close the gate this week. Reading the employment agreement (IP / moonlighting / non-compete) is a 1–2 hour human-only task that blocks LLC filing and any Caris contract. It has slipped twice. It is the highest-ROI hour on the board.
2. The name is settled — Archwright. Coined, unitary, ownable; the whole brand system carried over untouched. Buy the domains, then move on. See the brand system →
3. Turn Caris from a friendship into a scheduled discovery session. The demos are ready; the only missing ingredient is a date. The case study is the whole ballgame — it's worth more than its invoice because it's what makes lead #2 possible.

The master checklist — tap an open item to mark it done

⛔ Gate — blocks everything

• SC employment agreement review — IP, moonlighting, non-compete
• CLO confirms comfort filing the LLC

Entity & money

• Name locked (Archwright) → buy domains · TX SOS / USPTO clearance
• File TX single-member LLC → EIN → business checking
• Operating agreement with partner-admission provisions (vesting, buy-in, exit)
• Consulting agreement template — with case-study rights in contract #1
• Expense tracking + quarterly tax calendar (set aside 30–40% of net)

Build queue

• Caris mirror dataset + demo script
• Six pocket demos
• This website (private, gated)
• Assessment engine — intake → Tier 1 deliverable draft
• Proposal generator — discovery notes in, scoped proposal out
• Contract & runbook templates
• The reskinning machine — schema generator, pattern seeder, script template

Caris — first client

• Schedule the Salesforce + analyst-workflow walkthrough
• Get the two open analyst job descriptions / day-in-the-life
• Sponsor's success criteria in his own words
• Procurement path + data-sensitivity constraints (HIPAA-adjacent — know what can leave their walls)
• Phase 0 (free discovery) → Phase 1 proposal

Pipeline beyond Caris

• List the warm rooms accessible in the next 90 days
• Two vendor-network conversations this quarter
• Referral ask scripted into every engagement close

First client — Caris Life Sciences

Medical-device sales. Executive mandate: prove AI/automation can absorb two open analyst roles (attrition, not layoffs). ~$2M/yr Salesforce with no intelligence layer — the bigger prize is moving from reporting to per-account next-best-action. The contact is a senior leader, a dear friend, and the future partner (stays out of ownership while Caris is a client). Engagement arc: free Phase 0 discovery → paid Tier 1 → Tier 2 PoC → retainer.

The single test that matters: not whether the "whoa" lands at Caris — it will — but whether their team stays engaged after the whoa. That is the product working or not. Everything else is downstream of that answer.

Milestones

90 days · mid-Sept Entity + bank live · name + site shipped · Caris discovery done · first paid engagement signed · contract template finalized.

6 months · Dec Caris Tier 2 delivered with measured results · written case study secured · first revenue + quarterlies filed · one more lead in pipeline.

12 months · June '27 2–3 clients · ≥1 retainer · $30K–$60K revenue (realistic nights-and-weekends range) · the playbook documented · go / grow / hold decision.

Hard constraint: 8–10 hrs/week, ceiling protected. The model must work inside that or it doesn't work. Founder hours go almost entirely to selling and teaching — the two things agents can't do.

The honest risk picture

• Crowded gold rush. Differentiation (operator credibility, the 40+ niche, the graduation incentive) is real but unproven until the Caris case study exists in writing.
• Shelf life. The chasm-escort product has a prime window of roughly now through 2029. Move now. The durable layers — clarity excavation, the assessment, operator translation — outlive the chasm; the "look how easy" layer doesn't.
• Pipeline is one friendship. The whole current pipeline is Caris. Manufacturing warm rooms isn't a later step — it's the constraint.