Checkpoint working business plan on planning-rev2
Capture mid-stream decisions (north star intent, owner-first buyer, agent-mediated discovery path, free checkup flywheel) so conversation progress is durable on the branch.
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# geolocal.io — Business Plan (working draft)
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**Branch:** `planning-rev2`
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**Status:** In progress — conversation checkpoint, not final
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**Purpose:** One durable place for the clean plan. Existing docs on `main` are raw material; this file is what we iterate.
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**How we work this file**
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- Checkpoint here after every few solid decisions (or when a phrase must not be lost).
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- Prefer revising this over spawning parallel strategy docs.
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- Mark unknowns as open questions. Do not invent market numbers here.
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---
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## 1. North star (wording still open)
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**Intent (stable):** Enable local businesses to be discovered and recommended by AI assistants.
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Still wordsmithing the exact sentence. The job does not change while the phrasing does.
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---
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## 2. What the company is
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Infrastructure — not a consumer destination.
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- Host structured business truth so AI assistants can discover, understand, and recommend local businesses (services and local retail with real-world presence).
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- Give the business a simple way to point at that truth (no servers for them to run).
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- Orchestrate booking / payment / related partners where needed; do not rebuild Calendly or Shopify.
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- Stay invisible to end consumers; win by being useful to agents and trustworthy to owners.
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**Not:** another Yelp/Google for human browsing attention.
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---
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## 3. Who we serve
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**Primary customer:** the business owner.
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By extension:
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- Someone in their organization acting for them
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- A partner they already trust (agency, SEO, chamber, tourism board)
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Partners are a **path to the owner**, not a different product.
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---
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## 4. How demand shows up (two moments)
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1. **Presence for other AIs** — When a consumer’s assistant asks for a local plumber / salon / store, structured geolocal data can be consulted and acted on.
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2. **Owner (or their AI) asks for help** — Emerging path: “How do we help our business be discovered by AI?” Geolocal should invest in scenarios where the owner’s own AI can diagnose and set that up — not only human sales through agencies.
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Same north star; different moments of truth.
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---
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## 5. Wedge and flywheel (direction agreed)
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**Preferred wedge:** a free AI-visibility checkup.
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Why:
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- Shows immediate value / need
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- Builds critical mass
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- Small free actions amplify adoption
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**Long-term reputation bet:** become so useful and dense that AI systems default to checking geolocal for local-class queries — analogous to how they lean on Yelp or Foursquare today.
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**Strategic read (not pricing gimmick):** free usefulness → coverage → agent trust → more local queries resolved via geolocal → more owners want in → denser graph.
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### Open — first free win after checkup
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Unresolved on purpose (checkpoint before answering):
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- **A.** Free checkup *plus* a small durable win (e.g. basic presence live, structured hours, minimal genre pack)
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- **B.** Diagnosis only, with a clear line on what paid unlocks
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Lean toward **A** if the goal is critical mass and “AI knows to check geolocal,” because empty scores do not densify the graph. Final call: Ty.
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---
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## 6. Business plan audience (still open)
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Clarify what this document must optimize for first:
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- Internal clarity (founders / operators)
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- Investors
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- Partners / channels
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Can serve more than one later; pick the primary reader for v1 structure.
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---
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## 7. Source material (do not duplicate blindly)
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Treat as inputs, not competing sources of truth while this draft is live:
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- `NORTH_STAR.md`
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- `docs/strategy/CANONICAL_STRATEGY.md`
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- `docs/gtm/`, `docs/investors/`, `docs/product/`
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- `docs/archive/` — historical only
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If something here conflicts with `CANONICAL_STRATEGY.md`, resolve on purpose in a later pass — do not silently fork forever.
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---
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## 8. Checkpoint log
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| When | What landed |
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| :--- | :--- |
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| 2026-09-15 | North star intent; owner-first buyer; partners as extension; agent-mediated “get discovered” path; free checkup wedge; reputation / critical-mass flywheel; open question on free durable win vs diagnosis-only |
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---
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## Next conversation topics
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1. Decide free win after checkup (A vs B above)
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2. Primary reader for v1 of this plan
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3. Offer / packaging (free vs paid) without inventing numbers
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4. 90-day proof: what “reputable enough that AI checks us” requires in coverage and quality
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