# geolocal.io — Business Plan (working draft)

**Branch:** `planning-rev2`  
**Status:** In progress — conversation checkpoint, not final  
**Purpose:** One durable place for the clean plan. Existing docs on `main` are raw material; this file is what we iterate.

**How we work this file**
- Checkpoint here after every few solid decisions (or when a phrase must not be lost).
- Prefer revising this over spawning parallel strategy docs.
- Mark unknowns as open questions. Do not invent market numbers here.

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## 1. North star (wording still open)

**Intent (stable):** Enable local businesses to be discovered and recommended by AI assistants.

Still wordsmithing the exact sentence. The job does not change while the phrasing does.

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## 2. What the company is

Infrastructure — not a consumer destination.

- Host structured business truth so AI assistants can discover, understand, and recommend local businesses (services and local retail with real-world presence).
- Give the business a simple way to point at that truth (no servers for them to run).
- Orchestrate booking / payment / related partners where needed; do not rebuild Calendly or Shopify.
- Stay invisible to end consumers; win by being useful to agents and trustworthy to owners.

**Not:** another Yelp/Google for human browsing attention.

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## 3. Who we serve

**Primary customer:** the business owner.

By extension:
- Someone in their organization acting for them
- A partner they already trust (agency, SEO, chamber, tourism board)

Partners are a **path to the owner**, not a different product.

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## 4. How demand shows up (two moments)

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.
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.

Same north star; different moments of truth.

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## 5. Wedge and flywheel (direction agreed)

**Preferred wedge:** a free AI-visibility checkup.

Why:
- Shows immediate value / need
- Builds critical mass
- Small free actions amplify adoption

**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.

**Strategic read (not pricing gimmick):** free usefulness → coverage → agent trust → more local queries resolved via geolocal → more owners want in → denser graph.

### Open — first free win after checkup

Unresolved on purpose (checkpoint before answering):

- **A.** Free checkup *plus* a small durable win (e.g. basic presence live, structured hours, minimal genre pack)
- **B.** Diagnosis only, with a clear line on what paid unlocks

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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## 6. Business plan audience (still open)

Clarify what this document must optimize for first:
- Internal clarity (founders / operators)
- Investors
- Partners / channels

Can serve more than one later; pick the primary reader for v1 structure.

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## 7. Source material (do not duplicate blindly)

Treat as inputs, not competing sources of truth while this draft is live:

- `NORTH_STAR.md`
- `docs/strategy/CANONICAL_STRATEGY.md`
- `docs/gtm/`, `docs/investors/`, `docs/product/`
- `docs/archive/` — historical only

If something here conflicts with `CANONICAL_STRATEGY.md`, resolve on purpose in a later pass — do not silently fork forever.

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## 8. Checkpoint log

| When | What landed |
| :--- | :--- |
| 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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## Next conversation topics

1. Decide free win after checkup (A vs B above)
2. Primary reader for v1 of this plan
3. Offer / packaging (free vs paid) without inventing numbers
4. 90-day proof: what “reputable enough that AI checks us” requires in coverage and quality