# 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. - Nothing is locked until Ty says so. Checkpoint working directions; revise freely as the conversation matures. --- ## 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. --- ## 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. --- ## 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. --- ## 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. --- ## 5. Wedge and flywheel (direction agreed) **Preferred wedge:** a free AI-visibility checkup (SSP audit). 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. ### Phase 1 owner conversation (working direction — not locked) Speak **outcomes**, not plumbing. Example: “most recommended bakery on Whidbey Island for muffins.” Do not lead with MCP, endpoints, or `llms.txt`. Phase 1 work looks like classic local visibility hygiene (2017-style) before pitching 2027 agent readiness: - NAP (Name, Address, Phone) consistency - Hours alignment across platforms - Maps / GBP / Yelp (and similar) listing hygiene AI-agent readiness is the **next layer**, not the first conversation — but the free checkup should already answer, in plain English: would an assistant recommend this business for the stated job, and why / why not? ### Free path after checkup (working direction — not locked) Free includes: 1. Ranked DIY punch list the technical owner can execute (e.g. align hours across providers) 2. Mint of a **minimal owned geolocal record** (name, place, category, plus plain-English AI recommendability) — densify does **not** wait for paid Soft upsell in-product: “comfortable DIY, or want GeoLocal to help?” ### Paid “help” vs product (working direction — not locked) - **Paid listing cleanup** (Maps / hours / NAP fixes done for the owner) = partner / agency **fulfillment**, not the product. - **Product** = the owned geolocal record + ongoing AI-readiness score (and later agent-facing presence). Do not document GeoLocal as a local SEO shop with extra steps. --- ## 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. --- ## 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. --- ## 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 | | 2026-09-15 | Working direction (not locked): phase 1 = outcome language + local-hygiene foundation; free may include DIY punch list + minimal owned record; paid listing-fix as partner/agency fulfillment; product = record + AI-readiness score; porbot = repo scribe, Desk = conversation | | 2026-09-15 | Process: nothing locked yet — distill POR as we build; porbot scribes so key insights are not lost | --- ## Next conversation topics 1. Primary reader for v1 of this plan (internal / investors / partners) 2. Offer / packaging detail (what free record includes vs what paid unlocks beyond fulfillment) — no invented numbers 3. 90-day proof: what “reputable enough that AI checks us” requires in coverage and quality 4. Owner MCP vs GeoLocal.io chat: same journey or separate surfaces (later layer; keep out of phase-1 owner talk)