Decision
- The brain service is named the Company Brain. The install rung is the Company Brain install; the retainer is unchanged in shape and price ($2,495/mo). “Hockey Stick install” is rejected as the service name but kept as sales language (see options).
- List price holds at $12,500 base plus the add-on rate card, and the floor is PUBLISHED on the page ("installs from $12,500”). This resolves the publish-vs-quote open item from the 2026-08-08 tier decision: publish.
- Founding cohort: the first five external installs price at $9,500, explicitly traded for proof (written case study, reference rights, testimonial and logo use). When the five slots fill, the deal ends. The list price never moves during the cohort.
- Raise ladder, milestone-gated (states, not dates), set cold now so the future raises are not relitigated:
- Five accepted installs plus two written case studies: floor moves to $15,000
- Marquee logo, or ten installs, or strong retainer attach: floor moves to $19,500
- Discounting below the floor is banned. A budget-constrained buyer gets scoped down via the rate card (fewer connections, shorter backfill), never priced down.
Context
Michael flagged plainly that the original $12,500 was set close to arbitrarily. The founding cohort is the instrument that converts an arbitrary number into observed pricing data: five real invoices, acceptance outcomes, and objection patterns. Future raises then run on receipts instead of vibes. The overpricing risk of an unproven delivery motion is managed by the acceptance machinery (definition of done signed before kickoff, the 10-question cited-answer demo, pipes-not-water-pressure), not by lowering the sticker.
Options considered
- Drop the list to $7,500: lost. It breaks the ladder’s internal logic (the install would cost three months of its own retainer and half of JOLT Deploy), reads fragile to an ICP the survey already filters for budget, creates a 67% raise to justify later, and we have zero observed price resistance to respond to. The founding cohort delivers the low entry without touching the anchor.
- Name it Hockey Stick install: lost. It names the outcome the acceptance doctrine explicitly refuses to guarantee (we guarantee the pipes, not the water pressure); it aims at the unicorn-path half of an audience Hard Calls defines by having questioned that path; and it fails the retell test (the cofounder needs the whole pitch re-explained). KEPT as sales copy with the honest mechanism attached: hockey sticks do not get installed, they come from better calls compounding, and we install the machine that does that.
- Other names ruled out: Hard Calls Deploy (dies in cross-sell from Megaphone and JOLT clients with no HC context), Company Memory (passive; the brain answers and synthesizes), War Room and Mission Control shapes (guru shelf vocabulary), reviving Hockey Stick as a brand (re-splits the one-face funnel).
Consequences
- Sales surfaces say the Company Brain, and “installs from $12,500”; the founding-five counter is honest scarcity copy while slots last.
- The plain-words ladder stands: build it yourself ($197 inside Pro), we build it for you (from $12,500, founding five at $9,500), we keep it sharp ($2,495/mo).
- Canon updated same day: company-brain-setup skill, hard-calls-stack skill (decision 12 addendum), HC TLDR (Notion Library home plus the retired GDoc copy), Tatem meeting brief line 4.
- Remaining open item from 2026-08-08: embedded operator identity.