The Phased Roadmap

Progress is the fundraising story. Every phase has a public milestone. Every public milestone is a fundraising moment. Every dollar moves through visible accounting.

Strategic Principle

Don't ask for money based on what you'll do. Show what you've done, make each step publicly visible, and support follows because people can see they're funding momentum, not promises. Each phase compounds credibility from the last.

Phase 1 — Signal (weeks 1–3)

Goal
Prove demand. Build the email list.
Action
Launch a landing page using the existing brief and live demo. The ask is a non-binding pledge of intent — "When this platform opens, I want to pledge $X/year." Email and zip code only. Substack or simple Vercel page.
Cost
Under $100 (domain + email service).
Target metric
~2,000 email signups in 3 weeks.

Visible artifacts:

Unlocks: Credible answer to "is there demand?" — and the email list, which becomes the most valuable asset in the movement.

Phase 2 — Support the Work (week 2 onward, overlapping)

Goal
Fund the founder's time and the road to legal incorporation.
Action
Open a separate, much smaller ask alongside the pledge signup. Modest donations — $10, $25, $50 one-time, or $5/month — to fund work hours, hosting, legal consultation, and entity formation. Explicitly distinct from the $50/year platform pledge, which stays locked until launch-ready.
Cost target
$15K–$30K to cover 3–6 months of part-time founder work plus legal incorporation.
Infrastructure
Patreon, Open Collective, or direct Stripe.

Visible artifact: Public ledger — every dollar received, every dollar spent, every hour worked, updated continuously. Lives the radical-transparency promise from day one.

Phase 3 — Build in Public (parallel, week 1 through forever)

Goal
Make every step of the work visible.

This isn't a discrete phase — it's the operating culture. Weekly or biweekly updates: what was built, what was learned, what's blocking. The roadmap is published and revised in public.

Visible artifacts: A continuous stream of small milestones — we have a name, we have a domain, we have 5,000 signups, we have a draft Tier 2 pledge, we have an attorney, we have a 501(c)(4), we have a founding endorsement panel member, etc.

Every milestone is its own fundraising touch and another credibility deposit. Most projects fail not because the work is bad but because the world has no idea the work is happening.

Phase 4 — Legal Entities (weeks 8–16)

Goal
Establish the real legal infrastructure.
Action
Once Phase 2 clears roughly $10–15K, hire an attorney specialized in election law and 501(c)(4)/PAC/Super PAC formation. Establish the (c)(4) first — it can do issue advocacy and education immediately and is the simplest filing. The PAC and Super PAC follow once we're ready to move money on candidates.

Visible artifacts: EIN, IRS determination letter, FEC registration filings — all public documents. Publish each one as it lands.

Message: "We now legally exist as the thing we said we'd be."

Phase 5 — First Pledge Campaign (weeks 16–24)

Goal
Hit the first real funding threshold for one issue.
Action
Pick one founding issue. Recommended: prescription drug pricing — highest cross-party public support, cleanest legislative tests (specific bills already exist), most concentrated visible opposition (PhRMA at $31M lobbying).

Draft the Tier 2 pledge text together. Set a reachable first-issue threshold (suggested: $250K pledged). Open real pledges — cards pre-authorized but not charged. Run the public threshold counter on the site using the demo's visual.

Trigger event: When threshold hits, cards are charged, the (c)(4) gets the operations cut, the PAC and Super PAC are funded for the first time, and politician outreach begins.

Phase 6 — First Endorsed Politician (months 6–9)

Goal
Real political action — first endorsed politician, first PAC contribution, first Super PAC ad.
Action
With threshold hit, identify a short list of legislators on the issue who'd be receptive. Run AI-assisted public-record analysis on each. Present to the founding endorsement panel (you + 3–5 named, ideologically varied people recruited during Phases 1–5).

First politician signs the Tier 2 pledge. The PAC sends the $5K direct contribution. The Super PAC runs the first independent expenditure. The public scorecard goes live tracking their votes against the pledge.

Outcome: Real Citizens United exists in the real world, not just on a landing page. Realistic timing: month 6 to 9 from Phase 1 launch.

What's Locked In So Far

These design decisions are locked in for execution in Phases 5–6:

  1. Legal structure: 501(c)(4) + PAC + Super PAC stack.
  2. Onboarding: AI-assisted intake and analysis; human endorsement panel makes final calls; every decision and its reasoning is published.
  3. Delivery definition: A politician has delivered when they vote the way they publicly committed to vote.
  4. Strategic measure: Platform success is whether the policy actually advanced, not just whether individual pledged politicians kept their word.
  5. Binding commitment: Signed written pledge plus a recorded video statement.
  6. Tier system: All politicians enter at Tier 2 (position + named bills + anti-defection clauses). Tier 3 (adds exclusivity — no opposing-interest funding) is a graduation, reached via either self-initiated path or earned path (delivery record).
  7. Cross-partisan, per-issue endorsements: The platform backs candidates of any party based on issue-specific commitments. A senator endorsed on healthcare may be one the platform would never back on environmental policy.
  8. Pledge authorship: Long-term — specialists, social scientists, and AI-assisted drafting with platform editing and pledger ratification. Short-term — founder-led drafting with explicit public caveat that this is the founding phase.

This roadmap is a living document. Updated as phases complete and as the work surfaces what we haven't yet anticipated.