- Solo dev (you + Claude Code)
- Grand Prairie, Texas (DFW metroplex - 8M people, massive home services market)
- Two test businesses available (brother + best friend in NJ)
- Budget-conscious, willing to spend smart
Grand Prairie sits in the middle of the DFW metroplex. This is one of the best markets in the country for home service businesses:
- Hot summers = HVAC is a year-round monster industry
- Rapid suburban growth = plumbing, electrical, landscaping booming
- Texas has no state income tax = small businesses have more cash to spend on tools
- Texas is a one-party consent state for call recording (you only need one party's consent - huge compliance win)
- DFW has 150,000+ small businesses
You can literally drive to businesses and demo in person. This is your unfair advantage over every SaaS company selling online.
| Item | Cost | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Domain + hosting | $12/yr domain + $5-20/mo VPS | You probably already have this |
| Retell.ai (voice AI) | $0/mo base + $0.07/min usage | Pay as you go, no upfront. Test businesses might use 50 min/mo = $3.50 |
| Twilio (SMS) | $1/mo per number + $0.0083/text | One number for testing = ~$5/mo |
| OpenAI API (GPT-4o Mini) | Pay per use | For testing: maybe $2-5/mo. Per conversation cost is $0.001 |
| Stripe (billing) | $0 until you charge | 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction, only when you have paying customers |
| SSL certificate | $0 | Let's Encrypt, free |
Total to get started: ~$15-30/month
| Item | Cost | When |
|---|---|---|
| Custom email domain (support@mykodesk.com) | $6/mo (Google Workspace) | Before first paying customer |
| Sentry (error monitoring) | $0 (free tier) | Now |
| Better VPS (more RAM for Postgres) | $20-40/mo | When you have 5+ customers |
| 10DLC registration (SMS compliance) | ~$4/brand + $15/campaign | Before sending SMS to real customers |
| Amazon SES (email at scale) | $0.10/1K emails | When email volume gets real |
| Item | Why Not |
|---|---|
| Pinecone/Weaviate (vector DB) | Use pgvector - it's free and you already have Postgres |
| Vercel Pro | Free tier is fine for now |
| Datadog/New Relic | Overkill, use basic logging |
| Multiple LLM providers | Just use OpenAI GPT-4o Mini for now, cheapest good option |
| Zapier paid plan | Build direct integrations first |
| Marketing/ads | Your sales channel is walking into businesses, not Google Ads |
| Mobile app | Dashboard works on mobile browsers. Native app is Phase 4 |
| Fancy landing page | A clean single page with a demo video is enough |
- Clean up existing codebase
- Get onboarding wizard working
- Get chat widget polished and demo-ready
- Get AI engine working reliably with GPT-4o Mini + pgvector RAG
- Get dashboard looking professional
- Deploy to a VPS so it's accessible
- Integrate Retell.ai for voice
- Integrate Twilio for SMS
- Unified inbox showing all channels
- Test with brother's business
- Stripe integration
- Onboarding flow for new businesses
- Landing page
- Test with friend in NJ (different timezone/state = good test)
- Walk into businesses in Grand Prairie/Arlington/DFW
- Demo on your phone
- Offer free 14-day trial
- Iterate based on feedback
- Perfect for: In-person testing, watching customers interact with the AI
- What to test: Phone calls, web chat, appointment booking
- What you learn: What breaks, what confuses customers, what's missing
- Ask him: What are his top 10 customer questions? What scheduling tool does he use? What's his biggest CS pain?
- Perfect for: Remote setup testing (can you onboard someone who's not in the room?)
- What to test: Self-service onboarding, email channel, different timezone handling
- What you learn: Whether businesses can set this up without you physically there
- Compliance note: NJ is a one-party consent state too, so recording is fine
- How many conversations does the AI handle correctly vs incorrectly?
- What questions stump it?
- Do customers realize it's AI? Do they care?
- How long does onboarding take?
- What does the business owner actually look at in the dashboard?
- 0 paying customers
- Spending: $15-30/mo on infrastructure
- Focus: Get the product right with test businesses
- 3-5 paying customers at $99-199/mo
- Revenue: $300-1,000/mo
- Spending: $50-100/mo on infrastructure
- Net: $200-900/mo
- 10-15 paying customers
- Revenue: $2,000-3,000/mo
- Spending: $150-300/mo
- Net: $1,700-2,700/mo
- 25-50 paying customers
- Revenue: $5,000-10,000/mo
- Spending: $500-1,000/mo
- Net: $4,000-9,000/mo
You need ~50 customers on Pro ($199/mo) or ~100 on Starter ($99/mo). In a market of 150,000+ small businesses in DFW, that's 0.03-0.07% market penetration. Very achievable.
Given you're solo and budget-conscious, I'd actually suggest launching with slightly lower prices to reduce friction and build a customer base fast:
| Plan | Monthly | Annual | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | $79/mo | $63/mo | Chat + email only. Perfect entry point. |
| Pro | $149/mo | $119/mo | + Phone + SMS. The sweet spot. |
| Business | $249/mo | $199/mo | + More minutes/texts, priority support. |
Why lower than the strategy doc: You're new, no brand recognition, no case studies yet. Slightly lower price = easier first sales. You can always raise prices for new customers once you have proof it works. Early customers locked in at lower rate = loyalty.
Still great margins: Your cost per customer is ~$25-35/mo. Even at $79/mo Starter, you're at 55-68% gross margin. At $149/mo Pro, you're at 76-83%.
- Domain: mykodesk.com (if not already registered) - ~$12/year
- VPS: DigitalOcean or Hetzner droplet, 4GB RAM - $12-24/mo (runs Postgres, Redis, FastAPI, Next.js)
- OpenAI API key: Load $10 to start, lasts months of testing
- Retell.ai account: Free to sign up, pay per use when testing voice
- Twilio account: Free trial includes $15 credit
Total immediate spend: ~$25-50
That's it. Everything else can wait until you have paying customers.