Founding partners

We need a first business in your sector more than you need us.

Specify works today for custom interiors and custom fragrances. Every other sector is unproven, and the only way to prove one is to work with a business inside it. We are taking 3 founding partners per sector, and the terms are meant to make that obviously worth your time.

Nothing is provisioned in any system today. What a partnership covers is recorded in a written agreement and delivered against it. Applying records your interest. It does not create an account and it does not entitle you to anything yet.

What a founding partner receives

The platform, and the work to make it fit your business.

A founding partnership covers the platform subscription on a plan you choose, and the consulting time to get your real demand into a structure that works. It runs for as long as the partnership does, and what it includes is set out in the written agreement rather than metered against an account.

  • Consulting: capability modelling, getting your real enquiries into a structure, storefront work, integration with what you already run.
  • The platform subscription, on the plan that suits your business rather than a fixed one. Enterprise arrangements are negotiated separately.
  • The transaction fee on what your storefront processes.

It has no cash value, is not transferable and is not refundable. It exists to remove the cost of finding out whether this works for your business.

What a founding partner commits to

Four things, and we would rather you say no to one than agree to all four loosely.

  1. A recurring conversation

    A standing call at a cadence you set. Not a survey, and not a testimonial: the specific things that did not work, while they are still fresh.

  2. Real customer enquiries

    Redacted examples of requests your catalogue cannot express. This is the raw material the product is built on, and no demonstration substitutes for it.

  3. Someone who can approve capability

    A named person internally who can say what the business is genuinely able to deliver. Without them a Capability Map cannot be validated and the work stalls.

  4. A reference once there is something to reference

    Agreement in principle to be named later. Any specific use of your name, logo or story is agreed separately in writing, each time.

We are asking for these because we are pre-customer and learning where demand-driven commerce is commercially significant. We cannot learn that from a demo.

This is not a discount for signing up early. It is an exchange, and the part we cannot buy anywhere else is what we learn from working alongside you.

How it works

Two steps, and the first one is an email.

Join the list

One email and a sentence about what you sell. We will tell you when we are opening your sector. That is the whole commitment.

Make the case, if you want a slot

A short application asking what your customers ask for that your website cannot express, and what we would learn from working with you specifically. We read every one.

A written agreement, or a straight no

Acceptance is by a separate written partnership agreement. Nothing is provided to anyone before that exists, and we would rather decline early than string anyone along.

The list records interest, not a position. There is no queue and nobody is ahead of anyone.

We intend to take 3 founding partners per sector.

You describe your sector in your own words, because Specify is defined by a commercial shape rather than an industry list: customers who ask for outcomes, capability that exceeds the published catalogue, and decisions that need a person. Where one sector ends and another begins is our judgement, and we will tell you how we grouped yours.

Tell us what you sell.

Two fields. We will let you know when we open your sector, and you can make the case for a founding slot now or later.

In your own words. A phrase is enough: what you make, and who buys it.