Baseline

FC is currently priced at £50 per seat per month, selling into the most expensive, high-urgency moment in agencies: pitch and concepting, where context is fragile and iteration speed matters. A second wedge is auditability and compliance of AI usage for agencies with brand or model constraints.

Even though end-users are creatives, budget justification can come from two directions: pitch efficiency and win rate (the new business budget holder, citing up to £200k per pitch), and governance and compliance risk (agencies needing audit sheets of every prompt, image and model used).

Business model options

A. Seat-based SaaS (current model)

Price per active user per month. Simple mental model that matches common procurement patterns and produces forecastable MRR. Works well if FC becomes an always-on workspace. The risk: AI costs are usage-driven, not seat-driven, which creates margin pressure. Agencies with large pools of occasional users may resist per-seat expansion. £50 is mid-to-high versus typical collaboration tools — defensible if positioned as Figma Organisation-tier value (workflow plus governance) rather than moodboarding.

Comparable anchors: Figma Organisation $55/mo, Enterprise $90/mo. Milanote $10-12/mo. Kive Basic $15/mo, Pro $75/mo.

B. Hybrid: seats plus metered AI usage (recommended)

Base platform fee per seat plus usage-based AI credits with a generous included bundle so it still feels like SaaS. Aligns gross margin with real inference costs while letting procurement choose predictability versus performance. Package as three to four plans with included credits and clear overage rates; enterprise gets pre-paid credit blocks and hard caps.

C. Project and pitch-based pricing

Charge per "pitch project" or sell "Pitch Packs" (X projects per month). Fits how agencies think about cost of pitches and makes it easier for new business leads to justify the spend. The downside: harder to drive habitual adoption outside pitch moments.

D. Agency-level platform licence

Annual contract, minimum spend, unlimited or high-cap seats, admin and security bundle. Matches enterprise procurement and reduces seat friction, but requires longer sales cycles and a security posture. Best when governance and audit becomes the primary wedge.

E. Add-on revenue

Two natural add-ons: an AI audit and compliance pack (auto-generated audit reports of prompts, models, assets, approvals and rights), and a creative memory layer (captures the agency or creator's accumulated taste and decisions as a premium retention feature). Caution: anything that hints at "training on your data" will trigger procurement scrutiny. Must be opt-in with clear contractual controls.

Enterprise procurement

Even indie agencies increasingly behave like enterprise when AI touches client work.

Must-haves for selling into agencies handling brand and client data

• SOC 2 or ISO 27001 pathway; security questionnaire readiness
• Data Processing Addendum, GDPR alignment, clear subprocessors list
• "No training on customer data" default; clear retention and deletion options
• Audit logging, exportability, project-level access controls
• Model and vendor governance: ability to restrict which models can be used per client or project
• SSO, SAML and SCIM provisioning (gated as enterprise features, as per Figma and Notion patterns)

Governance can become a primary buying reason, not just a checkbox, especially as clients demand AI usage disclosure.

Competition

FC's differentiation claim is "workflow and context layer for ideation to pitch" rather than raw generation. This places it in a messy competitive field.

Direct competitors

• Milanote — moodboarding and creative boards; light structure, low price anchor
• Kive — creative library with AI generation and search; closer because it blends asset management with AI
• Miro / FigJam — strong at collaboration, weaker at pitch-ready packaging and AI governance
• Notion / Coda — can approximate a single source of truth, but less native to creative references and production

Adjacent tools that steal budget

• Presentation tools: Pitch, Google Slides, Keynote, Figma Slides
• AI deck generators: Gamma, Tome — compress time-to-deck

Production and generation platforms

• Adobe (Firefly, Creative Cloud), Canva, Runway, Midjourney
• These may not own workflow, but they can bundle it

Platform threats

The risk that Google, Microsoft or Adobe will integrate concepting into their existing stacks. FC stays defensible by being the tool-agnostic workflow layer (browser extension plus integrations) combined with creative memory and governance. Win on taste capture, context persistence and agency-level audit.

Ecosystem and integration partners

• Daily workflow: Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Slack, Teams, Google Drive, Dropbox, Asana, Jira
• Creative stack: Figma, Frame.io, Runway, Adobe tools, Pinterest, Are.na, Bynder, Brandfolder
• AI and model partners: OpenAI, Anthropic, Google — with policy controls per project
• Channel partners: creative leaders and advisors, AI festivals, agency networks, production studios, boutique consultancies

KPIs

Activation

• Time-to-first-pitch-ready output
• Percentage of projects with complete context (brief, references, decisions, outputs)
• Audit pack completeness rate
• Weekly active projects per workspace

Retention and expansion

• Weekly and monthly active users per seat or agency
• Seats per agency and seat growth rate
• Project repeat rate
• NPS among both creatives and new business leads

Unit economics

• Gross margin by plan (including inference cost)
• AI cost per project and per pitch-ready concept
• Customer acquisition cost payback
• Sales cycle length and close rate by segment

Outcome metrics

• Pitch cycle time reduction (baseline vs with FC)
• Pitch win rate lift (self-reported initially)
• Pitch cost avoided (hours saved, fewer external production cycles)

Go-to-market channels

Founder-led sales (primary)

Warm intros via advisors plus targeted outbound to independent agencies. Position by persona: for creative leadership, "taste and judgment preserved, faster iteration"; for new business, "more shots on goal per pitch budget"; for operations and risk, "audit trail and model governance."

Events and community

AI festivals and creative-thons with shared briefs, judges (ECD/CCO), brand sponsors. Use event outputs as case studies and social proof.

Product-led growth

Only when stability and cost controls exist. If pursued: free tier with hard usage caps to protect margin.

Integration-led acquisition

"Works where you work" via browser extension. Publish integrations and templates. Co-marketing with complementary tools (Figma, Frame.io, DAM providers).

Recommendations

1. Keep £50 per seat as list price for now, but introduce a usage and credit layer behind the scenes to protect margin and prepare enterprise pricing.
2. Package an "AI Audit Pack" (exportable report) as a paid add-on or enterprise feature — this is unusually procurement-aligned for creative tools.
3. Create two to three buyer-specific one-pagers (Creative Lead, New Business, Operations/Risk) so the story stays consistent.
4. Start tracking: time-to-pitch-ready, audit completeness, seat expansion per agency.