Business Plan
One company. Two products. One sequence. Confidential — for investor review only.
The ask
| Product | Ask | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Mirror Engineer — the software | $2.0M | The part that funds the hardware |
| Climate Tech — the hardware | $12.0M | $10M to build it, $2M contingency |
An investor can back one, the other, or both. The software is the part that funds the hardware. The hardware is the part that makes the software matter.
Terms (as stated in v5, unchanged): 15% loan, or 20% equity with a Year 5–8 buyback ladder. Negotiable. Strategic partners considered for manufacturing and permitting acceleration.
What exists tonight
Software
Mirror Engineer is a contractor's back office — estimate, takeoff, schedule, bid review, price history — delivered as one file the buyer owns. No server, no seats, no subscription. It opens offline. It keeps working whether or not this company is still here in five years.
Five companies are built on it. One is live on its own domain and taking work. No customer has paid yet.
The general contractor pack opens every door. It is not ready for a customer. The estimate prints without rates. Bid Review prints "nothing loaded." Another company's contact prints on Bid Compare. The calendar is a day off after 1 November. These are known defects, not unknowns.
The foundation pack paints a footing, wall, and pier on a computer and lands them on the detail sheet. On a phone it cannot paint, and the detail sheet does not print.
Picasso, the plan reader, is proven in the shop. It paints every footing, wall, and pad off the engineer's own footing schedule: 182 of 182 checks on one office's sheet, 398 of 402 on another, 317 of 317 on the control. It is not yet inside the customer's file.
Hardware
Two U.S. patents are granted:
- US 11,933,057 B2 — Climate-Wall — issued 19 March 2024
- US 12,188,232 B2 — Climate-Deck — issued 7 January 2025
Canadian applications are filed for Climate-Deck and Climate-Ties.
No structure has been built with this hardware. It is pre-production, pre-testing, and pre-UL. That is stated plainly because it is true.
ICC-ES gave guidance only (April 2023). No Evaluation Service Report exists. Intertek issued an unsigned quote for a test plan (September 2023, $5,280). QAI sent an inquiry (August 2023). No CTBS test result exists in the record. ESR-1815 is another company's report.
The Climate-Deck 24CF 50-foot span calculation has f'c entered as 60.0 ksi while the modulus matches 3 ksi concrete. It is not citable until an engineer reruns it.
| Card (estimated, not tested, 145 lb/ft³) | Make-up | Mass | R-value | STC | Fire listing |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wall | 4" core + 2" closed-cell + 4" open-cell spray foam | 48.3 lb/ft² | R-26–29 EST. | 45–52 EST. | None |
| Deck | 5" core + EPS | 60.4 lb/ft² | R-27–31 EST. | ~52 EST. | None |
CTBS manufactures the plastic hardware — ties, chairs, rebar trees, pin wedges. Concrete, forms, and equipment belong to the contractor. U-Stucco is Honor Topco's product, not CTBS's.
The sequence
Software first. Hardware second. Tests before scale.
- Close the software defects. The general contractor pack must print an estimate with rates, print Bid Review with data loaded, and stop printing another company's contact. The foundation pack must paint on a phone and print the detail sheet. Picasso must move from the shop into the customer's file. Until those are true, the software is not a product.
- Sell one software pack. The price is the founder's to set. The first sale is the proof that a contractor will pay for a file he owns. That check funds the next step.
- Cut one aluminum prototype mold for the zip-tie / center-tie geometry. Cost: VERIFY — no quote on file. This is the smallest surface that can be tested.
- Run two tests. See below.
- If both tests pass, cut the production steel molds. Ikson quotation IS-MQT221128-02 (dated 28 November 2022, revised for the 24 February 2023 RFQ): five steel molds, $39,700 FOB Shenzhen, 300,000-shot life each. That quote is nearly four years old. It is a reference, not a current price.
- License the process to a manufacturer. Tesla is a stated target for injection molding capacity and distribution. No relationship exists or is claimed. The ask is a manufacturing contract, not equity.
The two tests
These two tests close the unproven surface. Everything else — concrete strength, thermal mass, foam performance — is already proven by the materials around the hardware. The hardware is the only new thing.
| Test 1 — Pull strength | Test 2 — Burn rate | |
|---|---|---|
| What it proves | The plastic zip-tie teeth hold the interior center tie under the load the wall sees during the pour and after the forms strip. | The production resin meets the flame-spread and smoke-developed threshold required for the intended occupancy. The deck's vertical tie is embedded in concrete; the wall tie's plastic remains in the core. |
| What passing looks like | The connection does not release under the design load. The number is the engineer's to set. ASTM D638-class test or a custom fixture that replicates the field condition. | A flame-spread index and smoke-developed index an engineer can specify. UL 723 / ASTM E84 or equivalent. The number is the lab's, not the founder's. |
| What it costs | $1,500–$5,000 at a university or materials lab. VERIFY — actual quote required. | $2,000–$8,000 at a fire-rating lab. VERIFY — actual quote required. QAI and Intertek have both been contacted; neither has produced a result. |
| What it does not prove | The full assembly. This test is the connection only. | A full wall assembly. That comes later, with assembled systems (quantity VERIFY), if the component tests pass. |
Resin to be tested: VERIFY. The Ikson quote and part sheet specify glass-filled polypropylene with an FR/UV package; v5 specifies molded polycarbonate 6487 with FR/UV. The burn test is run on the resin that ships.
The business model
Software funds the molds. Molds fund the scale. Scale funds the license.
Mirror Engineer is sold as one file per company or per trade. The buyer owns it. There is no subscription. The trade packs — foundation, framing, landscape, and the rest — are slices of the general contractor pack, not separate products. A contractor who buys the foundation pack is not buying a different software. He is buying the same software with everything else removed.
Climate Tech hardware is sold as components — ties, chairs, rebar trees, pin wedges — through distributors and direct. The contractor brings his own forms, his own concrete, and his own crew. CTBS provides the pieces that turn a standard pour into a lumber-free assembly.
EPS forms are wire-cut locally at existing foam plants. The file goes to the plant. The plant cuts the foam. Shipping is the last mile, not the continent.
The endgame is a license. A manufacturer runs the molds. CTBS licenses the process and the geometry. The software prices what the hardware ships, so the manufacturer knows the volume before the mold is cut.
The numbers
Every figure below names where it came from. None is invented.
From the 72-month proforma (unit economics, not calendar commitments)
| Step | Penetration | Hardware revenue |
|---|---|---|
| Year 1 | 5% | $9,879,435 |
| Year 5 | 80% | $158,070,960 |
| Full scale | 100% | $197,588,700 |
These are the proforma's own figures. They assume the hardware exists and is being sold. It does not yet. The updated adoption clock in v5 stretches these steps across 9–10 years. That is more honest than the original 36-month window. It is still a projection on an unproven product.
From the Ikson mold quote and part sheet (reference only, nearly four years old)
| Item | Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Five steel molds (AL 5.5 T-tie, 18" exterior rebar tree, 24" interior rebar tree, two vertical shafts) | $39,700 FOB Shenzhen, 300,000 shots each | Ikson quotation IS-MQT221128-02 |
| Molded cost per piece, AL 3.5 T-tie | $0.56 | Ikson part sheet |
| Molded cost per piece, AL 5.5 T-tie | $0.58 | Ikson part sheet |
| Press | 150-ton class at $60/hour | Ikson part sheet |
The part sheet's other lines are struck through and are not carried here. Both documents specify glass-filled polypropylene.
From the founder's own investment record
| Item | Amount |
|---|---|
| Intellectual property | $100,000+ |
| Product design (10,000+ hours) | $500,000+ |
| Prototype R&D | $175,000 |
| Marketing | $150,000 |
| Total invested | $945,000+ |
ALMA DECIDES: the software price per pack. The proforma does not set it. The first sale is the proof, not the model.
The risks
| Risk | What it means | What answers it |
|---|---|---|
| No tested assembly | Pull strength and burn rate are unproven. | Step 4, not a footnote. If either test fails, the sequence stops. |
| One founder | Manufacturing, sales, and engineering cannot be one person. The bandwidth constraint is real. | The software is the lever that buys time to hire. |
| No code path | ICC-ES guidance is not an ESR. An engineer's stamp is required per project until a listing exists. That is slower than a listed product and it is the current state. | A listing after the component tests pass. |
| The software has shipped broken before | Defects reached files that were called finished. | One chassis, one builder, a dry run before any customer sees it, and a separate inspector who refuses if the file does not match the receipt. |
| A competitor designs a different tie shape | A single geometry is not the moat. | The process — the contractor's own metal form ties — tempered rather than break-off, so they survive repeated pours — carry the pour, strip out, and are reused as equipment, while the CTBS plastic hardware stays in the wall — plus the aluminum-form and steel-form interfaces, plus the patent family. |
What the investor gets
Not a belief. A sequence with a stop condition.
The software is the part that is real today, with known defects that are named. The hardware is the part that is engineered and patented, with two tests that close the unproven surface. The sequence is software, then one sale, then one mold, then two tests, then production, then license.
If the tests fail, the sequence stops. If the software does not sell, the hardware does not get funded. The investor is not asked to fund seven bets at once. The investor is asked to fund one step, and the next step only if the first one is true.
Contact
Alma Jessop, Founder — alma@climatebuilt.com — www.climatebuilt.com