This document provides the detailed, bottom-up justification for the figures presented in the main Fundraising & Budget Plan. It is intended to serve as the primary resource for investor diligence.
Note on the Financial Model: This document is the strategic companion to a detailed, spreadsheet-based financial model, which is available upon request. A placeholder for this model can be found at financial-model-placeholder.csv. The spreadsheet includes monthly cash flow projections, a full cap table, and sensitivity analysis.
A plan is only as good as the team executing it. Our strategy is to maintain a lean, world-class core team and supplement with contractors and prize-based competition. For a detailed breakdown of the phase-based hiring roadmap and role descriptions, see the full Hiring Plan & Team Roadmap.
The following provides a more granular justification for the phase-based budget.
| Category | Estimate | Bottom-Up Justification |
|---|---|---|
| Operations | $10-15M | Based on a team of 20 with a fully-loaded average cost of $250k/year for a 2-year runway. |
| Platform MVP | $50-75M | Includes a 50-person engineering team/contractor budget, plus 3 independent security audits ($5M), and cloud infrastructure costs ($10M). |
| Legal (Pilots) | $40-60M | Based on retaining 5 top-tier global law firms ($5M/year each) and 3 lobbying firms ($5M/year each) for a 2-year period. |
| Pilot IE | $100-150M | Derived from the average cost of a competitive U.S. Senate campaign (~$50-75M per cycle), replicated in two key pilot regions. |
| Contingency | $45-90M | A 20-30% contingency buffer, standard for high-risk ventures. |
| Category | Estimate | Bottom-Up Justification |
|---|---|---|
| Scaled IEs | $300-600M | Cost of running 5-10 simultaneous G7-nation-level campaigns. The prize model ($175M total for top 3) is a component of this. |
| Incentive Alignment | $50-100M | Seed capital for structured financial products designed to attract MIC partners. Sized to be competitive with their existing lobbying budgets. |
| Platform Scale-Up | $100-150M | Budget for scaling the platform to 300M+ users, including global CDN, security, and compliance features (e.g., GDPR). |
| Legal Expansion | $40-80M | Expands legal and lobbying footprint to an additional 10-15 countries. |
| Category | Estimate | Bottom-Up Justification |
|---|---|---|
| Saturation Campaigns | $300-750M | All-out media and political pressure in the final 1-3 holdout nations, which will be the most expensive to win. |
| MIC Co-Opting | $50-100M | Final tranche of incentive capital for key corporate and political endorsements. |
| Treasury Launch | $100-150M | Includes costs for final, comprehensive security audits of the DIH treasury, insurance policies (e.g., against smart contract failure), and initial capitalization of DAO governance mechanisms. |