MILESTONES

Timeline

Three stages. Founding Families, Family Expansion, Community Build. Every stage has an exit gate. Capital does not activate until the gate clears. No stage is a forecast, each stage is a set of conditions.

Months since inception

Stage 1 master plan locked 2026-04-21

Current stage

Stage 1

Founding Families, Weeks 1 to 3

Next milestone

COPPA filed

Stage 2 gate, TODO(timeline): confirm target date

Next milestone ETA

Week 7

Per Stage 1 master plan

LAST UPDATED 2026-04-22

Tekku stages its work in three arcs. Stage 1 Founding Families is the founder building with his son, then the first three paid families shipping real apps every week. Stage 2 Family Expansion lands the COPPA stack, opens the founding-100, and runs the first zero-fee classroom pilot. Stage 3 Community Build is public launch, pricing A/B, and the viral badge loop.

Capital does not activate until a gate clears. Seed close is gated on $500K ARR, LTV to CAC above 3x, and a reproducible retention curve. Series A is gated on the Y3 ARR trajectory and the first real acquirer conversation. The gates are non-negotiable. Missing a gate does not kill the company. It means the next capital event waits until the gate clears.

Runway from every stage is designed to absorb a slipped gate without existential pressure. That is the reason peak monthly burn is held low in the P and L, and why the seed extension is sized for 44 months of planned burn rather than 18 or 24. Slippage is priced in.

Stage 1, Stage 2, Stage 3 timeline

gantt title Tekku stage timeline dateFormat YYYY-MM-DD axisFormat Week %W section Stage 1 Founding family (user zero) :done, s1a, 2026-04-14, 7d First 3 paid families :active, s1b, 2026-04-21, 14d Stage 1 exit gate :milestone, s1g, 2026-05-05, 1d section Stage 2 COPPA stack build :s2a, 2026-05-05, 14d Founding-100 cohort opens :s2b, 2026-05-12, 21d Zero-fee classroom pilot :s2c, 2026-05-19, 28d Stage 2 exit gate :milestone, s2g, 2026-06-02, 1d section Stage 3 Public launch + pricing A/B :s3a, 2026-06-02, 21d Viral badge loop wired :s3b, 2026-06-09, 14d 100 paying families :s3c, 2026-06-23, 14d Stage 3 exit gate :milestone, s3g, 2026-07-07, 1d section Seed close Seed $3M activates :crit, seed, 2026-07-07, 60d

Three arcs across Weeks 0 to 12. Each stage has an exit gate. Stage 2 does not open until Stage 1 families are shipping weekly. Stage 3 does not open until the COPPA stack is filed and the pilot classroom is live.

Next 12 months

Quarterly milestones from Q2 2026 through Q1 2027. Each row expands for detail. Status: done, active, next, future. Owner is the agent or founding hire responsible for the gate.

	Milestone	Owner	Blocker	Status
Q2 2026: Stage 1 exit gate	First 3 paid families shipping weekly	Founder	None	Active
Q2 2026: Stage 2 COPPA + pilot	COPPA stack live, one classroom pilot running	Head of trust (to hire), founder	TODO-001 COPPA implementation	Next
Q3 2026: Stage 3 public launch	Public launch, pricing A/B concluded, 100 paying families	Founder, agent team	Stage 2 gate clearance	Future
Q3 2026: Seed close	Seed $3M on $18M cap SAFE closes	Founder	$500K ARR trigger + LTV to CAC above 3x	Future
Q4 2026: Workshop tier scale	10 paying schools, 500 classroom seats	Head of school GTM (to hire)	Workshop tier pricing confirmed, reference school case study	Future
Q4 2026: Family plan	$249 Family plan ships, multi-kid households unlocked	Founding eng 1	5,000 paying families on Builder tier	Future
Q1 2027: Series A prep	Series A diligence package readied, $1M ARR	Alexander (InvestOS), founder	Y3 ARR trajectory holding at 12-month retention	Future

Owner column lists the named responsible surface. Agent owners are current. Human owners named "to hire" are the seed-funded hires from the team page, with a Seed plus N days trigger.

36-month arc

Stage graduation gates across three years. Every gate has a criterion, a target date, and a current status. The criterion is not a forecast. It is the condition that must be true before the next stage opens.

	Gate criterion	Target date	Current status
Stage 1 gate	First 3 paid families shipping apps weekly, parent NPS taken	Week 3 (2026-05-05)	Active
Stage 2 gate	COPPA safe-harbor filed, one zero-fee classroom pilot live, founding-100 open	Week 7 (2026-06-02)	Next, blocked on TODO-001
Stage 3 gate	$149 vs $199 A/B concluded, 100 paying families cleared	Week 12 (2026-07-07)	Future
Seed close gate	$500K ARR, LTV to CAC above 3x, retention curve confirmed	Month 6 (2026-10-14)	Future
Workshop tier gate	10 paying schools, 500 classroom seats	Month 12 (2027-04-14)	Future
Series A gate	Y3 ARR on trajectory, 12-month retention proven, one real acquirer conversation	Month 18 (2027-10-14)	Future
International + kid monetization gate	Canada, UK, Australia launched. Stripe Connect for kid creators live.	Year 3 (2028-Q2)	Future
Exit-readiness gate	Known ARR, trusted compliance, data asset, moated user base	Year 5 (2030)	Future

Target dates are planning targets, not commitments. The gate criterion is the commitment.

Stage 1: Founding Families (Weeks 1 to 3)Founder builds with his son. First three paid families ship apps weekly. Self-funded.

Stage 1 is the founding cohort. User zero is the founder's eight-year-old son. The first three paid families onboard through direct founder conversations at $99 per month, locked in forever. No paid acquisition. Every family is known. The cohort is the Stage 1 retention sample, the first real moderation log, and the first wave of shipped apps that feed the viral badge loop.

Exit gate: three paid families shipping at least one real app per week for two consecutive weeks, parent NPS collected after the second week, no moderation incidents. Capital: self-funded. Timeline: Weeks 1 to 3 of the master plan.

Stage 2: Family Expansion (Weeks 4 to 7)COPPA stack lands. Founding-100 opens. First classroom pilot. This is the stage blocked on TODO-001.

Stage 2 opens once Stage 1 families are shipping weekly. The COPPA stack lands in Weeks 4 and 5: Persona or Stripe Identity for parent verification, 90-day retention cron on Supabase, parent export and delete UI, privacy policy page with the third-party data map, no-training clause written into the Anthropic and OpenAI contracts. The founding-100 cohort opens at $99 per month with a closed-enrollment invite model. One zero-fee classroom pilot runs in parallel (20 to 50 kids, 3 teachers).

Exit gate: COPPA safe-harbor filing submitted, 25 to 50 founding-100 families active, one classroom pilot through two weeks of sessions with no moderation incidents. Capital: seed bridge available if needed, not planned. Timeline: Weeks 4 to 7.

This is the stage blocked on TODO-001 in the backlog. The moment user #2 joins after the founder's son, COPPA is a legal blocker. All Stage 2 work hangs off the compliance implementation.

Stage 3: Community Build (Weeks 8 to 12)Public launch. Pricing A/B. Viral badge loop turns organic. The community becomes distribution.

Stage 3 is the community build. Open signup replaces closed enrollment. The Builder monthly price is A/B tested at $149 versus $199. The viral badge loop is wired end to end: every shipped app embeds a "Built on Tekku" badge that links back, landing pages for referred parents carry one-click signup, every referral that closes earns the referring kid a badge. Founding-100 closes and becomes a cohort-specific legacy price.

The thesis of Stage 3 is that community is the acquisition channel. A family that ships two or three apps pulls another family in through the shipped URL itself. We do not plan for paid acquisition during Stage 3. Paid activates only after LTV to CAC clears 3x on organic.

Exit gate: 100 paying families cleared, pricing A/B concluded with a signed-off monthly price, viral badge loop measured with a real referral rate. Capital: seed round opens after the exit gate. Timeline: Weeks 8 to 12.

Critical dependenciesFive things that must be true for the 36-month arc to hold. We track each one live.

The arc sits on five dependencies. If any one of them breaks materially, a stage gate slips. None of them are catastrophic individually. Two or more at the same time compresses the runway, which is why the seed is sized for 44 months rather than 18 or 24.

Critical dependencies

	Dependency	Current read	If it breaks
Anthropic pricing stable	Claude token pricing continues its downward curve	Holding. 55% unit cost reduction over the last 18 months.	Migrate high-volume tasks to OpenAI or DeepSeek, hold gross margin through routing.	→
Moderation stack holds	OpenAI Moderation + tuned kid-speech layer keep false-positive rate in band	Tuning underway; TODO-003 in backlog for the false-positive layer	Throttle enrollment until the tuning layer clears. Parent trust is the rate limiter, not growth.	→
Key person availability	Founder remains active through Month 18 (Series A trigger)	Active, full-time, no announced transition	Key-person insurance in place before seed close. Cassandra + Nikolai carry the platform state under Quinn orchestration if the founder is unavailable.	→
Parent WTP confirmed by pilot	Founding-100 and Stage 3 A/B confirm $149 to $199 monthly willingness to pay	Pending. Current clearing price is the Founding-100 $99 legacy price.	If $149 does not clear the A/B, extend the $99 founding price for a second cohort and re-test at $129 in Stage 3.5.	→
Regulatory clarity	COPPA 2026 is the primary regime. No surprise from a second regulator before Month 12.	COPPA compliance-first from day one. State AI-in-ed bills tracked weekly.	Counsel keeps a live radar for state, FERPA, and EU AI Act developments. Transparency page ships in Stage 2 as public posture.	→

Stage 1, Stage 2, Stage 3 timeline

See also