CADENCE — Go-to-Market Plan

Built on market-research.md (run #1). All numbers are plans/projections — no traction exists yet. The research verdict: a real but narrow wedge; the money is in MSPs + regulated small-IT, not the (large, loud, low-paying) homelab crowd. This plan prices and sells for that.

1. Positioning

One-sentence value prop:

CADENCE tells you whether and when to install each Proxmox/Ceph/Nextcloud update — curated human judgment, evaluated against your own inventory, delivered as a signed feed your appliance verifies locally and never phones home.

Category: not RMM, not a vuln scanner, not a "managed" takeover — an upgrade-advisory feed. The frame that lands: "pve8to9 tells you if your config will break; CADENCE tells you if the release itself is worth installing yet."

Why we win the comparison (from research §2/§3):

  • vs free native checkers (pve8to9, Nextcloud updater/Security Scanner): they answer "does an update exist / will my config technically break". CADENCE answers "is this release wise yet" — holds, wait-for-patch, cross-product ordering. Different question.

  • vs RMM (NinjaOne/Action1/Atera/Tactical): they patch Windows endpoints and push latest. CADENCE says hold for server stacks they don’t even cover. Complement, not competitor — wire CADENCE verdicts into their webhook.

  • vs vuln feeds (OSV/GitHub Advisory): disclosure, not timing. CADENCE consumes them.

  • vs managed Nextcloud/Proxmox support: removes self-hosting or just gives a stable repo + ticket queue — not a curated "wait for 9.1" feed.

Defensibility (honest): the raw judgment is partly public (wikis/forums). The moat is cadence (verdict out before people upgrade) + inventory-aware evaluation + signed, air-gap-mirrorable, auditable delivery. Lock in regulated buyers for whom those are requirements.

Two capabilities now proven in code that sharpen the pitch (run #2):

  • The catalog grows at the speed of curation, not engineering. A new self-hosted stack is a new feed module — pure signed YAML, zero appliance code (demonstrated: a PostgreSQL module slotted in with no engine change, including a Nextcloud→PostgreSQL cross-product gate). So the long-tail roadmap (GitLab, Mastodon, Home Assistant, Docker images, …​) is bounded by Stoffel’s authoring time, not dev time — exactly where a one-person consultancy wants the constraint.

  • It’s a real, deployable appliance, not a demo. It pulls + verifies a signed feed over HTTP into a re-verifiable local mirror (so "air-gap mirror" is CADENCE_FEED_CACHE, not a promise), reads versions from the source-of-truth itself (Proxmox/NetBox/Nextcloud/apt), runs offline, and ships optional dashboard auth + zero outbound customer data — the privacy/sovereignty story regulated buyers ask for, now true rather than aspirational.

2. ICP (ideal customer profile)

Primary ICP — the MSP/integrator running Proxmox+Ceph (and often Nextcloud) for clients.

  • 5—​50 managed estates; already pays $129—​249/tech/mo for RMM that doesn’t answer this question.

  • Acute pain: one botched cluster upgrade across a client fleet = a weekend lost + reputation hit.

  • Buys per-managed-estate; price scales with their revenue.

Secondary ICP — the regulated/air-gapped small IT team (healthcare, public sector, utilities, finance under NIS2/CRA). Smaller count, highest value + stickiness; the signed mirrorable feed and the auditable "we held for a reason" trail are requirements, not nice-to-haves.

Funnel-only (not revenue) — the prosumer self-hoster. Large, reachable, but won’t pay. Source of credibility, content signal, GitHub stars, and the occasional Pro convert. Never the plan.

3. Channels (ranked by fit) + first 3 experiments

Rank Channel Why Fit

1

Content/SEO on "should I upgrade X"

Captures the exact 2am search intent; the gap is real (no product ranks for it). Compounds.

High, slow

2

Self-hosting communities (r/Proxmox, r/selfhosted, Proxmox/Nextcloud forums, Lemmy/Mastodon)

Where the pain is posted daily; source-available appliance earns trust. Funnel + design partners.

High for funnel

3

MSP channel (r/msp, MSP Discords/peer groups)

Where the money is; "reduce ticket volume / prevent client outage" pitch.

High value, slower trust

4

Integrations/marketplace (webhook into RMM/Slack/Teams; later a Proxmox-community-script / NetBox plugin)

Meets buyers in tools they already run.

Medium

5

Partner/channel for regulated (integrators, ISACs, compliance circles)

Segment D is reached via partners, not SEO.

High value, long cycle

First 3 concrete experiments (cheap, measurable):

  1. Three cornerstone "should I upgrade" posts — "Should you upgrade to Proxmox VE 9 yet? (and the Ceph-Squid order of operations)" (drafted → content/should-i-upgrade-proxmox-ve-9.md), "Which Nextcloud point releases to hold and why" (drafted → content/which-nextcloud-releases-to-hold.md), "A signed upgrade-advisory feed for self-hosters." (drafted → content/signed-advisory-feed-for-selfhosters.md) Publish on a project blog + cross-post to r/Proxmox & r/selfhosted. Measure: traffic → GitHub stars → waitlist signups. (All 3 drafted in content/. Each is curated judgment told as prose — the same advisories the feed ships, which is the point: the post and the product are one artifact. Remaining work is non-writing: a place to publish, the GitHub repo, and the waitlist form.)

  2. Free Community feed + the source-available appliance on GitHub, announced in the forums with a live demo (the feed-builder analyze output). Measure: stars, clones, waitlist, issues.

  3. 5—​10 hand-picked MSP outreach conversations (r/msp + direct) offering a free design-partner slot for MSPs running Proxmox/Ceph for clients. Measure: booked calls → design partners. 2—​3 design-partner MSPs are worth more than 100 homelab signups.

4. Pricing & packaging (anchored to research §5)

The feed subscription is the recurring product; the appliance is source-available (free).

Tier Price Who Includes

Community

€0

Funnel / homelab

One module, slower feed cadence, email notify

Pro

€9—​19 / estate / mo

Prosumer-pro, tiny shops

All modules, full cadence, email + webhook

MSP / Business

€49—​149 / managed estate / mo

Primary ICP

Air-gap mirror rights, priority advisories, exportable signed audit trail

Compliance / Air-gap

custom €100—​500+/mo

Regulated (segment D)

Mirrorable signed feed, audit trail, SLA on advisory latency

How much can we realistically charge? The defensible anchor is the MSP tier at €49—​149/managed estate/mo — small next to the $129—​249/tech/mo they already spend on RMM, and justified by "one prevented bad upgrade pays for a year." Proxmox’s own €120—​1,100/socket/yr support is the ceiling reference: it buys a stable repo + ticket queue, not upgrade judgment, so CADENCE can sit near/below it and offer what it doesn’t. The Pro tier (€9—​19) mostly de-risks willingness-to-pay; do not expect it to carry the business. Compliance is priced to value.

Free → paid path: Community (1 module, lagged feed) → hit the wall on a second stack or want same-day verdicts → Pro. MSP/Compliance are sales-assisted (the audit-trail + mirror rights are the unlock). 14-day full-feature trial of Pro; no card up front.

5. Launch checklist & funnel

Launch checklist (v1):

  • Appliance (Leptos client) builds, runs, pulls + verifies a signed feed over HTTP, reads live inventory via an adapter, shows verdicts, optional auth — done + e2e-verified (run #2).

  • Scheduled refresh loop + notify-on-change (today: one-shot at startup) — small, M8b.

  • 2 modules curated with real, current advisories (not just the illustrative sample).

  • Public feed hosting + an air-gap mirror guide (rsync/static; the client already writes a re-verifiable mirror to CADENCE_FEED_CACHE).

  • Landing page with the value prop + live analyze demo + pricing. (copy drafted — docs/landing-page.md; needs a site + the live demo embed.)

  • Billing seam wired (Stripe/Paddle) — trait now, real account at launch.

  • Transactional email (advisory notifications) — seam now, real provider at launch.

  • Trust page: signing-key fingerprint, verification instructions, security posture.

  • 3 cornerstone content posts live. (All 3 drafted in content/: Proxmox VE 9 / Ceph-Squid, Nextcloud which-to-hold, and the signed-feed explainer. Remaining: a publishing home + cross-post.)

Funnel (illustrative targets, not promises): blog/community traffic → GitHub stars / waitlist → Community installs → activation (feed verified, first verdict seen) → Pro trial → paid → MSP/Compliance design partners (sales-assisted). North-star early metric: # of activated installs that saw a real "blocked/hold" verdict — that is the aha. Watch advisory-authoring latency as the leading supply metric (research risk #1).