Founder plan / June 2026
Build the expert network before the market.
VigFi Experts should become the clean alternative to noisy signal rooms, guru courses, and anonymous indicator sellers: public forecast receipts, credible specialists, paid communities, and a future bridge into regulated prediction-market value.
Operating thesis
Community + receipts + market signal
Supply
100 founding experts
identity + record
Demand
free followers first
paid belonging later
Trust
wins and misses shown
no hidden calls
Upside
forecast graph
market bridge
Key rule
Until licensing is explicit, this is research, education, and community access. No staking, odds, or personalized financial advice in the experts product.
Business model
Four revenue lanes, one trust engine.
The page should not feel like a payment gateway. It should feel like joining a specialist circle where the price buys access to reasoning, alerts, discussion, and a visible record.
Expert memberships
Specialists sell ongoing access to forecasts, notes, alerts, and private discussion spaces. VigFi takes a transparent platform share.
Free followers -> paid Circles
Desk bundles
Subscribers can buy a whole desk: property, timber, energy, crypto, macro, sport, or AI compute. This turns one creator into a category habit.
EUR 49-149 / month
Pro research seats
Companies pay for team access, source packs, calls, API-ready forecast objects, and category dashboards.
EUR 490-2,500 / month
Data and market layer
Timestamped probabilities, rationale, and outcomes become a scored intelligence graph that can later feed regulated market products.
Licensing gate first
Pricing language
Name the relationship, not the transaction.
Watchlist
Free follower mode: public record, free notes, scoreboard email.
Circle
Single-expert member: locked calls, AMAs, comments, alerts.
Desk
Category bundle: a group of experts, one board, one monthly review.
Pro Room
Team access: source packs, calls, data exports, and concierge research.
Take-rate model
Be generous at the start, standardize later.
Founding experts should keep 95% in year one to create supply and pride. The standard plan can settle at 85% creator share, with desk bundles and Pro seats priced for platform margin.
Subscription gross -> expert payout -> platform contribution -> reinvest into acquisition and verification
Cashflow
Spend first on expert supply, then let bundles carry the team.
Illustrative twelve-month model. The important metric is not total receipts at first; it is platform contribution after creator payouts, payments, and fixed team spend.
Runway shape
With EUR 150k-300k founder runway, the plan can survive the first three quarters if hiring stays fractional and product scope is limited to marketplace proof.
M1-M3 / Proof desks
Recruit founding experts, publish public ledgers, ship subscriber mock flows.
-EUR 39,000
net cash
M4-M6 / Creator engine
First category bundles, SEO comparison pages, paid community pilots.
-EUR 44,000
net cash
M7-M9 / Desk scale
Add creator success, forecast ops, and pro research seats.
-EUR 27,000
net cash
M10-M12 / Break-even push
Enterprise seats and desk bundles carry fixed costs.
EUR 37,000
net cash
Expert network
The product is not content. It is credible people under scoring pressure.
The winning expert network is curated like a fund, edited like a newsroom, and monetized like a creator community.
VigFi
receipts beat hype
Experts
credentialed supply
Forecasts
scored objects
Followers
free trust
Members
paid belonging
Data
market signal
Start with narrow desks
Do not recruit everyone. Start where VigFi already has product gravity: Valencia and Baltic property, timber and land, energy/shipping, crypto liquidity, macro/rates, and AI compute.
Each desk needs 2 anchor experts, 3 challenger experts, and one editor who can turn knowledge into forecast objects.
Turn experts into a scored product
Every expert must publish structured calls: question, probability, deadline, resolution source, rationale, disclosure, and final settlement.
The public ledger is the moat. Users buy access because misses are visible too.
Make earning feel prestigious
Founding experts keep 95% in year one, get a public charter badge, a category launch page, and a concierge publishing workflow.
The pitch is not gig work. It is a verified reputation asset with recurring income.
Build the community surface
Each expert gets free followers, Circle members, Desk members, and Pro members. Forums, AMAs, locked alerts, and monthly score reviews make it feel social, not like a checkout form.
Belonging increases retention; scoreboards keep the quality bar visible.
First hires
Hire operators who make experts look good and keep the record clean.
The first team should be fractional or contractor-heavy until desk revenue proves retention. Avoid permanent overhead before the marketplace loop works.
Expert acquisition lead
Recruit the first 20 credible specialists, negotiate founding terms, and build a repeatable vetting script.
Forecast operations editor
Convert expert thinking into precise, resolvable forecast objects and run settlement discipline.
Creator success producer
Help experts package tiers, launch posts, demo videos, AMAs, and onboarding flows.
Growth and SEO lead
Own scoreboards, comparison pages, search landing pages, newsletter swaps, and weekly buzz loops.
Product engineer
Ship auth, paid memberships, forum states, payment placeholders, forecast publishing, and analytics.
Compliance reviewer
Keep research, advice, and regulated market functionality separated until the right licence path is live.
Creator proposition
Make experts want to earn with VigFi.
The founding promise should be simple: keep more, publish better, build a permanent record, and turn niche judgment into recurring status and income.
Founding Expert
95% year-one shareFor the first cohort. VigFi does the heavy lift: profile, desk page, launch campaign, pricing, editing, and subscriber onboarding.
Circle Host
Recurring audienceExperts earn from member-only notes, locked probabilities, alerts, office hours, and lightweight forums around their niche.
Desk Partner
Bundle upsideTop experts share desk-level revenue when their category becomes a subscription bundle or enterprise research product.
Required expert kit
Profile video, proof of credentials, conflict disclosure, sample public call, paid member promise, posting cadence, and a first-month launch calendar.
Promotion and traction
Win traffic from hype sellers by being the receipt layer.
Do not spoof fake expert sites or clone their funnels. Beat them with comparison pages, public audits, transparent scoring, and better alternatives for users already searching for signals.
Scoreboard loop
Every week publish who was right, who changed their mind, and what the public market missed. This creates repeatable social proof.
Comparison loop
Capture traffic from indicator, signal, course, and guru pages with clean comparison pages: receipts, risk flags, and verified alternatives.
Challenge loop
Invite influencers, analysts, and newsletter writers into public forecast challenges. Winners get reach; weak claims get exposed by the ledger.
Community loop
Turn subscribers into participants with desk forums, prediction reviews, AMAs, badges, and founder access for early members.
Traffic conquest pages
The anti-signal-room SEO playbook.
Users already search for crypto indicators, course reviews, tipsters, paid groups, and expert predictions. VigFi should rank with evidence-driven pages that explain what to avoid and show verified expert alternatives.
Prediction-market bridge
Markets show the price. Experts explain why the price is wrong.
Prediction markets create demand for probability thinking. VigFi Experts can be the editorial and reputation layer around that behavior without prematurely becoming a betting product.
Layer 1
Research now
No staking. Experts publish education, forecast commentary, and public score records.
Layer 2
Market mirror
Show VigFi expert probabilities next to public market prices where available, with clear no-advice framing.
Layer 3
Signal graph
Aggregate expert calibration, disagreement, and source quality into data products for pro users.
Layer 4
Regulated lane
Only after licensing gates: connect forecast intelligence to real-money market products without mixing unregulated advice and betting.
Product expression
Probability pages that combine expert rationale and market price.
Do not cross this line early
The experts product should not sell odds, promise returns, handle stakes, or let subscribers treat a forecast as personalized advice. Keep the market product under separate licensing, risk, KYC, AML, and settlement controls.
90-day execution plan
Build proof before scale.
Days 1-15
Pick 3 desks, recruit 10 founding experts, publish the charter and forecast object rules.
Days 16-30
Launch profiles, free follower mode, locked-member mockups, and the first weekly scoreboard.
Days 31-60
Ship demo videos, desk pages, community placeholders, payment choices, and creator onboarding.
Days 61-90
Run public forecast challenges, comparison SEO pages, and first Pro research seat pilots.
Risk gates
The trust bar must stay higher than the growth bar.
Regulatory blur
Keep education, research, paid content, and real-money market products separated until licence approvals are explicit.
Fake expert supply
Require identity, credentials, disclosures, and permanent miss records. No anonymous guru monetization.
Creator churn
Give experts done-for-you editing, audience analytics, and founding economics before asking for heavy cadence.
Subscriber trust
Do not overpromise returns. Sell clarity, receipts, and access to reasoning, not guaranteed profit.
Source-informed assumptions
Grounded enough to act, still a model.
These references shaped the business-plan page. The financial numbers above are illustrative operating assumptions, not an investment offer or a forecast guarantee.
Substack creator pricing
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KPMG prediction-market paths
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Skynet 2025 prediction-market report
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