CHPTRS takes the engineering side of Ecologi Action, the self-service business, as a responsibility: the handover from the current team, the hosting and security, the automation of customer service and ops, and a fast rhythm of experiments: test, learn, keep what works.
Ecologi Enterprise, the assisted side, stays as it is. Action is the product-led side: subscriptions, Shopify, the API and the Impact Shop, run lean and profitable from day one. It's the side of Ecologi Alex has always believed in and had the most passion for.
Fast, without compromising on quality. The speed comes from AI and our proprietary software factory: agents plan, build and review every change in pull requests, with humans at the gates.
* Plus VAT, plus a share of subscription growth above the handover base.
Every cube is one of Ecologi's 9,000 paying members.
Every figure here comes from the Ecologi Action deck. The retainer is designed to replace the Chief Engineer, the Tech Engineer and the dev agency, and starts the week after the kick-off.
Holding the subscription line flat pays for it on its own. September's subscriptions were £219k, 12.5% below January. If the deck's January–September trend simply continues, another twelve months of slide costs about £266k of revenue and £183k of gross profit. Every point of subscription revenue retained is worth about £28k a year.
The scope is the self-service business Ecologi Action takes on: subscriptions, Shopify, the API and the Impact Shop.
Enterprise keeps assisted sales and corporate relationships, unchanged.
Inside Action, the two teams meet at the backlog: a weekly backlog review with Scott, and the board measures to the advisory group every month.
Passed through at cost: hosting and infrastructure, Stripe and Shopify fees, email and tooling, the customer service agents' wages, impact purchases and ad spend.
Your phases, in your order. The retainer is fixed through the first two and reviewed at the third. Only the first carries a date; the others are gated by evidence, not time.
Protect the live revenue base.
Gate 1. Handover complete; subscription run-rate at or above the handover month.
Fix the reasons people leave.
Gate 2. The 90-day evidence review, against thresholds for retention, acquisition and contribution agreed at the kick-off.
Test, measure retained revenue, then scale what works.
Gate 3. Engineer in the seat; retainer reviewed down.
Olly put it best: this isn't about finding a million customers, it's turning 9,000 into 18,000. The handover protects the members Ecologi has. After Gate 3, the factory's job is the next 9,000.
New doors into Ecologi
Creator and podcast partnerships, retail and Shopify checkout contributions, artists' fan communities, media and intermediaries. Each one a small release, measured on retained revenue per community.
New flavours and toppings
We build the rails so a flavour, a topping or a prize draw ships in a week rather than a quarter, and the monthly impact moment lands in the member's pocket, not on a page they never visit.
New ways to contribute
Regular giving, one-off top-ups, the fractional API, Shopify and gift cards, with small amounts aggregated so fees don't swallow them. The offer separated from the payment method.
The deck's base case is +10% a year once churn is halted; the dream target is +20%. Every test above ships through the factory behind a small release, is measured on retained revenue, and is scaled only when the evidence says so. Fast, and without compromising on quality.
Fractional CTO · the buck stops here
Co-founded Ecologi and built the subscription product, the Shopify integration and the API. Owns architecture, hosting, security, the handover and the engineering hire.
Product and operations · in the business day to day
The psychology of the buyer, onboarding and cancellation, customer service and ops automation, the experiment pipeline and its read-outs.
Our proprietary software factory · how an experiment ships every week
A battle-tested multiagentic team plans the work, builds it into pull requests and reviews it on a schedule, with humans at the gates. It's how we move fast without compromising on quality.
Designed, recruited and handed over by CHPTRS
We write the role, run the search and hand over to them. When they are in the seat and productive, the retainer is reviewed down and CHPTRS steps back toward fractional CTO plus the factory.
How it flexes
When a permanent engineer is in and productive, the retainer is reviewed down. A sprint clearly outside the self-service products, a new Enterprise integration say, is scoped and priced separately.
The bonus
The base is the subscription run-rate in the month the migration completes, measured on retained revenue. Growth above it earns a fixed percentage, settled quarterly or annually. We agree the percentage at the kick-off.
Start
Everything lives in Ecologi's GitHub, accounts and runbooks from day one, with a notice period on both sides. The hiring commitment is the exit plan.