Cernio — Revenue & Cost Structure

Version: 1.0 Date: 2026-03-25 Source: Founder Handbook (Ch. 68-84), Strategy Docs (02-api-cost-control, 04-billing-credits) Purpose: Detailed breakdown of how money flows in and out of the business

1. Revenue Model Overview

Cernio uses a Hybrid SaaS + Credit model. This is deliberate:

Model	Problem It Solves
Pure subscription	Heavy users generate massive AI costs — unlimited pricing creates large losses
Pure credits	Users constantly think about cost — reduces product usage and stalls activation
Hybrid	Predictable revenue from subscriptions + controlled AI cost via credits

Revenue = Subscription MRR + Credit Pack Revenue + Seat Expansion

2. Subscription Revenue

Plan Structure

Plan	Monthly Price	Annual Price (20% off)	Target User
Free	$0	—	Trial — deliver WOW moment
Pro	$39-79	$374-758/yr	Individual exporter
Team	$99-199	$950-1,910/yr	Export teams (2-10 seats)
Enterprise	Custom	Custom	Large firms, multi-org

Pricing decision deferred to post-beta. Pro and Team will be priced based on beta user behavior and willingness-to-pay signals. For projection purposes, we use midpoint estimates: Pro = $59/mo, Team =$ 149/mo.

Plan Limits (Feature Gates)

Feature	Free	Pro	Team	Enterprise
Discovery searches/month	3	50	200	Unlimited
Companies per search	10	25	25	50
Contact reveals/month	1	100	500	Unlimited
Saved leads	20	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited
Organization members	1	1	10	Unlimited
Batch operations	No	No	Yes	Yes
API access	No	No	No	Yes
Auto-headhunt	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
AI company analysis	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Follow-up reminders	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Shared lead workspace	No	No	Yes	Yes

Subscription Revenue Scenarios

Scenario	Pro Users	Team Users	Enterprise	Monthly Sub Revenue
Beta (Month 3)	5	0	0	$295
Early (Month 6)	20	3	0	$1,627
Growth (Month 12)	80	15	1	$7,455
Scale (Month 36)	400	80	5	$37,260

Enterprise priced at $500/mo average for projections.

3. Credit Revenue

How Credits Work

Plan limits define a monthly allowance. Usage within the allowance is “free” (covered by subscription). When a user exceeds their plan limit, credits are consumed.

User runs discovery search
  → Check: within plan limit? → Yes → proceed (no credit cost)
  → Check: within plan limit? → No → has credits? → Yes → consume 1 credit, proceed
  → Check: has credits? → No → show upgrade/purchase dialog

Credit Pricing

Pack	Credits	Price	Per-Credit Cost	Implied Margin (vs AI cost)
Small	50	$15	$0.30	~80% (on discovery)
Medium	200	$50	$0.25	~76%
Large	1000	$200	$0.20	~70%

Credit Consumption Table

Action	Credits	Actual AI Cost	Gross Margin per Action
Buyer discovery search	1	~$0.06	70-80%
Contact reveal (headhunt)	1	~$0.03	85-90%
Deep company analysis (enrichment)	2	~$0.10	75-83%
Market intelligence report	3	~$0.15	75-83%
Batch operation (per company)	0.5	~$0.03	70-80%

Credit Revenue Scenarios

Assumes ~20% of paid users purchase credit packs, average 1.5 packs/quarter:

Scenario	Paid Users	Credit Buyers	Quarterly Credit Revenue
Beta (Month 3)	5	1	$50
Early (Month 6)	23	5	$250
Growth (Month 12)	96	19	$950
Scale (Month 36)	485	97	$4,850

4. Cost Structure

4.1 Fixed Costs (Monthly)

Category	Item	Cost	Notes
Infrastructure	Hetzner VPS “Galata” (production)	€9.49 (~$10.30)	8 vCPU, 16GB RAM, 160GB NVMe
Infrastructure	Hetzner VPS “Kadikoy” (worker)	€5.49 (~$5.96)	4 vCPU, 8GB RAM, 80GB NVMe
Infrastructure	Domain + DNS (Cloudflare)	~$2	dose-related domains
Infrastructure	SSL certificates	$0	Let’s Encrypt via Coolify
SaaS Tools	Stripe	$0 base	2.9% + $0.30 per transaction
SaaS Tools	PostHog (analytics)	$0	Free tier (1M events/mo)
SaaS Tools	Sentry (error tracking)	$0	Free tier (5K events/mo)
People	Founder salary	$0	Bootstrapped, self-funded
	Total Fixed	~$18/mo

Critical insight: Fixed costs are extremely low (~$18/mo) because of self-hosted infrastructure on Hetzner and bootstrapped operations. This is a major advantage — the business reaches profitability very early.

4.2 Variable Costs (Per Action)

AI Provider Costs (Per 1M Tokens)

Provider	Model	Input Cost	Output Cost	Best For
Gemini	2.5 Flash	$0.15	$0.60	Default (cheapest)
Perplexity	Sonar Pro	$1.00	$1.00	Web search (headhunt, discovery)
Anthropic	Claude Sonnet	$3.00	$15.00	Complex analysis
OpenAI	GPT-4o	$2.50	$10.00	Fallback

Cost Per User Action

Action	LLM Cost	Search API	Processing	Total
Discovery search	$0.02	$0.03	$0.01	$0.06
Contact reveal	$0.02	$0.01	$0.00	$0.03
Deep analysis	$0.05	$0.03	$0.02	$0.10
Market report	$0.08	$0.05	$0.02	$0.15
Batch (per company)	$0.02	$0.01	$0.00	$0.03

4.3 Transaction Costs

Item	Cost	Notes
Stripe subscription processing	2.9% + $0.30	Per monthly payment
Stripe credit pack processing	2.9% + $0.30	Per purchase
Estimated Stripe cost on $59 Pro plan	$2.01	3.4% effective rate
Estimated Stripe cost on $50 credit pack	$1.75	3.5% effective rate

5. Unit Economics

5.1 Per-User Economics (Pro Plan — Midpoint $59/mo)

Metric	Value	Calculation
Monthly subscription revenue	$59.00	Pro plan
Stripe fee	-$2.01	2.9% + $0.30
AI cost (30 searches/mo avg)	-$1.80	30 × $0.06
AI cost (50 reveals/mo avg)	-$1.50	50 × $0.03
Infrastructure allocation	-$0.36	$18 fixed / 50 users
Net revenue per user	$53.33
Gross margin	90.4%

This is exceptionally high gross margin because AI costs are low and infrastructure is self-hosted. Even at pessimistic usage (50 searches, 100 reveals), margin stays above 80%.

5.2 Per-User Economics (Team Plan — Midpoint $149/mo)

Metric	Value	Calculation
Monthly subscription revenue	$149.00	Team plan
Stripe fee	-$4.62	2.9% + $0.30
AI cost (100 searches/mo avg)	-$6.00	100 × $0.06
AI cost (250 reveals/mo avg)	-$7.50	250 × $0.03
Infrastructure allocation	-$0.36	$18 fixed / 50 users
Net revenue per user	$130.52
Gross margin	87.6%

5.3 Credit Pack Economics

Pack	Revenue	Stripe Fee	AI Cost (if all discovery)	Net	Margin
Small (50 credits)	$15.00	$0.74	$3.00	$11.26	75.1%
Medium (200 credits)	$50.00	$1.75	$12.00	$36.25	72.5%
Large (1000 credits)	$200.00	$6.10	$60.00	$133.90	67.0%

Credit margins are lower than subscription margins but still healthy (67-75%). Credits serve as overflow monetization, not primary revenue.

5.4 Blended Unit Economics Summary

Metric	Conservative	Expected	Optimistic
ARPU (Monthly)	$45	$65	$85
Gross Margin	78%	85%	90%
Estimated CAC	$30-50	$15-30	$5-15
Estimated LTV (24-36 mo retention)	$1,080	$1,560-2,340	$2,040-3,060
LTV:CAC Ratio	22-36x	52-156x	136-612x

LTV:CAC is extremely favorable because of near-zero CAC (personal network, content marketing, trade fairs) and high gross margins. Even the conservative estimate far exceeds the 3x benchmark for healthy SaaS.

6. Revenue per Search Analysis

This is the core economic equation:

Revenue per search = Credit value ($0.20-0.30)
Cost per search    = AI cost ($0.06)
Margin per search  = $0.14-0.24 (70-80%)

At scale:

Monthly Searches	AI Cost	Revenue (at $0.25 avg credit)	Gross Profit
1,000	$60	$250	$190
10,000	$600	$2,500	$1,900
100,000	$6,000	$25,000	$19,000
1,000,000	$60,000	$250,000	$190,000

Note: Most searches will be within plan limits (not consuming credits). The subscription fee covers the expected usage. Credits only kick in for power users exceeding limits.

7. Break-Even Analysis

Minimum Viable Revenue

Expense	Monthly
Infrastructure (Hetzner + domain)	$18
AI API costs (at 10 users, 300 searches)	$18
Stripe fees (at 5 Pro subscribers)	$10
Total minimum costs	~$46/mo

Break-Even Point

Scenario	Required Users	Monthly Revenue	Notes
Cover infra only	1 Pro user	$59	Infrastructure paid for by single subscriber
Cover infra + AI	2 Pro users	$118	All variable costs covered
Founder salary ($3K/mo)	~55 Pro users	$3,245	Modest founder compensation
Founder salary ($5K/mo)	~90 Pro users	$5,310	Comfortable founder compensation
Sustainable business ($10K MRR)	~170 Pro users	$10,030	Reinvestment capacity

Key insight: With $18/mo fixed costs, the business is technically profitable from the first paying customer. The real break-even is founder salary — achievable with 55-90 Pro subscribers.

8. Revenue Expansion Opportunities

Near-Term (Ring 1-2)

Opportunity	Mechanism	Revenue Impact
Pro → Team upgrades	Multi-user export teams	2.5x ARPU increase
Credit pack purchases	Power users exceeding limits	10-20% revenue uplift
Annual billing	20% discount for upfront payment	Cash flow improvement

Medium-Term (Ring 3)

Opportunity	Mechanism	Revenue Impact
Market intelligence reports	Premium add-on (3 credits each)	New revenue stream
HubSpot/CRM integration	Premium connector	Feature differentiation
Trade fair tool	Mobile companion	Activation channel

Long-Term (Ring 4+)

Opportunity	Mechanism	Revenue Impact
Enterprise API access	Programmatic discovery	High-value contracts
AI Export Copilot	Premium AI assistant	Premium tier justification
Data licensing	Anonymized export intelligence	New revenue category
White-label	Platform for export agencies	Enterprise deals

9. Cost Optimization Levers

Lever	Mechanism	Potential Savings
Provider routing	Use Gemini Flash (cheapest) for classification, Perplexity only for web search	30-50% AI cost reduction
Search cache	30-day TTL on `export_ai_search_history` — identical queries don’t hit AI	20-40% fewer API calls
Batch processing	Classify 25 companies per API call instead of 1-by-1	10-20x fewer API calls
Model selection	Use smaller models for simpler tasks (classification vs analysis)	20-40% token cost reduction
Self-hosted models	Run open-source models on GPU VPS for high-volume tasks (future)	60-80% cost reduction

10. Pricing Psychology

Exporters think in terms of lead generation capacity, not AI compute:

Framing	Bad	Good
Discovery	”Uses 1 AI credit"	"Find 25 potential buyers”
Contact reveal	”Costs 1 credit"	"Get the purchasing manager’s email”
Pro plan	”$59/month for AI"	"$59/month = 50 buyer searches + 100 contacts”
ROI	”AI tool subscription"	"One distributor deal pays for 10 years of Pro plan”

A single successful distributor relationship can generate $50K-500K+ in annual revenue for a small exporter. At$ 59/mo, Cernio costs $708/year — the ROI is self-evident.

Summary

Metric	Value
Revenue model	Hybrid SaaS + Credits
Primary revenue	Subscription (Pro $59, Team$ 149 midpoints)
Secondary revenue	Credit packs ($15-200)
AI cost per search	~$0.06
Gross margin (subscription)	85-90%
Gross margin (credits)	67-75%
Fixed costs	~$18/mo (self-hosted Hetzner)
Break-even	1-2 Pro subscribers (infra) / 55-90 (founder salary)
LTV:CAC ratio	22-612x (depending on assumptions)

Next: 03-financial-projections.md — 3/6/12 month and 3-year projections

Overview

Strategy

Economics

Operations

​Cernio — Revenue & Cost Structure

​1. Revenue Model Overview

​2. Subscription Revenue

​Plan Structure

​Plan Limits (Feature Gates)

​Subscription Revenue Scenarios

​3. Credit Revenue

​How Credits Work

​Credit Pricing

​Credit Consumption Table

​Credit Revenue Scenarios

​4. Cost Structure

​4.1 Fixed Costs (Monthly)

​4.2 Variable Costs (Per Action)

​AI Provider Costs (Per 1M Tokens)

​Cost Per User Action

​4.3 Transaction Costs

​5. Unit Economics

​5.1 Per-User Economics (Pro Plan — Midpoint $59/mo)

​5.2 Per-User Economics (Team Plan — Midpoint $149/mo)

​5.3 Credit Pack Economics

​5.4 Blended Unit Economics Summary

​6. Revenue per Search Analysis

​7. Break-Even Analysis

​Minimum Viable Revenue

​Break-Even Point

​8. Revenue Expansion Opportunities

​Near-Term (Ring 1-2)

​Medium-Term (Ring 3)

​Long-Term (Ring 4+)

​9. Cost Optimization Levers

​10. Pricing Psychology

​Summary