Potential challenges

This page lists the 14 things most likely to go wrong with Distribution Club, from platform approvals to fraud to the risk that our own test campaigns make the marketplace look healthier than it is. For each one it says what the problem is, how we would notice it early, what we do to prevent it, and what we do if it happens anyway.

Draft v0.1 · Last updated 19 September 2026

On this page

1. 1. How to read this page
2. 2. Summary table
3. 3. Social API access and audits
4. 4. Money handling and tax
5. 5. Two-sided cold start
6. 6. Quality and brand safety
7. 7. Fraud and pay integrity
8. 8. Creator earnings fairness
9. 9. Automatic posting acceptance
10. 10. Review cost and speed at scale
11. 11. Sample logistics
12. 12. Legal classification and disclosure
13. 13. Platform dependence
14. 14. Competition
15. 15. Dogfood distortion
16. 16. The two-week MVP
17. 17. Open questions we cannot answer yet

1. How to read this page

The words used below. A brand is the paying customer. A creator is the person who makes and posts a video. A campaign is what a brand creates: a brief, a 10-item checklist, a fund (the money the brand deposits) and settings. A gig is one unit of work for one creator inside a campaign. An offer is the notification inviting a creator to take a gig, and dispatch is the process of sending offers. A creator is paid a CPM (a rate per 1,000 real views) set by their league, with a floor released at publish into the creator's wallet and the rest following views read on day 3, day 7 and day 14; a payout moves wallet money to the bank each month. Ops is our own operations team. A dogfood campaign is one funded by Distribution Club itself and run through the normal product. The full vocabulary is in the Product spec.

Each challenge has seven parts: what it is; why it matters; likelihood and impact (each High, Medium or Low); early warning signs; prevention (what is already in the spec); if it happens (the fallback); and the owner and the phase in which it bites. Phases are dated on the Rollout plan: Phase 0, the MVP sprint, runs 7 to 20 September 2026, with the first gig dispatched 21 September 2026; Phase 1, the build-out while live, runs 21 September 2026 to 22 January 2027; Phase 2 from 25 January 2027, Phase 3 from 29 March 2027, Phase 4 from 1 July 2027.

The ratings are the spec author's judgement at Draft v0.1 and will change as real numbers arrive. Distribution Club is one founder through 2027, doing product, engineering, review, ops and sales, with a chartered accountant and a lawyer paid per job (brief section 9); owners below are the founder unless a challenge is squarely accounting or legal work, and the pairing of each challenge with a person is proposed here, not fixed in the brief (assumption).

2. Summary table

3. Social API access and audits

3.1 What it is

Eventually we read every view count, and where a platform allows it, post video, through the official interface (API) of that platform. At MVP none of this is used: the creator enters their handle by hand, ops sets the league from the creator's last 10 posts, and ops reads or receives a screenshot of the public view count on day 3, day 7 and day 14 (brief section 28). Applications for read permission and, alongside them, publishing permission go in from day one of the MVP sprint so the build-out can replace this manual work later, targeted for after the beta. Each platform still makes us pass a check first: Meta App Review for Instagram insights and, separately, publishing; a Google API compliance audit for YouTube analytics and, separately, upload (until the upload side passes, videos uploaded by an app cannot be public); a TikTok audit for reading views and, separately, for the Content Posting API (until the posting side passes, posts made through the app can only be private); and a paid X API tier for both reading and posting. These take 2 to 8 weeks. After approval there are limits: Instagram allows 100 API posts per account per 24 hours, access tokens expire, a YouTube upload costs a large share of the daily quota, and X has per-app rate limits. Any platform can change its policy. Details are on the Dependencies page.

3.2 Why it matters

Neither read nor publishing permission sits on the two-week critical path, since handles are entered and views are read by hand at MVP. What matters is the build-out: read permission replaces manual view reads with API reads, and publishing permission is what lets automatic posting switch on for a platform. If a platform is slow or refuses read access, the manual process simply continues on that platform for longer than planned, which is more ops work but not a launch risk.

3.3 Likelihood and impact

Likelihood High: four read-permission requests, and at least one will probably ask for changes. Impact Low for the MVP itself, since nothing here blocks the first gig; Medium for the build-out, since a slow approval keeps ops reading views by hand for longer than planned and delays when automatic posting can start.

3.4 Early warning signs

• No reply from a review 4 weeks after applying (assumption).
• A reviewer asks for changes to our demo, privacy policy or list of scopes.
• A posting spike, run during the sprint when time allows, fails on a platform, or token refresh fails in testing.
• Ops cannot keep up reading views by hand across a growing number of creators once the beta opens.

3.5 Prevention

• All four applications, for read permission first and publishing permission alongside it, go in during the MVP sprint, so even an 8-week review is well underway before the build-out ends.
• We request only the scopes we need (read stats, and publish once approved), and engineering runs OAuth and read spikes against all four APIs when sprint time allows, so every application comes with working code.
• The manual process (handle entered by hand, league set from the last 10 posts, views read on day 3, 7 and 14) is the plan at MVP, not a fallback waiting to fail, so a slow approval changes nothing about whether the first gig ships.

3.6 If it happens

A campaign can pick any mix of platforms, and the manual process works the same way on all four, so a slow or refused read permission on any platform simply means ops keeps reading that platform's views by hand for longer. Automatic posting on a platform waits until its publishing permission is approved, with creator-posted mode and manual checking as the permanent fallback everywhere until then.

3.7 Owner and phase

The founder owns the applications and the spikes. It runs through the MVP sprint and the build-out, with a first check-in at the open creator beta on 25 January 2027, and continues into Phase 3 as publishing permissions arrive.

4. Money handling and tax

4.1 What it is

Brands deposit money, we hold it against gigs, and we pay creators, now on Indian rails first and worldwide rails as coverage grows. The rule stays the same regardless of country: the platform never holds customer money in its own operating account. Two pairs sit behind this rule, per brief section 34: marketplace plus Route gives GST on our 20% cut only, because the creator supplies the brand and we only supply facilitation; principal plus holding the money ourselves gives GST on the whole price, the shape used by dating and hosting apps that sell their own coins, which we reject as the standing model. The fallback rule that follows is absolute: never hold brand money without a licence and without being the principal. Either a licensed partner holds the 80% creator pool and we are the marketplace (GST on our 20% cut only), or, only as a dated stopgap with the lawyer's sign-off, we are the principal ourselves and pay GST on the whole price for those gigs; there is no third option where we hold the money as a marketplace without the licence.

Distribution Club is an Indian entity, so Razorpay collects brand payments (cards, UPI and net banking) and Razorpay Route holds and splits the fund to creators, with a fallback of collecting into the entity's own Razorpay account and paying through RazorpayX at MVP volumes, with the lawyer's sign-off, until Route is approved. RazorpayX or Cashfree Payouts pay Indian creators by UPI or bank; Payoneer Mass Payouts, with PayPal as a second candidate, pays creators outside India once the entity's eligibility as a payer is confirmed. See the Payments page for the full detail. Whether Distribution Club needs any registration of its own beyond Razorpay's aggregator licence is a lawyer question for the MVP sprint. Brands are charged for what a gig takes from their fund, in rupees at that day's rate of the dollar price for Indian brands (assumption); the split between the creator's fee and our 20% cut lives only in our own ledger and never appears on a brand-facing screen. Tax works differently on each side: GST at 18% applies to the platform's 20% cut charged to Indian brands, taken at deposit, with the cut on gigs sold to brands outside India potentially zero-rated under a Letter of Undertaking, to be confirmed by the chartered accountant; TDS (tax deducted at source), most likely under Section 194-O, is deducted from Indian creator payouts as the accountant confirms, with PAN and bank details collected before the first payout. Brands never pay a subscription to Distribution Club, so a merchant-of-record service has no role at all: it never carries the platform's 20% cut, which the platform itself must account for and pay (brief section 30). Since 5 September 2026 the platform's 20% cut is net margin: the running cost of each gig, review, payout transfer, storage and the card fee's share, about $2.00 per gig, is paid from the 80% creator pool before creators, never from this 20%.

4.2 Why it matters

Getting this wrong can stop the company. It also makes the ledger hard: at deposit a brand pays into a fund with no fee shown as a separate line, so a campaign is simply the fund amount the brand chooses, $600 or more, tracked in US dollars inside the product regardless of the currency the brand is actually charged in; our 20% cut is taken at once and tracked only in our internal ledger. Creator pool money is then reserved (at the gig's expected earnings) when a creator accepts, and released as a floor at publish plus further releases after the day 3, day 7 and day 14 view reads; the platform's 20% cut is not released this way, since it was already taken and recognised as revenue the moment the deposit landed. Money not earned when a gig is cancelled or a post underperforms its expected earnings stays in the creator pool, and is paid out on the 1st of every month, converted to the creator's local currency by whichever rail pays them. The no-refund rule must be clear before the first deposit: unused creator pool stays in the fund balance for the brand's next campaign, and deposits are never returned.

4.3 Likelihood and impact

Likelihood Medium: the Razorpay model is standard for an Indian marketplace, but Route's approval timing, the GST and TDS treatment, and payer eligibility for paying creators abroad are all open questions during the sprint. Impact High: a bad answer delays the first payout or forces a change to the money flow.

4.4 Early warning signs

• The lawyer's review says a registration is needed beyond Razorpay's own licence, or Route cannot hold funds the way this plan describes.
• Our ledger and Razorpay's balance disagree.
• The chartered accountant has not confirmed the TDS section or the GST and Letter of Undertaking treatment before the first payout on 1 October 2026.
• A creator outside India is still unpaid because Payoneer's eligibility as a payer, or PayPal as the second candidate, has not been confirmed.

4.5 Prevention

• Razorpay is signed and Route is requested on 7 September 2026, with the RazorpayX fallback and the lawyer's sign-off ready in case Route's approval runs past 21 September 2026.
• The ledger is built at the very start of the sprint, before dispatch, so every later feature writes to it, with a rail field so every payout rail is treated the same. The no-refund rule is written into the brand terms.
• The founder runs the first payout on 1 October 2026 by hand in the ops console, so the first batch is checked line by line.

4.6 If it happens

If Route is not approved in time, the RazorpayX fallback carries the first payouts at MVP volumes with the lawyer's sign-off, moving to Route once approved (assumption). If the ledger and Razorpay's balance disagree, payouts are frozen until the difference is explained and creators are told the new date (assumption). If a creator outside India is not yet covered by Payoneer or PayPal, their payout is held and the creator is told, rather than sent through an unapproved channel (assumption).

4.7 Owner and phase

The founder owns it with the accountant and the lawyer. It bites hardest in the MVP sprint and at the first payout run on 1 October 2026, and continues at every payout run after.

5. Two-sided cold start

5.1 What it is

Brands will not fund campaigns if slots do not fill, and creators will not stay if offers do not arrive. Our version has a twist: availability density. Offers only go to creators who are inside their availability windows at the moment of dispatch. So it is not enough to have 300 creators in total. An audience segment needs enough creators online at the times brands fund campaigns. If a brand funds an AI tools campaign for a US developers audience at 10 am on a Tuesday and most developer-audience creators have set 6 pm to 11 pm windows, no offers go out until the evening.

Creator sign-up is open worldwide from the first day of the beta, so the total pool of sign-ups looks big quickly. But a global pool can be wide and thin at the same time: it is easy to have creators on paper in many countries and still have too few in any one audience segment, league and time zone at once. The number to watch is not total sign-ups but dispatch density: how many eligible creators are inside their availability window, matched to a given audience segment and league, in a given time zone, at the moment a brand funds a campaign.

V1's narrow niche makes both sides of this thinner by design, not just at launch. The paying customer is indie developers, indie hackers and small SaaS companies, buying only ten categories, all priced at the same 1.6 factor: AI tools, SaaS and web apps, developer tools, productivity apps, fitness apps, health apps, lifestyle apps, education apps, kids apps, games. That is a smaller and more price-sensitive demand side than a general 21-category, any-brand model: budgets are more likely to sit near the $600 minimum than the $6,000 examples used elsewhere on this site, and there are simply fewer indie-developer and small-SaaS brands to sign up in any given period than there are restaurants, D2C brands or gyms. On the supply side, developer-audience creators, the ones whose audience genuinely skews toward US developers or indie hackers, are not spread evenly across all four platforms: that audience concentrates on X and on YouTube (brief section 50 item 9), so a campaign that specifically wants Instagram Reels or TikTok reach for a US developers audience may find dispatch density thinner there than on X or YouTube Shorts, even where the same fill rate looks fine on the platforms where that audience actually is.

5.2 Why it matters

The beta target is 70% of slots filled within 2 hours. Wave 1 sends offers to enough creators that one is expected to be accepted: at least 2 and up to 6 per open slot, based on the recent acceptance rate for that audience segment and league (starting at 2 until 50 offers of data exist for that combination), each expiring after 30 minutes, then further waves for up to 48 hours. After 48 hours the brand is asked to widen leagues, platforms or its audience description. A brand that has to do that on its first campaign is unlikely to be one of the 40% who fund a second within 60 days. A second, quieter failure mode sits alongside a missed fill rate: even where the planner shows a range rather than a promise, for example "Expected: 400,000 to 500,000 views," a thin niche pool raises the risk that dispatch still does not fill enough of the campaign to reach even the low end of that range. A brand was never promised a guarantee, so this is not a broken promise in the strict sense, but a range that is regularly missed on the low side damages trust just as much as a missed fill rate would.

5.3 Likelihood and impact

Likelihood High: 300 beta creators across 21 categories, 4 platforms and eight leagues is about 14 per category before filtering by hours, and spread further across every country the beta opens in, that number is thinner still in any one place. Eight leagues, up from six, and 21 categories, up from ten, split that same pool into more, thinner bins, which makes the density rule below harder to clear (assumption). V1's narrow customer and category set, and the concentration of developer-audience creators on X and YouTube, make the same pool thinner again for the specific audience segments and platforms V1 actually needs, even before the general 21-category maths above (assumption). Impact High: slow fills lose brands and silence loses creators, and a niche this narrow has fewer brands in the pipeline to absorb a bad first impression.

5.4 Early warning signs

• Fill rate under 70% within 2 hours in any category; slots regularly reaching wave 3; the 48-hour widening message being sent at all.
• Offers expiring unanswered, and creators with no offer in 14 days.

5.5 Prevention

• The MVP sprint and the build-out together build a waitlist of 300 creators and sign 10 pilot brands with letters of intent, so both sides exist before 25 January 2027.
• Accept fewer categories at first: pilot brands are recruited in the categories where the waitlist is deepest, and a thin category is not offered to brands until it has enough creators (assumption). The Rollout plan carries a proposal, not yet decided, to make this deliberate rather than incidental: concentrate the first 90 days on Instagram Reels and TikTok only, Tier 1 and Tier 4 audiences only, and five categories, with dispatch widening once fill rate passes 70% within 2 hours in that narrow scope. Creator sign-up stays open worldwide throughout; only dispatch would be narrowed.
• The default availability setting is "always available", and dispatch waves respect each creator's local time zone, so a campaign funded in one country still reaches creators in another during their own evening window.
• The first-gig guarantee: every new creator who passes eligibility gets an offer within 7 days, from a dogfood campaign if no brand campaign matches. Sign-up becomes a completed gig and a wallet balance.
• A campaign in an audience segment is only accepted once at least 40 eligible creators exist in that audience segment and league (assumption). For dispatch purposes, Bronze 1 and Bronze 2 count together as one bucket against this threshold, since splitting the lowest, most crowded leagues in two makes them the hardest to clear on their own (assumption). Dispatch may similarly group neighbouring categories together for this count at MVP, so the 40-creator threshold is checked against a small cluster of related categories rather than one alone (assumption). There is no city or country-and-city version of this rule in V1: audience geography is read from the creator's own platform insights, not from where the creator lives, and local-visit campaigns (Preset C) that used a city-based version of this density rule are moved to "later: local distribution", outside V1.
• Dogfood campaigns start on day 13 of the MVP sprint (19 September 2026), not in January, at $2,000 per week through the build-out and Phase 2, and $5,000 per week in Phase 3, keeping offers flowing and recruiting through the referral link in every dogfood video ($5 to the referrer once the referred creator's first post is confirmed live). See Dogfooding.
• Ranking includes recency, so offers spread across creators.
• For V1's narrow niche specifically: dogfood campaigns and sales outreach are aimed at indie-developer and small-SaaS communities where they actually are, which is disproportionately X and developer-focused YouTube channels, rather than spread evenly across all four platforms; and pilot brand recruiting targets indie hacker communities directly (Rollout plan) rather than waiting for a broad self-serve funnel to find them (assumption).

5.6 If it happens

Pause new brand sign-ups in a thin category and point dogfood campaigns at it to recruit. The founder sets honest fill expectations and helps brands widen leagues rather than wait. In the worst case the beta runs in fewer categories and coverage is completed on the way to 3,000 active creators in Phase 3.

5.7 Owner and phase

The founder owns both supply and demand. It bites in Phase 2 and continues into Phase 3.

6. Quality and brand safety

6.1 What it is

A video can pass all 10 checklist items and still be bad: dull, poorly lit, off-tone, or containing a wrong claim about the product. A competitor's product may sit in the background. The checklist tests facts, not taste, and the brand does not review by default, so the brand's reputation rests on our review.

6.2 Why it matters

Not reviewing is the point of the product for brands. A post that embarrasses a brand ends the relationship, and the beta target of 40% brand repeat within 60 days fails. Wrong claims can also be a legal problem for the brand.

6.3 Likelihood and impact

Likelihood Medium. Impact Medium overall, High for the one brand it happens to.

6.4 Early warning signs

• Brand ratings of posts (1 to 5, collected from MVP, weighted into the creator score from Phase 3) trending down; brands using "report a post"; creators using "report a misleading brief".
• First-pass approval under 70%, and reviewers marking the same checklist item "unsure" often.

6.5 Prevention

• A human reviews every submission at MVP, by hand and without an automated pass, which is build-out work.
• The checklist: item 3 needs the key message in the creator's own words, item 7 bans reused and stock footage, item 8 bans competitor products, item 9 needs clear audio and licensed music. Briefs are capped at 300 words with one key message line.
• A brand can switch on the optional approval step (a 24-hour window; no response means approved).
• Prohibited categories (alcohol, tobacco and vaping, gambling and real-money gaming, crypto and unregulated investment products, political and religious content, adult content, prescription drugs, weapons) are declined at brand signup. The checklist never asks for an opinion, only facts from the brief.

6.6 If it happens

Before posting, "changes requested" gives one revision with a 48-hour deadline; a second failure cancels the gig at $0. If a live post breaks a checklist item that review missed, ops asks the creator to remove it, any release not yet made is cancelled and the money returns to the creator pool (assumption). If the brief was unclear, ops can grant the creator a goodwill payment of up to 20% of the gig fee from our own revenue.

6.7 Owner and phase

The founder owns it. It bites in Phase 2, and again in Phase 3 when auto-approval means humans no longer see every submission.

7. Fraud and pay integrity

7.1 What it is

Six kinds of cheating, all aimed at getting paid for something that is not real: bot traffic bought to inflate a view count; view velocity or engagement outside a creator's normal range; an audience geography that does not match a creator's usual audience, a sign of bought or misrepresented reach; recycled or duplicate content submitted to more than one gig; several creator accounts sharing one device or account fingerprint, run by one person; and fake brands set up to post prohibited content, test stolen cards, or collude with a creator to pull money out. Distribution Club treats pay-fraud prevention as a first-class system rather than an afterthought bolted onto the hold. A view is simply what the platform's own API reports for a post; nothing else is counted, and no view is ever excluded from what a brand is shown. What these checks decide is pay, on top of the existing 48-hour hold (brief section 49 item 5): a release is withheld or clawed back if a post shows view velocity or engagement outside the creator's normal range, audience geography inconsistent with the creator's own insights, duplicate or recycled content (checked by perceptual hash against the platform's library and the wider web), or an account or device fingerprint shared with another creator. Only views reported by the platform's official API are ever paid for or reported to a brand; a view is never excluded, only the pay behind it.

This is the central risk on this page. V1 is built entirely on the claim that a brand's money follows real views, not bought or bot ones (brief section 49 item 5, section 50 item 7), and V1's own customer, indie developers and small SaaS founders, is exactly the audience most likely to notice and call out a padded number. Every other challenge on this page assumes fraud is under control: creator earnings fairness (challenge 8) assumes the views a creator is paid on are real, the brand's cost per 1,000 views (challenge 14) is meaningless if some of those views are bots, and the "distribution infrastructure" positioning itself (Overview, Competitors) is the promise that what a brand is shown is real. If measurement fraud is not controlled, nothing else on this page matters, because the product has nothing left to sell.

7.2 Why it matters

Most of what a creator earns follows real views, only the floor (20% of expected earnings) is fixed, so faked or bot views are stolen money, and inflated views on a brand's dashboard are a lie about what the brand actually bought. The beta criterion is that less than 2% of released money is later reversed or flagged. Fraud also poisons creator scores, expected-earnings calculations and brand reports, and once a brand cannot trust the view count, the whole "distribution infrastructure" positioning described on the Overview and Competitors pages falls apart: a brand buys distribution on the promise that what it is shown is real.

7.3 Likelihood and impact

Likelihood High: someone will try each of these, and bot traffic is estimated at 20% to 30% of views in Tier 3 and Tier 4 markets specifically (assumption), so it is not a rare edge case there. Impact High: typical expected earnings range from about $37.50 (Bronze 1) to $4,125.00 (Diamond), for a US developers audience, Reels, AI tools and SaaS campaign, and the 48-hour hold caps the loss on any single gig, but a technical, sceptical V1 customer base means even one publicised bad number does more damage here than it would to a less scrutinising audience.

7.4 Early warning signs

• View velocity or a follower-to-view ratio outside the creator's own history.
• An audience geography reported for a post that does not match the creator's usual audience insights, where the platform's data allows the comparison.
• A perceptual hash match between a new upload and an earlier upload, on this platform or elsewhere on the web.
• Several creator accounts sharing one device or account fingerprint, or one payout account behind more than one creator profile.
• A brand with no working website or handle, or a card that fails the brand-safety check.

7.5 Prevention

• Bots and velocity: every release, the floor and each of the day 3, 7 and 14 reads, sits as Pending for 48 hours while checks run on view velocity, follower and view ratio, and engagement ratio, comparing each post against the creator's own normal range.
• Geography mismatch: a post's audience geography is compared against the creator's own audience insights (by hand from a screenshot at MVP, from the API in the build-out); a mismatch flags the post rather than paying it automatically.
• Recycled content: perceptual hashing of every upload against the platform's own library and the wider web, not just against Distribution Club's earlier uploads, catches content lifted from elsewhere as well as content resubmitted to a second gig.
• Shared fingerprints: one payout account per person, identity verification through the partner before the first payout, and device and account fingerprinting to catch several creator profiles run from one device or shared between people.
• Sampling at MVP: there is no automated fraud-check tooling on day one. Ops checks by hand every post that shows a velocity or geography anomaly, plus another 10% chosen at random, and looks for the same signals a machine would: bot-like patterns, mismatched geography, and content that looks copied. Automated perceptual hashing, anomaly rules and fingerprinting are build-out work, replacing the by-hand sample once volume outgrows it.
• Higher sampling in Tier 3 and Tier 4: because bot traffic runs an estimated 20% to 30% of views in those markets, ops checks a larger share of Tier 3 and Tier 4 posts by hand than the 10% random sample used elsewhere, on top of checking every anomaly (assumption).
• Small-gig viability in Tier 3 and Tier 4: resolved separately by the running-cost rule (founder decision, 5 September 2026). What a gig takes from the fund is expected earnings plus the $2.00 running cost, divided by 0.8, with the running cost paid from the 80% creator pool before creators, never from the platform's 20% cut. No split of a deposit, however small the Tier 3 or Tier 4 Bronze gigs are, can cost the platform more than the 20% it already kept.
• Fake brands and collusion: the brand-safety check within 2 business hours before the first campaign, funds collected before dispatch, and dispatch itself automatic and ranked by the system so a brand cannot pick creators; the 1 gig per brand per 30 days limit caps what any colluding pair could extract.

7.6 If it happens

Flagged amounts stay Pending and ops reviews within 3 business days. A post that fails a check has its pay withheld; the view count itself, read from the platform's API, is reported unchanged. Proven fraud cancels any release not yet made and closes the account. Money already paid out is not clawed back unless fraud is proven.

7.7 Owner and phase

The founder owns the by-hand sampling at MVP and the automated checks once they are built. It starts in Phase 0 with by-hand sampling, grows into automated tooling in Phase 1 and Phase 2, and scales with volume in Phase 3.

8. Creator earnings fairness

8.1 What it is

A creator is paid per 1,000 real views (CPM) at a rate set by their audience geography, the platform, the campaign category and their league (see Rate cards), not a fixed fee. Expected earnings are the creator's median views times the CPM, shown in the offer along with whether a bonus is available before they accept. A floor of 20% of expected earnings releases when the post is confirmed live, and the rest follows views actually read on day 3, day 7 and day 14, up to the maximum payout, which is expected earnings itself unless the brand has switched on an optional bonus of up to 1.5 times expected. If a post gets very few views, the creator earns close to just the floor for a full day's work.

8.2 Why it matters

A creator's league, and so part of their CPM, is set by their own median views, not by followers, so pay already follows reach rather than a vanity number. The league factor inside the CPM is nearly flat on purpose (1.00 for Bronze 1 up to Silver 2, 1.05 for Gold 1 and 2, 1.10 for Ruby and Diamond), so a brand pays about the same per 1,000 views in every league; the reward for climbing leagues is a bigger expected payout per gig, since a higher league also means more median views. For a US developers audience, Reels, AI tools and SaaS campaign, expected earnings at a typical median run from $37.50 for Bronze 1 (7,500 views) up to $4,125.00 for Diamond (750,000 views), all at a CPM between $5.00 and $5.50. A Bronze 1 creator (median 5,000 to 9,999 views) with a median of 6,000 views on that mix gets an expected $30.00 gig, floor $6.00 at publish. A Silver 1 creator (median 15,000 to 24,999 views) with a median of 20,000 views gets an expected $100.00 gig, floor $20.00. If a post badly underperforms, the creator still keeps the floor already released, since the floor is a guaranteed minimum, not a running total that can fall below it, but a post stuck near its floor is still a full day's filming for little pay. The beta targets are 60% of posts earning at least 75% of their expected earnings and 50% of creators completing a second gig within 60 days. A formula that feels unfair breaks both. Letting higher-league creators opt into lower-league slots (section 4.8 of the Product spec) should improve the fill rate for Bronze 2 slots, since Bronze 2 is the league most likely to sit unfilled when few Bronze 2 creators are available.

8.3 Likelihood and impact

Likelihood Medium: real view counts vary a lot, and some posts will always underperform their creator's median. Impact High: creator supply is the hardest thing to rebuild. The opt-in also carries a risk: opted-in higher-league creators could crowd Bronze 2 creators out of their own slots; the wave-2 rule mitigates this, since wave 1 offers for a Bronze 2 slot still go only to Bronze 2 creators, so a Bronze 2 creator always has first claim on it before any higher-league creator sees it.

8.4 Early warning signs

• Share of gigs earning under 75% of their expected earnings, by league and platform.
• Offer accept rate falling among creators who have completed one gig; creators near the 5,000-view eligibility floor earning close to just the floor far more often than others.
• Creators dropping a league after one bad month, which points to a league formula that reacts to a single slow month rather than to a real change in reach.
• Low scores on the "payout clarity" and "offer clarity" friction questions after dogfood gigs.

8.5 Prevention

• The CPM, the expected earnings and whether a bonus is available are inside the offer, so the creator knows them before accepting, and declining is free. The floor guarantees 20% of expected earnings just for publishing, whatever the views turn out to be.
• Views come from the official API on day 3, day 7 and day 14 (by hand at MVP), so expected earnings and the count share a source.
• Leagues use a 90-day median over at least 10 posts, not a single post or a single bad month, so one quiet week does not drop a creator a league.
• The share of expected earnings actually earned is tracked from the first dogfood gigs on day 13 of the MVP sprint (19 September 2026), before any outside brand gig.

8.6 If it happens

If creators stop accepting because too many posts land near the floor, the first change is to the floor, not the CPM: raise the floor from 20% to a higher share of expected earnings, for example 30% (assumption). The second option is to raise the CPM factors for the leagues most affected, or switch the optional bonus on so creators keep more of any overperformance (assumption). Either change applies to new offers only and is announced to creators with the reason.

8.7 Owner and phase

The founder owns the formula as product lead. It bites in Phase 2, with the first real data at the payout run on 1 March 2027.

9. Automatic posting acceptance

9.1 What it is

At MVP the creator posts the content, not the platform. After approval the app gives the creator the approved package: the exact video file and the exact caption, with the disclosure hashtag, the paid-partnership or branded-content label instruction, the campaign hashtag and the brand tag already in place. The creator posts it on their own account, unchanged, within 24 hours of approval, then pastes the post link back into the app. At MVP the founder verifies the link by hand: opens it, checks it is public, checks the caption, and compares the video against the approved file (brief section 28, item 6). Frame-hash matching, which compares the posted video and the approved file automatically, is build-out work, added once volume outgrows manual checking. Automatic posting through the API, where the platform publishes for the creator, is switched on per platform later, once that platform grants the publishing permission, targeted for after the beta. Because posting is in the creator's hands at MVP, the risk shrinks from "will creators hand over posting rights" to a narrower one: creators changing the caption or the file before they post it.

9.2 Why it matters

Post checking is one of our six differences from competitors: even though the creator posts, the platform checks the live post against the approved file, so it does not rely on the creator's word. If a creator swaps the caption, drops the disclosure, or edits the video before posting, the checklist review that approved it is worth nothing. If a creator simply misses the posting deadline, the gig fails through no fault of the review process, but it still needs a clear rule so it is treated the same as a missed content deadline.

9.3 Likelihood and impact

Likelihood Medium: most creators will post the exact approved package, since it is already reviewed and ready to go, but a caption trimmed or a hashtag dropped is easy to imagine. Impact Medium, down from the earlier "will creators connect an account for us to post on" risk: a mismatch delays one gig rather than the whole posting model, and automatic posting later removes the risk platform by platform as publishing permissions are approved.

9.4 Early warning signs

• The founder's manual check catching a swapped caption or file, or missing it under time pressure at 50 to 100 reviews a day.
• Captions coming back missing the hashtag, the brand tag or the disclosure.
• Posting deadline missed: approved packages still unposted past the 24-hour window, after the 12-hour reminder has already gone out.
• Low scores on the "posting trust" friction question after dogfood gigs.

9.5 Prevention

• The creator sees the exact caption and file before tapping Submit and again in the approved package, so there is no ambiguity about what "unchanged" means.
• The check at MVP is the founder opening the link and checking it against the approved file by hand; frame-hash matching is added in the build-out to make this automatic, once the platform read permissions in section 3 are in place.
• A mismatch gives the creator one chance to fix it: repost the exact approved file and caption within the remaining posting window, then the platform verifies again.
• Missing the posting deadline moves the gig to Expired with the same consequences as a missed content deadline: $0 paid, reliability score drops, gig re-dispatched.

9.6 If it happens

If the founder's manual check finds a real change, the gig follows the mitigation above: one chance to fix within the remaining posting window, then Expired if it still does not match. Where a platform's automatic posting has since gone live, this whole risk disappears for that platform, since the platform itself posts the exact approved file.

9.7 Owner and phase

The founder owns acceptance, the approved-package and link-check flows, and the hash and transcript matching once that build-out work starts. Built for the MVP sprint with a manual ops check, it bites from the first gig on 21 September 2026, and shrinks further as automatic posting rolls out platform by platform in Phase 3.

10. Review cost and speed at scale

10.1 What it is

At MVP there is no automated pass at all: the founder reviews every submission by hand against the 10-item checklist, as a form (pass or fail per item, a reason per failure), giving a decision within 48 hours, at 50 to 100 submissions a day (brief section 29). Automated checklist scoring, the transcript and vision-model pass that would triage most submissions before a human sees them, is build-out work, added once volume passes what the founder can review inside 48 hours, roughly 100 a day or about 3,000 a month. One person doing every review does not scale past that point.

10.2 Why it matters

At 6 minutes each, a reviewer handles about 10 submissions an hour; 50 to 100 a day is already 5 to 10 hours of the founder's own time on review alone, on top of everything else the founder owns during the sprint. This is one of the two founder-time risks that, together, are the top operational risk on this page (the other is challenge 16, the two-week MVP): as long as Distribution Club is one person, review capacity is bounded by what one person can do inside 48 hours, not by how much demand there is. The mitigation is not a headcount plan that grows by phase; it is the hire trigger in Rollout plan, section 10: an ops reviewer once submissions pass about 100 a day, about 3,000 a month. Cost matters too: the Business model page's $2.50 per-submission review cost is, at MVP, the founder's time and no cash, since there is no automated-checking vendor to pay yet; the contribution margin is about 53% of revenue at MVP with an illustrative figure of about 77% by Phase 4, which only works once automated scoring takes over most submissions.

10.3 Likelihood and impact

Likelihood High: certain once volume grows past what the founder alone can review in 48 hours, which could happen inside the MVP sprint itself if dispatch outpaces 50 to 100 submissions a day. Impact Medium: it slows posting and eats margin but does not break the product, as long as dispatch is throttled to match review capacity.

10.4 Early warning signs

• The 48-hour decision SLA slipping, or the founder's daily review time regularly exceeding 100 submissions.
• Once automated scoring exists, humans overturning it often, which means auto-approval is not ready.

10.5 Prevention

• Dispatch volume is kept inside what the founder can review by hand inside 48 hours during the sprint and the early build-out, so the checklist form, not the founder's calendar, is what fails first if something has to give.
• Automated checklist scoring is built once volume approaches the 100-a-day, 3,000-a-month mark, with every human decision recorded against it so the agreement rate is known before it is trusted.
• From Phase 3, submissions with all 10 items "pass" from creators with a score of 80 or above are auto-approved, with a 10% random spot check. Any item scored unsure, any fail, and any submission from a creator under 80 still goes to a human. Nothing is auto-rejected.

10.6 If it happens

The queue is worked in order of gig deadline; if it is regularly missing the 48-hour decision promise, the ops-reviewer hire trigger (Rollout plan, section 10) is pulled forward rather than waited on, and if the queue still exceeds capacity, dispatch of new gigs is slowed rather than the decision promise broken (assumption).

10.7 Owner and phase

The founder owns it at MVP and until the ops-reviewer hire trigger (Rollout plan, section 10) is crossed, after which the ops reviewer takes routine review over. It bites from the MVP sprint onward if volume runs ahead of what the founder can review, and again in Phase 3 and Phase 4 at much higher volume.

11. Sample logistics

11.1 What it is

If "sample required" is set, the creator shares a delivery address on acceptance, the brand ships and marks it dispatched, the creator marks it delivered, and the deadline clock starts at delivery. The platform does no shipping beyond this; that is a stated non-goal at MVP.

11.2 Why it matters

Physical products add days to every gig and cause disputes: the sample never arrived, the wrong item arrived, or the two sides disagree about delivery. The beta target of a median under 72 hours from fund received to first post cannot be met by a sample campaign. Preset A "Product showcase" is the default for physical products and Preset D is "Unboxing", so samples will be common.

11.3 Likelihood and impact

Likelihood Medium. Impact Medium: it slows some campaigns and creates support work but does not touch the core flow.

11.4 Early warning signs

• Gigs sitting between acceptance and "delivered" for more than 7 days.
• Support tickets about samples; brands funding sample campaigns with a 24-hour or 48-hour deadline.

11.5 Prevention

• The deadline clock starts at delivery, so a slow brand does not cost the creator.
• If a brand has not marked a sample dispatched within 5 days of acceptance, ops is alerted; if it is still not dispatched at 7 days, ops cancels the gig, the fee returns to the creator pool and the creator's score is unchanged.
• The founder steers sample campaigns to the 5-day or 7-day deadline options during the beta. Local-visit campaigns (Preset C, a restaurant or store visit) are not part of V1: they are moved to "later: local distribution", so this risk applies only to physical-sample campaigns for software products (for example a hardware add-on shipped to a creator), which are rarer in V1's category mix.

11.6 If it happens

Ops mediates through support, since there is no brand-creator chat. A creator whose sample never arrived is not penalised: the gig is cancelled by ops at $0 with no change to their score. Brands with repeated sample problems are moved to campaigns without samples.

11.7 Owner and phase

The founder owns it. It bites in Phase 2.

12. Legal classification and disclosure

12.1 What it is

Creators are independent contractors, and brands and creators both contract with the platform, never with each other. Tests for who counts as a contractor differ by country, and inside the United States also by state, and the product gives a lot of direction: a fixed checklist, deadlines, a score, and the posting rules set by us. Separately, disclosure must satisfy several regimes at once: the US FTC Endorsement Guides, the UK ASA rules, India's ASCI guidelines and similar rules elsewhere, alongside data-privacy rules such as GDPR in the EU and UK and CCPA in California. One automatic disclosure standard is added to every post ("#ad" plus the paid-partnership or branded-content label), the lawyer keeps a per-country wording checklist, and creators must still give honest opinions.

12.2 Why it matters

A wrong classification could be costly, to be confirmed by the lawyer, and now has to be checked separately for each country a creator signs up from. A disclosure failure would put both the brand and us at risk in that country, to be confirmed by the lawyer. Both are cheap to prevent and expensive to fix.

12.3 Likelihood and impact

Likelihood Low: the work is short, project-based and open to anyone eligible, and disclosure is automatic in every country. Impact High.

12.4 Early warning signs

• The lawyer flags a country, or a US state, during the MVP-sprint review of terms; a creator complaint or a regulator letter.
• A platform's branded-content label is not available through its API for some account type.

12.5 Prevention

• The lawyer drafts the terms of service, creator agreement, brand agreement and disclosure policy during the MVP sprint, with a per-country wording checklist for disclosure.
• The product keeps the marks of independence: creators set their own hours, accept or decline freely at no cost, use their own equipment, choose their own words, and work for many brands.
• Disclosure is added by the platform at posting and the creator must not remove it (checklist item 10). The accepted offer plus brief plus terms is the written statement of work, to be confirmed by the lawyer against contract laws in each country and against state contract laws inside the United States.

12.6 If it happens

Dispatch is paused for creators in the affected country, or US state, while the terms or the product are changed there (assumption). If a platform cannot carry the label through its API, the full disclosure goes in the caption text and the lawyer decides whether that platform can stay live (assumption).

12.7 Owner and phase

The founder owns it with the lawyer. It is decided in the MVP sprint and watched in every phase after.

13. Platform dependence

13.1 What it is

Everything we post and measure goes through Instagram, YouTube, TikTok and X. Any of them could restrict third-party posting, change what API-posted content may do, change how branded content is shown, or change pricing and quotas. We have no control over this. Availability already differs by country: TikTok is not available in India, for example, so creators there connect Instagram, YouTube or X instead, which means a campaign that needs TikTok will find fewer eligible creators in some countries than others.

13.2 Why it matters

Losing a platform removes a share of gigs, strands campaigns in flight, and breaks the "same gig on four platforms" promise. A reach change without an API change is subtler: it shows up as posts on one platform earning a lower share of their expected earnings and gets blamed on creators.

13.3 Likelihood and impact

Likelihood Medium over 2027: platform policy changes are normal. Impact High for the platform affected, Medium for the business because there are four.

13.4 Early warning signs

• Developer terms updates or deprecation notices; rising API error or rate-limit responses on one platform.
• The ratio of gig post views to creator median dropping on one platform but not the others.

13.5 Prevention

• Four platforms from day one with the same gig, checklist and rate card, so a campaign can move platforms without changing anything else. LinkedIn and Facebook Reels are added in Phase 4.
• We use only the scopes we need and follow each platform's rules exactly, which is the best protection against being cut off.
• Views and post status are read on day 3, day 7 and day 14, so a change shows within the read schedule rather than immediately.

13.6 If it happens

Dispatch on the affected platform is paused. Accepted gigs finish if the API still works; otherwise ops cancels them at $0, the money returns to the creator pool and the creator's score is unchanged, since this is an ops cancellation. Brands with open slots on that platform are asked to move them to another platform.

13.7 Owner and phase

The founder owns it. It applies in every phase.

14. Competition

14.1 What it is

Two kinds of competitor exist, described on the Competitors page. Content Rewards (a Whop product) runs pay-per-view bounties: anyone can join, creators post to their own accounts and submit the link, the brand approves each post, and common campaigns pay about $1 per 1,000 views. That is cheaper for a brand to start. SideShift is a creator marketplace and job board with brand plans at $299, $499 and $999 per month, claiming 900,000+ US-based creators and $100M+ paid out. Either could add dispatch or automatic posting.

14.2 Why it matters

Our minimum fund is $600. A brand sees a cost per 1,000 views for its budget, for example about $6.38 for a US developers audience on a Silver 1 gig (Rate cards), against Content Rewards' roughly $1 per 1,000 views. A brand that can start a bounty for less, or already pays SideShift monthly, needs a reason to switch. Creators who can join a bounty with no application need a reason to wait for offers.

14.3 Likelihood and impact

Likelihood High: both are active and dispatch is an obvious next feature. Impact Medium: our model is different enough that the same brand can use both.

14.4 Early warning signs

• Pilot brands comparing our cost per gig with a per-1,000-view price; creators asking why they are not paid per view.
• Either competitor announcing dispatch, deadlines, platform review or API posting.

14.5 Prevention

• Sell the six differences: dispatch instead of applications, commitment with a deadline and a score, platform review against a fixed checklist, checked posting, CPM pay with a floor and a maximum payout from a held fund with a monthly payout, and four platforms with one rate card.
• Sell reliability with numbers: fill rate, on-time submission, first-pass approval and time to first post appear in the brand dashboard.
• Keep the creator side free: no fee on earnings at MVP and no paid ranking, ever. There is no subscription on the brand side either: Phase 3 adds volume pricing, which adds 5% of that month's deposits to a brand's creator pool at month end once it deposits $10,000 or more in a calendar month (assumption).

14.6 If it happens

If a competitor adds dispatch, we compete on what is hardest to copy: the review, checked posting and the fund-and-CPM ledger. On price, the founder points out that our effective CPM buys a committed creator, a fixed checklist review, a floor and a maximum payout, and a checked post, not just raw views bought at about $1 per 1,000; the price is all-in and already covers everything we do. We do not lower the rate card in response (assumption).

14.7 Owner and phase

The founder owns it. It bites in Phase 3 when brand sign-up becomes self-serve, and in Phase 4.

15. Dogfood distortion

15.1 What it is

Distribution Club funds one dogfood campaign a week from day 13 of the MVP sprint (19 September 2026): $2,000 per week through the build-out and Phase 2, $5,000 per week in Phase 3. Add the first-gig guarantee and the monthly "Payout day" campaign, and a large share of early gigs are paid for by us. That can make the marketplace look healthier than it is: fill rates, gig counts and payouts rise, and creator scores are built on Preset G "Creator story" gigs rather than on brand work.

15.2 Why it matters

The Phase 2 target is 150 completed brand gigs plus dogfood gigs, counted separately. If they are mixed, we would not know whether brands get what they pay for, and a creator with a score of 80 from dogfood gigs alone would be auto-approved in Phase 3 without ever passing a brand's checklist.

15.3 Likelihood and impact

Likelihood Medium: the temptation to report the bigger number is real. Impact Medium: it misleads us more than anyone else, but bad decisions follow from bad numbers.

15.4 Early warning signs

• Dogfood gigs above 30% of any creator's completed gigs in 30 days; creators whose only completed gigs are dogfood gigs.
• Fill rate on dogfood campaigns far above fill rate on brand campaigns.
• Cost per eligible creator sign-up from dogfood above $15 at the end of Phase 2, which means dogfood is buying gigs rather than creators.

15.5 Prevention

• The guardrails on the Dogfooding page: dogfood gigs never exceed 30% of a creator's completed gigs in any 30-day period; dogfood campaigns are labelled "Distribution Club campaign" in every dashboard and excluded from brand-funded volume in reporting; the founder's account and the 20 friendly-creator accounts are excluded from public creator counts.
• The beta success criteria are measured on brand-funded gigs, with dogfood numbers reported alongside (assumption).
• Dogfood campaigns follow the same review, disclosure and payout rules as any other.

15.6 If it happens

The weekly dogfood budget is cut while the first-gig guarantee is kept, since that is the part that recruits creators. Auto-approval in Phase 3 then requires at least 3 completed brand gigs in addition to a score of 80 (assumption).

15.7 Owner and phase

The founder owns it, since the founder also approves the dogfood budget. It bites in Phase 2 and Phase 3.

16. The two-week MVP

16.1 What it is

The founder wants the MVP live two weeks from 4 September 2026: the sprint runs 7 to 20 September 2026 and the first real gig dispatches on 21 September 2026 (brief section 28). Everything that would normally spread across a longer Phase 0 and Phase 1 now has to either fit inside 10 working days or become manual, background work that catches up during the build-out. Five things in particular can each stop or badly dent the first gig. Razorpay Route's approval running past the sprint is the top blocker among them: it decides whether the first gigs launch as a marketplace with GST on the platform's 20% cut only, or fall back to running as the principal with GST on the full price of those gigs, with the lawyer's sign-off, until Route clears (see Payments). The other four: the Indian entity and its bank account not being ready, the founder's own time being spread too thin across product, review and sales, creators outside India earning into a wallet they cannot yet be paid from, and a manual view read being disputed by a brand or a creator.

16.2 Why it matters

Nothing else on this page works before the first gig exists: fraud checks, review, dispatch density and platform dependence all assume gigs are already flowing. If the entity, the bank account or Razorpay Route are not ready, there is no brand deposit and the sprint slips to dogfood-only gigs. If the founder cannot keep up with sign-up, dispatch, review and the first brand relationships at once, quality or speed drops on whichever gets the least attention that day. If a creator abroad completes a gig and cannot be paid, the first-gig guarantee and the wallet promise are tested immediately, not months from now. If a brand or creator disputes a hand-recorded view count, there is no API log yet to settle it. This founder-time risk, together with challenge 10 (review cost and speed at scale), is the top operational risk on this whole page: every other challenge assumes the founder's calendar has room, and at MVP nothing guarantees that it does.

16.3 Likelihood and impact

Likelihood High: a two-week sprint building a two-sided marketplace, a payments integration and legal paperwork at the same time is tight even before any one blocker runs long. Impact High: several of these failure modes stop the first gig outright rather than merely slowing it.

16.4 Early warning signs

• Incorporation or the bank account still not confirmed by the middle of the sprint, around 13 September 2026.
• No answer on Razorpay Route's approval by 18 September 2026, three days before the first gig.
• The founder's calendar shows review, sign-up support and brand calls stacking on the same days with no slack.
• A creator outside India completes a gig before Payoneer's eligibility as a payer, or PayPal as the second candidate, is confirmed.
• A brand or creator questions a recorded view number with no screenshot or second reading to check it against.

16.5 Prevention

• Incorporation, GST registration and the Razorpay account all start on 7 September 2026, in parallel with product work, so the entity is the pacing item the founder watches daily rather than a late surprise.
• The RazorpayX fallback, with the lawyer's sign-off, is ready before Route's approval is due, so the first gig does not wait on Route specifically (see Payments).
• The day-by-day sprint plan (brief section 28) sequences data model and ledger first, then sign-up, then dispatch, then review and payouts, so the founder is never building and reviewing at full intensity on the same days.
• Creators outside India are told plainly, at sign-up, that their wallet holds the balance until a payout rail is confirmed, so nobody is surprised when a payout does not arrive on the 1st.
• Every manual view read is recorded with a timestamp and, where possible, a screenshot, so a dispute has something to point to even without an API log.
• The hire triggers in Rollout plan, section 10, an ops reviewer once submissions pass about 100 a day and an engineer once monthly profit covers a salary for three months, are the standing mitigation once the sprint ends: they exist because one person cannot carry this indefinitely, not only for the two weeks.

16.6 If it happens

If the entity or Route is not ready by 21 September 2026, the first gigs run as dogfood campaigns paid from the founder's own account, with brand-funded gigs starting as soon as the blocker clears (assumption). If the founder's time runs out, review is the last thing to slip, since a slow decision costs a day, not the fund; dispatch and sign-up keep moving and the review queue is worked in order of deadline. If a creator abroad cannot yet be paid, their wallet keeps the balance and they are told the payout date will follow once a rail is confirmed. If a view count is disputed, ops takes a fresh reading with a screenshot and, where the two sides still disagree, treats the creator's own number as the floor rather than penalising them for an ops error.

16.7 Owner and phase

The founder owns this challenge personally, since the founder is both the product lead and, at MVP, the reviewer. It bites entirely inside Phase 0, the MVP sprint, and at the first payout run on 1 October 2026.

17. Open questions we cannot answer yet

These questions cannot be settled with the information in the brief. Each has the phase in which we expect an answer.

1. Will all four platforms grant read permission for view counts before 25 January 2027, and if not, which platforms fall back to ops reading public counts by hand for longer than planned? Will each platform's publishing permission arrive in time for the Phase 3 automatic-posting target? (MVP sprint to Phase 3.)
2. Does the entity's role, with Razorpay Route holding all funds, need any registration of its own beyond Razorpay's aggregator licence, and does the answer change if the RazorpayX fallback is used at MVP? (MVP sprint.)
3. How many creators will change the caption or the file before posting the approved package, rather than posting it exactly as approved, and how often does that need the one-chance-to-fix mitigation before a gig expires? (MVP sprint, then Phase 2.)
4. Are the CPM factors, the 20% floor and the median-based maximum payout set right, and do 60% of posts earn at least 75% of their expected earnings inside 14 days? (Phase 2, first read on 1 March 2027.)
5. Will brands accept paying the full fund up front, before any post exists, now that 20% of it becomes our revenue the moment it lands? (MVP sprint, then Phase 2.)
6. How many creators per category, inside their availability windows, are needed for 70% of slots to fill within 2 hours? (Phase 2.)
7. What is the real human review time per submission at MVP, and does the founder's own pace match the 6-minute planning assumption? (MVP sprint.)
8. How much do "#ad" and the branded-content label reduce reach compared with the creator's median, and does it differ by platform? (Phase 2.)
9. Do the accepted offer, brief and terms satisfy state written-contract laws for freelance work, and in which states? (MVP sprint, lawyer.)
10. What TDS section applies to Indian creator payouts, what does the Letter of Undertaking for export zero-rating require, and can Payoneer or PayPal accept the Indian entity as a payer for creators abroad? (MVP sprint, accountant.)
11. Will Content Rewards or SideShift add dispatch or API posting before our public launch on 29 March 2027? (Phase 3.)

The answers, as they arrive, go on the Assumptions page and change the ratings in section 2.