Timeline

This page puts the whole plan on a calendar: the five phases and their dates, what each workstream does in each month from September 2026 to December 2027, the outside approvals on the critical path, the dated events, the order in which pieces must be built, where the slack is, what is cut first if time runs out, and the checkpoints where the founder decides whether to go on. The Rollout plan says what each phase contains; this page says when.

Draft v0.1 · Last updated 17 September 2026

On this page

1. 1. Summary
2. 2. Month by month
3. 3. Critical path
4. 4. Key dates
5. 5. Dependencies between workstreams
6. 6. Buffer and what slips first
7. 7. Review checkpoints

1. Summary

The plan runs in five phases. A phase is a block of weeks with one goal and a set of exit criteria: the things that must be true before the next phase starts. Every phase date on this page comes from the brief. The month-by-month split, the critical path dates and the checkpoints are worked out from those dates.

The words on this page have fixed meanings across the whole spec.

Brand

The paying customer: a company, an app or SaaS product, or an agency acting for a brand. V1 customers are indie developers, indie hackers and small SaaS companies.

Creator

The person who makes and posts content on their own social account.

Campaign

What a brand creates: a brief, a 10-item checklist, a fund and settings.

Gig

One unit of work for one creator inside a campaign: one video, one post.

Offer

A gig notification sent to a creator, who can accept or decline it.

Fund

The money a brand deposits for a campaign, held by a licensed payments partner, never by the platform itself.

Checklist

The 10 items every submission must satisfy.

CPM

The rate a creator is paid per 1,000 real views, set by audience geography, platform, category and league (see Rate cards): a floor of 20% of expected earnings releases at publish, and the rest follows views read on day 3, day 7 and day 14, up to the maximum payout, which is expected earnings, unless the brand adds an optional bonus.

Wallet

The creator's balance inside the app: Pending, Available, Paid.

Payout

Money moved from the wallet to the creator's bank account on the 30-day cycle, the 1st of every month.

Ops

The platform's own operations team: review, fraud, support.

Dispatch

The process of sending offers to creators.

Dogfood campaign

A campaign funded by Distribution Club itself, run through the normal product, to test the product and recruit creators.

Phase 0 starts on Monday 7 September 2026 and Phase 3 ends on Friday 25 June 2027. That is 42 weeks (2 plus 18 plus 9 plus 13) with almost no gap: Phase 0 ends on Sunday 20 September 2026 and Phase 1 starts the next day, Monday 21 September 2026; every later phase still ends on a Friday with the next starting the following Monday. Phase 4 adds 26 weeks, so the whole calendar covers about 68 weeks, or 16 months. The first pilot brand campaign is funded just 2 weeks after the first day of work, on day 14 of the MVP sprint (20 September 2026), and dispatches the next morning; the wider worldwide beta with all 10 pilot brands still opens 20 weeks after the first day of work (25 January 2027), and the product opens to the public 29 weeks after it (29 March 2027).

Every phase in this timeline runs inside the V1 scope decided on 5 September 2026 (Rollout plan, section 8.7): V1 customers are indie developers, indie hackers and small SaaS companies, V1 campaigns accept only ten categories (AI tools, SaaS and web apps, developer tools, productivity apps, fitness apps, health apps, lifestyle apps, education apps, kids apps, games), and matching is by audience, not creator location, with no city targeting until Phase 4 opens local distribution.

The timeline assumes one founder through 2027, doing product, engineering, review, ops and sales, with no payroll. A chartered accountant and a lawyer help, paid per job. Hires happen only when profit pays for them: an ops reviewer once submissions pass about 100 a day, about 3,000 a month, then an engineer once monthly profit covers the salary for three months (assumption); both are named as triggers, not dates, on the Rollout plan. Nothing here depends on a specific fund-raise; the working capital of about $25,000 to $35,000 the Scenarios page models is what covers the founder through the dip, not a raise. If a hire trigger is not crossed on schedule, the Phase 1 build-out weeks stretch first; section 6 says what gives way.

1.3 The MVP sprint, 7 to 20 September 2026

Phase 0 is not six weeks of preparation before anything is built; it is a two-week sprint that ships the product itself, with a real gig dispatched to a real pilot brand starting the next phase (brief section 28). The day-by-day build is below, grouped the way the brief groups it; the reasoning behind each manual step and every blocker's lead time are on the MVP in two weeks page.

The first real gig dispatches the next morning, Monday 21 September 2026, the first day of Phase 1, Build-out while live (section 3). Every blocker with a lead time longer than two weeks, the Indian entity and bank account, GST registration, the Razorpay account and Razorpay Route, RazorpayX or Cashfree Payouts, Payoneer Mass Payouts, the WhatsApp Business API, the Google Play and Apple developer accounts, and the four platform API applications, starts on 7 September 2026 alongside this build and is detailed in section 3.

2. Month by month

For each month this section lists what five workstreams are doing and one month-end checkpoint: the single thing that must be true by the last working day of the month. The workstreams are Engineering, Product and design, Supply (creators) and Demand (brands), all the founder's own work, and Ops and legal (the founder, with the accountant and the lawyer paid per job). Phase contents come from the brief; the month-end checkpoints and the spread of Phase 4 work across July to December are planning choices made on this page (assumption).

2.1 September 2026 (Phase 0, MVP sprint, then Phase 1 build-out begins)

• Engineering: the 14-day sprint build in section 1.3, data model, ledger and auth first, then sign-up, dispatch, submission, wallet, payouts and dashboards; from 21 September, Phase 1 build-out begins with automated checklist scoring (AI review) work.
• Product and design: the creator sign-up flow, offer and upload screens, the brand campaign form and the ops console table, built during the sprint rather than wireframed in advance.
• Supply (creators): day 13 (19 September), the first dogfood gig on the founder's account and the 20 friendly-creator accounts; from 21 September, creators sign up for real as dispatch runs, not from a waitlist.
• Demand (brands): the first pilot brand's brief and sample lined up during the sprint; its campaign funded on day 14 (20 September) and dispatched 21 September, the first real gig.
• Ops and legal: incorporate, open the bank account, set up accounting; submit Meta App Review, the Google API compliance audit, the TikTok Content Posting API audit and the X paid tier purchase on 7 September; open Apple and Google developer accounts; apply for the Razorpay account, Razorpay Route, RazorpayX or Cashfree Payouts, Payoneer Mass Payouts and the WhatsApp Business API (section 3); the lawyer finalises the four legal papers before 21 September.
• Checkpoint (month end): the MVP sprint has shipped a live web app, the payment flow has been validated end to end with a real small transfer, the first dogfood gig (day 13) and the first pilot brand campaign (day 14) are done, and the first real gig has dispatched on 21 September.

2.2 October 2026 (Phase 1 build-out)

• Engineering: automated checklist scoring (AI review) continues; OAuth social connect and platform API read integration begins as the applications from 7 September progress.
• Product and design: the review queue refined as AI review comes online; early native app screens sketched ahead of the store gates clearing.
• Supply: weekly $2,000 dogfood campaigns continue; creators keep joining through dispatch and referral rather than a waitlist.
• Demand: the founder signs further pilot brands beyond the first.
• Ops and legal: GST registration completed; Razorpay Route request progressing; 1 October, the first payout run, paying dogfood and pilot-brand earnings since 21 September.
• Checkpoint: the first payout run completed cleanly on 1 October 2026, and the MVP success test (at least ten posts live and 200,000 to 250,000 views for a US developer audience within 14 days of the pilot brand's deposit, with clicks reported) is checked against the pilot brand's first campaign (assumption).

2.3 November 2026 (Phase 1 build-out)

• Engineering: platform API reads land for the first platform or platforms as approvals arrive; automatic league calculation begins replacing hand-set leagues where reads are live.
• Product and design: league screens updated to show automatic median views where a platform's read permission is live.
• Supply: weekly dogfood campaigns continue; the first-gig guarantee, live since 21 September, keeps every new creator's first offer inside 7 days.
• Demand: further pilot brands onboarded by hand toward the 10 needed for the beta.
• Ops and legal: 1 November payout run; Razorpay Route approval chased; Payoneer onboarding under way for creators outside India.
• Checkpoint: at least one platform's API reads live for leagues and view tracking.

2.4 December 2026 (Phase 1 build-out)

• Engineering: frame perceptual-hash matching built and tested against the founder's manual link checks; the Google Play and Apple store gates progressing toward clearance.
• Product and design: native app screens finalised, ready for submission once the store gates clear.
• Supply: weekly dogfood campaigns continue.
• Demand: the pilot brand base grows toward the 10 needed for the beta; briefs and samples for each ready.
• Ops and legal: 1 December payout run; Payoneer onboarding continues; Razorpay Route live, or the RazorpayX fallback confirmed with the lawyer's sign-off.
• Checkpoint: frame-hash matching running alongside the founder's manual check, ready to take over.

2.5 January 2027 (Phase 1 build-out, final stretch, then Phase 2 week 1)

• Engineering: native iOS and Android apps submitted to both stores once the store gates clear; referral automation shipped, replacing the hand-paid $5 reward.
• Product and design: app store listings; every surface ready for the wider beta.
• Supply: weekly dogfood campaigns continue through 22 January; beta creators (worldwide sign-up) prepared for 25 January.
• Demand: the 10th pilot brand signed; all 10 onboarded by hand ahead of 25 January.
• Ops and legal: 1 January payout run; every submission still gets a founder decision within 48 hours, moving to AI review as it is trusted; app store review done by 25 January.
• Checkpoint: Phase 1 exit on 22 January with both apps approved, or a named reason either store gate has not cleared, and the beta open on 25 January.

2.6 February 2027 (Phase 2, weeks 2 to 5)

• Engineering: a release every week; dispatch tuning so 70% of slots fill within 2 hours; Payoneer, live since the Phase 1 build-out, extended to the growing beta cohort outside India.
• Product and design: changes driven by the five friction scores (offer clarity, upload ease, review feedback quality, posting trust, payout clarity).
• Supply: creator sign-up open worldwide and growing toward 3,000 sign-ups; first-gig guarantee kept (an offer within 7 days, a dogfood gig if nothing matches); "Payout day" dogfood campaign dispatched on 1 February.
• Demand: the pilot brands' first campaigns funded and dispatched; brand-safety checks within 2 business hours.
• Ops and legal: payout run on 1 February, the fifth since October, now paying the wider beta alongside dogfood and the pilot brands; every submission gets an automated result within 24 hours and a human decision within 48 hours; 48-hour fraud holds; mid-beta checkpoint on 26 February.
• Checkpoint: the 1 February payout run done cleanly, and the mid-beta review held on 26 February with all 11 beta criteria measured.

2.7 March 2027 (Phase 2 weeks 6 to 9, then Phase 3 week 1)

• Engineering: self-serve brand sign-up, pay-as-you-go pricing and volume pricing built during the beta so they are ready on 29 March; auto-approval, custom checklists and Preset F released during Phase 3 (assumption).
• Product and design: public sign-up flows; pricing pages.
• Supply: 150 completed brand gigs by 26 March, on the way to 3,000 creator sign-ups and 300 completed first gigs; worldwide creator sign-up, already open since 25 January, continues into Phase 3; dogfood budget rises from $2,000 to $5,000 a week.
• Demand: 40% of pilot brands fund a second campaign within 60 days; self-serve sign-up opens 29 March.
• Ops and legal: payout run on 1 March; phase review on 26 March against all 11 beta criteria; GST on the platform's 20% cut where applicable.
• Checkpoint: beta exit criteria met on 26 March and the public launch made on 29 March.

2.8 April 2027 (Phase 3, weeks 1 to 5)

• Engineering: self-serve fixes; auto-approval for creators with score 80 or above when all 10 items pass, with a 10% random spot check; raised gig limits for high-score creators; brand rating (1 to 5 per post) added to the quality part of the creator score at 10% weight, with first-pass approval at 20%; automatic posting switched on for Instagram Reels once Meta's publishing permission is approved, with creator-posted mode staying as the fallback.
• Product and design: the custom checklist editor.
• Supply: open sign-up; referral programme open to all ($5 to the referrer once the referred creator's first post is confirmed live).
• Demand: first self-serve brands on pay as you go, where the platform keeps 20% of every deposit at once and creator earnings are paid from the other 80%, the creator pool, with volume pricing starting automatically for any brand whose deposits reach $10,000 in a calendar month: 5% of that month's deposits added to its creator pool at month end (assumption).
• Ops and legal: payout run on 1 April; ops moves from confirming every submission to spot checks on auto-approved ones.
• Checkpoint: a brand signs up, funds a campaign and gets posts live with no help from the founder.

2.9 May 2027 (Phase 3, weeks 6 to 9)

• Engineering: fully custom checklists; Preset F "Clipping" (repurposing brand-provided footage); automatic posting switched on for YouTube Shorts once the Google audit's upload side passes.
• Product and design: brand dashboard reporting improvements from self-serve feedback.
• Supply: growth toward 3,000 active creators; dogfood at $5,000 a week.
• Demand: growth toward 100 paying brands and $200,000 in monthly fund deposits.
• Ops and legal: payout run on 1 May; mid-launch checkpoint on 14 May.
• Checkpoint: the mid-launch review on 14 May, with Phase 3 targets projected to the end of June.

2.10 June 2027 (Phase 3, weeks 10 to 13)

• Engineering: stability and cost work on automated review; preparation for Phase 4 items; automatic posting switched on for TikTok and X once their audit and paid-tier work is done, completing the automatic-posting rollout across all four platforms; creator-posted mode stays available everywhere as the fallback.
• Product and design: Phase 4 scope confirmed and put in order.
• Supply: 3,000 active creators by 25 June.
• Demand: 100 paying brands, 2,000 completed gigs a month and $200,000 monthly fund deposits by 25 June.
• Ops and legal: payout run on 1 June; phase review on 25 June; contribution margin measured against the roughly 53% MVP figure in the Business model.
• Checkpoint: the Phase 3 targets met on 25 June.

2.11 July 2027 (Phase 4 starts Thursday 1 July; spread proposed)

The brief gives Phase 4 a list of items between 1 July and 31 December 2027 with no order inside it. The spread below (proposed) puts money and pricing changes first, new platforms in the middle, and language and market research last, so each item has data from the one before.

• Engineering: instant payout at a 2% fee through the payments partner; managed-campaign tools in the ops console (proposed).
• Product and design: managed campaigns, priced per campaign with the platform keeping 35% and creators getting 65% (assumption), no monthly fee, a campaign manager from ops (proposed).
• Supply: Diamond custom deals opened, for creators with 500,000 or more median views, at negotiated fees above the Diamond rate (assumption, proposed).
• Demand: first managed-campaign brands; agency conversations start (proposed).
• Ops and legal: payout run on 1 July; apply for LinkedIn and Facebook Reels API access so approvals arrive before the September build (proposed).
• Checkpoint (proposed): managed campaigns and instant payout live.

2.12 August 2027 (Phase 4; spread proposed)

• Engineering: agency accounts that run several brands, with reporting across those brands (proposed).
• Product and design: agency account model and billing (proposed).
• Supply: score changes explained in the app before they take effect (proposed).
• Demand: agencies onboarded on managed campaigns (proposed).
• Ops and legal: payout run on 1 August; agency agreement drafted (proposed).
• Checkpoint (proposed): an agency runs campaigns for several brands under one account.

2.13 September 2027 (Phase 4; spread proposed)

• Engineering: LinkedIn and Facebook Reels connect, eligibility, posting and view tracking (proposed).
• Product and design: platform picker updated to six platforms (proposed).
• Supply: creators invited to connect LinkedIn and Facebook accounts (proposed).
• Demand: campaigns can target the two new platforms (proposed).
• Ops and legal: payout run on 1 September; disclosure rules confirmed for the two new platforms (proposed).
• Checkpoint (proposed): LinkedIn and Facebook Reels live with the same gig and checklist.

2.14 October 2027 (Phase 4; spread proposed)

• Engineering: an API for agencies to create campaigns, fund them and read reports (proposed).
• Product and design: API documentation (proposed).
• Supply: gig limits and Diamond custom-deal fees reviewed with data from the summer (proposed).
• Demand: first agency using the API (proposed).
• Ops and legal: payout run on 1 October; API terms added to the brand agreement (proposed).
• Checkpoint (proposed): the API for agencies live.

2.15 November 2027 (Phase 4; spread proposed)

• Engineering: non-English product languages: brief, checklist, review transcription and app copy in Spanish, Hindi and Portuguese (proposed).
• Product and design: Spanish, Hindi and Portuguese app and dashboard copy (proposed).
• Supply: creators recruited in each new language through dogfood campaigns run in that language (proposed).
• Demand: brands can choose Spanish, Hindi or Portuguese for a campaign (proposed).
• Ops and legal: payout run on 1 November; the ops-reviewer hire trigger checked again as submissions in each new language add volume (proposed).
• Checkpoint (proposed): first campaign completed in each of Spanish, Hindi and Portuguese.

2.16 December 2027 (Phase 4 ends Friday 31 December; spread proposed)

• Engineering: hardening; year-end review of changes to the platform APIs; extra local payout rails (for example UPI in India, Pix in Brazil) added through the payments partner, alongside the second payout rail (Payoneer) already live since the Phase 1 build-out (proposed).
• Product and design: payout method picker updated for the new local rails (proposed).
• Supply: 15,000 active creators by 31 December.
• Demand: 400 paying brands and 10,000 completed gigs a month by 31 December; the 21-category roadmap and local distribution (city targeting, Preset C) open to brands beyond the ten V1 categories, once V1 density is proven (assumption; Rollout plan, section 8.7).
• Ops and legal: payout run on 1 December; year-end tax statements through the payments partner; Phase 4 review on 31 December (proposed).
• Checkpoint: Phase 4 targets met: 400 paying brands, 15,000 active creators, 10,000 completed gigs a month.

3. Critical path

The critical path to the two-week MVP is short, because everything a platform API or an app store would normally do is done by hand at launch (brief section 28). The chain that cannot be shortened and that the 21 September 2026 launch waits on is: the entity and bank account, then the Razorpay pay-in account, then a way to pay creators, either Razorpay Route or its RazorpayX fallback, plus the legal papers. Every other outside approval below, the four platforms' APIs, the two app stores, is a Phase 1 build-out item: it makes something automatic that already works by hand, and none of it moves the 21 September 2026 date. Most of these items are outside the founder's control, which is why they all start on 7 September 2026, the first day of Phase 0. The Dependencies page describes each outside service; this section gives only the dates.

Four items concern the social platforms, and none of them sit on the two-week launch path. To read view counts automatically, the app needs a read permission from each platform; to post automatically, it needs a separate publishing permission. Meta grants Instagram insights (reading views) and, separately, publishing, both through Meta App Review. Google runs an API compliance audit before an app can read YouTube Analytics, and a separate upload audit before it can post automatically. TikTok audits an app separately for reading view counts (through the Display API or a video query) and for posting through its Content Posting API. X sells API access in paid monthly tiers covering both reading and posting, so there is a purchase, not a split audit. The brief puts each of these audits at 2 to 8 weeks; the exact steps should be verified against each platform's current documentation. Because the MVP reads views by hand on day 3, day 7 and day 14 of each gig, and creators post themselves with the founder verifying the link by hand, none of these six approvals block the first dispatch on 21 September 2026. They are Phase 1 build-out items instead: each platform's reads and leagues switch from a manual check to an automatic one as its read permission arrives, and each platform's posting switches from creator-posted to automatic as its publishing permission arrives, targeted for Phase 3.

The lead times for the entity, GST, Razorpay, Route, RazorpayX or Cashfree, Payoneer and the WhatsApp Business API come from brief section 28. Everything on this list starts on 7 September 2026, whether it blocks the 21 September launch or not, because none of it can be sped up once it starts. The four platform APIs, the two app stores and the developer accounts are marked build-out because none of them are needed for the two-week launch: the MVP reads views by hand, verifies posts by hand, and ships as a web app, so these approvals only replace a manual step with an automatic one once they land, inside Phase 1 build-out (21 September 2026 to 22 January 2027) for the read and store items, and inside Phase 3 (April to June 2027) for the publishing audits.

If a platform's read permission is late. Because view reads and leagues are already done by hand at MVP, a late platform API approval does not threaten the 21 September 2026 launch or the 25 January 2027 beta date; it only delays that platform's move from a manual read to an automatic one. If a platform's read permission is still pending when Phase 1 build-out ends on 22 January 2027, ops keeps reading its public view counts by hand (YouTube and X give these without a connected account) or by creator screenshot (Instagram and TikTok need the creator's connected account), and that platform's automation lands in a later release once the permission arrives (assumption). None of this affects posting: automatic posting is a Phase 3 addition on every platform, since creators post the approved package themselves from launch and the platform verifies the posted link, by hand at MVP and by frame hash once that build-out item ships (Rollout plan, section 4).

4. Key dates

Every dated event in the plan, in order. Payout runs are included because they are fixed to the 1st of every month and never move.

1. Monday 7 September 2026: Phase 0, MVP sprint starts. All four platform applications submitted; the entity, Razorpay, Razorpay Route, RazorpayX or Cashfree, Payoneer and the WhatsApp Business API applications begin; Apple and Google developer accounts opened; legal drafting begins.
2. Saturday 19 September 2026: day 13 of the sprint. First dogfood gig, on the founder's own account and the 20 friendly-creator accounts.
3. Sunday 20 September 2026: day 14 of the sprint, Phase 0 ends. First pilot brand campaign funded.
4. Monday 21 September 2026: Phase 1, Build-out while live starts. First real gig dispatched.
5. Thursday 1 October 2026: first payout run, paying dogfood and pilot-brand earnings since 21 September.
6. Sunday 1 November 2026: payout run.
7. Tuesday 1 December 2026: payout run.
8. Friday 1 January 2027: payout run.
9. Friday 22 January 2027: Phase 1 build-out ends. Checkpoint on automated checklist scoring, API reads and leagues on at least three platforms, frame-hash matching, both native app submissions (or a named reason either store gate has not cleared), Razorpay Route (or the RazorpayX fallback), Payoneer, and referral automation.
10. Monday 25 January 2027: beta starts. App store review done if the native apps have shipped; the 10 pilot brands onboarded by hand.
11. Monday 1 February 2027: payout run, the fifth since October, now including the wider beta. "Payout day" dogfood campaign dispatched.
12. Friday 26 February 2027: mid-beta checkpoint.
13. Monday 1 March 2027: payout run.
14. Friday 26 March 2027: beta ends. Phase review against the 11 beta criteria; go or no-go.
15. Monday 29 March 2027: public launch. Self-serve sign-up; dogfood budget rises to $5,000 a week; automatic posting begins rolling out platform by platform through June as each publishing permission is approved.
16. Thursday 1 April 2027: payout run.
17. Saturday 1 May 2027: payout run.
18. Friday 14 May 2027: mid-launch checkpoint.
19. Tuesday 1 June 2027: payout run.
20. Friday 25 June 2027: Phase 3 ends. Phase review against the Phase 3 targets.
21. Thursday 1 July 2027: Phase 4 starts. Payout run.
22. Sunday 1 August 2027: payout run.
23. Wednesday 1 September 2027: payout run.
24. Friday 1 October 2027: payout run.
25. Monday 1 November 2027: payout run.
26. Wednesday 1 December 2027: payout run.
27. Friday 31 December 2027: Phase 4 ends. Phase review against the Phase 4 targets and the new language and payout-rail additions.

Payout runs happen on the calendar date even when the 1st is a weekend, as on 1 May and 1 August 2027; the batch is automatic and the money reaches bank accounts on the partner's next settlement day (assumption). Only creators with completed payout setup and an Available balance of at least $20 are included; smaller balances roll over. Each payout run also triggers that month's league recalculation, since a creator's league is set by their median views over the last 90 days. The founder runs each batch from the ops console, as described on the Dogfooding page.

5. Dependencies between workstreams

Each line is a hard order: the first item must be finished and tested before the second can be built or run. The two-week sprint follows this same order, day by day (section 1.3): days 1 to 2 are the ledger and auth, days 3 to 5 are sign-up and campaign funding, days 6 to 8 are dispatch and offers, days 9 to 10 are upload, review, the approved package and posting, and days 11 to 12 are the wallet and the payout batch. Several items below describe the automated version of a step; at MVP that step is done by hand instead, and the Phase 1 build-out (Rollout plan, section 4) is what turns it automatic, in the same order.

1. The Razorpay pay-in account must finish before campaign funding, because the fund is collected there, either through Razorpay Route or, until that is approved, the entity's own Razorpay account paying out through RazorpayX.
2. Social connect (the OAuth login for Instagram, YouTube, TikTok and X) must finish before the eligibility check and expected-earnings calculation can read each account's median views automatically from the platform's API; at MVP a creator's handle is entered by hand and ops sets the league from the last 10 posts, so this item is Phase 1 build-out, not a launch dependency.
3. Funding must finish before dispatch, because dispatch starts only when the fund is received and the brand-safety check is done.
4. Dispatch must finish before offers, because an offer is what dispatch sends: 2 to 6 offers per open slot, adapting to the recent acceptance rate for that category and league, each expiring after 30 minutes, in waves for up to 48 hours.
5. Upload must finish before review, because review, whether the founder reading it by hand at MVP or the automated pass added in the build-out, needs the uploaded video first.
6. Review must finish before the approved package, because only a submission with all 10 items passed is turned into the exact file and caption the creator is given to post.
7. The approved package must finish before creator posting, because the creator can only post once given the reviewed file and caption.
8. Creator posting must finish before the link check, because the platform, or the founder by hand at MVP, can only check a posted link once the creator has posted it.
9. The link check must finish before tracking, because tracking starts from the post's own publish time once the post is confirmed to match the approved file, by eye at MVP and by frame hash once that build-out item ships.
10. Tracking must finish before earnings release, because pay is released from view counts read on day 3, day 7 and day 14, by hand at MVP and automatically once each platform's read permission lands.
11. The ledger must finish before the wallet, because every wallet balance is a sum of ledger entries.
12. The wallet and payout setup (identity, PAN and bank details, tax form) must finish before the payout batch, because the batch pays only Available balances to verified bank accounts.
13. Dogfood (day 13 of the sprint) must finish before the first pilot brand's gig (day 14), because the founder must have completed a real gig with real money first.
14. The beta criteria must be met before the public launch, because self-serve removes the hand-holding by the founder that covers gaps in the beta.

6. Buffer and what slips first

A buffer is time in the plan that is not needed if everything goes right. This plan has two buffers, a cut list, four fixed promises and one rule.

6.1 Where the buffer is

• The last weeks of Phase 1 build-out (January 2027), reserved for native app submissions and any remaining platform API-read work. Because the web app is the permanent MVP surface, a native app that is not ready by 22 January 2027 delays the native app store launch, not the beta: the beta still opens on 25 January 2027 on the web app.
• The beta's 9 weeks (25 January to 26 March 2027). The target of 150 completed brand gigs with 10 brands, 3,000 worldwide creator sign-ups and 300 completed first gigs is a small volume for 9 weeks, and releases are weekly, so a build-out item not ready by 25 January can ship in any of the 9 beta releases. This buffer protects the public launch date.
• There is no buffer inside the two-week MVP sprint (Phase 0). Every one of its 14 days is accounted for in section 1.3, and the outside blockers run on their own clock (the entity, Razorpay, the platforms, the lawyer), so a slip there is the most likely way the sprint overruns.

6.2 What slips first

If time runs out, features are cut in this order, taken from the cut list on the Rollout plan page. Each cut is a delay to a later weekly release, not a removal.

1. Automatic posting. Creators post the approved package themselves at MVP, so switching a platform to automatic posting waits for that platform's publishing permission.
2. X view tracking automation. Views are already read by hand for every platform at MVP; if X's paid API tier is delayed, ops keeps reading its public counts by hand past the end of Phase 1 build-out, with no effect on the launch or the beta date.
3. Preset F "Clipping".
4. Custom checklists. Brands keep editing up to 3 of the 10 items until then.
5. Instant payout at 2%. Creators keep the monthly payout on the 1st.
6. Volume pricing. Brands stay on pay as you go, with the platform keeping 20% of every deposit at once.
7. Non-English product languages (Spanish, Hindi, Portuguese) and the extra local payout rails.

6.3 What never slips

• The review SLA: 90% of submissions get an automated result within 24 hours and a decision within 48 hours, with a human confirming every submission at MVP.
• Payout on the 1st of every month.
• Disclosure: "#ad" and the platform's paid-partnership or branded-content label on every post, added automatically.
• The 48-hour fraud hold on every release (the floor and each of the day 3, 7 and 14 reads) before money becomes Available.

These four are promises to creators and brands, not features. If the founder cannot keep one at the current volume, dispatch is paused until it can, rather than the rule being bent (assumption).

6.4 Rule for starting a phase

A phase does not start until the previous phase's exit criteria are met. If they are not met on the review date, the phase is extended one week at a time, the review is repeated, and every later date on this page moves by the same number of weeks (assumption). The one exception is Phase 4, which starts on 1 July 2027 regardless of the Phase 3 result, because its content is a list of additions that can be reordered rather than a gate (assumption). If Phase 3 misses its targets, the Phase 4 list is cut from the bottom, starting with the non-English product languages and the API for agencies (assumption).

7. Review checkpoints

A checkpoint is a dated review by the founder where one question is answered with numbers from the ops console and the brand dashboard, and one decision is written down. There are eight: one at the end of each phase, one mid-beta, one mid-launch, and one added a fortnight into Phase 1 to check the core loop is proven (assumption). The beta criteria are listed in full on the Rollout plan page; the risks each checkpoint watches are on the Challenges page.

When a checkpoint moves a date, this page is reissued as the next draft version with the new dates, so every other page still points at one calendar (assumption). The assumptions on this page are collected on the Assumptions page.