The horizon
The 18-month catalytic horizon, and the seven-year regenerative trajectory.
The 18-month horizon
The catalytic window, month by month.
The stages overlap on purpose. Stage 0 keeps tending its ground while Stage 1 activates Hudson Valley. Stage 2 builds the Dashboard while Stage 1 deepens with Mexico City. Stage 3 opens with the first festival while Stage 2 ships toward production. The three tranches arrive at readiness, not on calendar; by M18 three bioregions are active, the Dashboard is in production, and the federation has begun forming around the cycle the bioregions already run.
Stages overlap so the work stays continuous.
M1
Stage 0 opens
Foundation & Documentation begins.
M3
T1 closes
Priority slug arrives. $615K. Hudson Valley pilot starts.
M6
Stage 1 deepens
Hudson Valley active. Mexico City pre-conditions opening.
M9
T2 closes
$560K. Stage 2 begins. Dashboard MVP build sequenced.
M12
Stage 3 opens
First Planetary Party festival. Hudson Valley public.
M15
T3 closes
$325K. Stage 3 remainder. Stage 4 begins. Third bioregion live.
M18
Catalytic window closes
Three bioregions active. Dashboard production. Federation forming.
The seven-year trajectory
Y1 through Y7. Three scenarios. The base case anchors the deck.
Three scenarios, three different reads of the same deployment. The base case is what the team underwrites: Y3 structural break-even at $1,525K revenue, three bioregions active, twenty subscribers closed. The conservative case is what the team plans its cash floors against: two bioregions instead of three, twelve subscribers instead of twenty, net surplus arriving in Y6 rather than Y4. The optimistic case is what becomes possible when Capital Flow Participation, the long-horizon stewardship- vehicle line Marcus calls the youngest mechanism, actually compounds; it is achievable, and it should not anchor the foundation conversation.
| Year | Conservative | Base (deck) | Optimistic | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | Net | Revenue | Net | Revenue | Net | |
| Y1 | $35K | ($685K) | $50K | ($750K) | $75K | ($795K) |
| Y2 | $250K | ($830K) | $360K | ($845K) | $525K | ($785K) |
| Y3 | $1,005K | ($355K) | $1,525K | ($5K) | $2,050K | $360K |
| Y4 | $1,500K | ($220K) | $2,345K | $345K | $3,090K | $840K |
| Y5 | $1,995K | ($85K) | $3,210K | $720K | $4,130K | $1,320K |
| Y6 | $2,490K | $50K | $4,050K | $1,070K | $5,180K | $1,810K |
| Y7 | $2,985K | $185K | $4,890K | $1,420K | $6,230K | $2,300K |
Source: Marcus financial model, 2026-05-14, Section 8.
Y3. Conservative
$1,005K
Net ($355K)
Deck floor. Two bioregions, 12 subscribers. Net surplus arrives in Y6.
Y3. Base (deck)
$1,525K
Net ($5K)
Structural break-even. Three bioregions, 20 subscribers. The deck's commitment.
Y3. Optimistic
$2,050K
Net $360K
Slightly above the deck ceiling. One large co-participation in Y2; Dashboard early. Stretch case.
The 20-subscriber path
One new subscriber every seven weeks.
The Y3 archetype mix is not aspirational. Four foundation buyers from the Packard, Hewlett, and Builders Initiative tier. Four aligned institutions across research universities, indigenous-led policy organizations, and regenerative-finance think tanks. Eight bioregional networks including Bloom, the Bioregional Embassy, Colombia Regenerativa, and Cloud Forests partners. Four climate-aligned family offices buying access for their portfolio companies. Twenty subscribers, blended ARR of $10,800, $216,000 to the Y3 line.
| Archetype | Count | Avg ARR | Subtotal |
|---|---|---|---|
| Foundation buyers (Packard, Hewlett, Builders Initiative program offices) | 4 | $20,000 | $80,000 |
| Aligned institutions (research universities, indigenous-led policy orgs, regenerative-finance think tanks) | 4 | $12,000 | $48,000 |
| Bioregional networks (Bloom, Bioregional Embassy, Colombia Regenerativa, Cloud Forests partners) | 8 | $7,000 | $56,000 |
| Climate-aligned family offices buying access for their portfolio companies | 4 | $8,000 | $32,000 |
| Y3 ARR target (blended) | 20 | $10,800 | $216,000 |
Source: Marcus financial model, 2026-05-14, Section 4.
Twenty closings across 36 months reads as one new subscriber every seven weeks. That is what stewardship velocity looks like at human scale; not pipeline magic. The curve begins with five anchor conversations from Syd’s Kinship Earth network in Q1 2026, grows to fifteen qualified through the Hudson Valley and Mexico City pilots through Q3 2026, lands the first three letters of intent by Q4 2026, and closes its first five subscriptions in Q1 2027. Ten more across Q2 and Q3 2027. Five more in Q4 2027. The risk on this line is not the unit economics; the unit economics hold. The risk is the Dashboard MVP shipping on schedule. If Stage 2 slips past Q4 2026, the conversion curve shifts right and Y3 closings drop to twelve to fifteen. That risk is named, scheduled, and tracked.
The honest gap
A $170,000 cash-floor gap at end of Q4 2027.
A foundation officer reading the trajectory above has just walked through three years of projected revenue and arrived at the most important paragraph on this page. The honest answer is that the model surfaces a cash-floor gap of approximately $170,000 at end of Q4 2027. We are naming it here, on this page, where any program officer can find it, because that is what trust requires. The same number sits in Marcus’s model at Section 2. The same number would be read aloud in a senior-trustee room. There is no version of this conversation in which it lives anywhere but in plain sight.
Cash floor minimum
($170K)
End of Q4 2027
The gap exists for a structural reason, not a planning failure. By end of Y2 the catalytic slug is fully deployed; the third tranche closed in Q1 2027 and the last of it is moving through Stage 4. Subscription revenue and Investment Pipeline fees are ramping on the curve named above, but recurring revenue has not yet caught up to operating cost. This is the structural shape of catalytic finance, where the deployment leads the receivables, and it is exactly the shape patient capital is designed to hold. Marcus surfaces this as the single most important risk in the model. Naming it as risk is the point.
Three mitigation paths
How the gap closes.
Mitigation 01
Earlier subscription pipeline
Prime the subscription pipeline by Q4 2026 so Y3 closings front-load. Five closings by Q1 2027 instead of Q2 2027 narrows the Q4 gap by roughly $80K.
Mitigation 02
T3 tranche sequencing
Delay a portion of Stage 4 expand-spend until early Y3, holding $60K to $80K of the T3 tranche as deployment-flex through the cash-floor window.
Mitigation 03
Nalu'ea Trust short recoverable bridge
A short recoverable bridge from the investment rail, structured as recoverable rather than catalytic, covering Q4 2027 with repayment from Y4 surplus.
Three mitigation paths exist, and none of them is an emergency move; all three are healthy operating choices the team and the funders walk into together, not separately. The team holds the gap honestly because concealing it is the failure mode this work refuses. Patient capital deserves a horizon it can read clear-eyed, and patient stewardship deserves a partner who can sit with a $170,000 line item for a full quarter without flinching. The gap will close. The page names how.
The recycling commitment
The Y4 through Y7 surpluses recycle. They do not accumulate.
The recycling commitment is the moral center of the catalytic frame. The Y4 through Y7 net surpluses, $345K then $720K then $1,070K then $1,420K in the base case, do not accumulate as equity-holder value because there are no equity holders. They recycle. The next section reads the channels aloud and shows the visual underneath. The number that matters is the cumulative total, and where it lands.
The Y4 through Y7 split. Base case.
Flow Funds expansion
Capital flows back into bioregional Flow Funds, deployed through Kinship Earth's trust-based participatory mechanism. Ungated by investor priority.
50%
$1,778,000
New bioregion activation
Funds 6 to 7 additional bioregion activations between Y4 and Y7 from internal surplus, mirroring the $160K-per-bioregion Stage 1 unit economics. No additional catalytic ask required.
30%
$1,067,000
Network resilience reserve
Held in conservative instruments by the Trust. A five-year operating reserve protecting the Trust and core team against catalytic-capital cyclicality.
20%
$711,000
Read the bar aloud. Fifty percent of the cumulative Y4 through Y7 surplus, roughly $1.78M, recycles into the bioregional Flow Funds the stewardship circles govern. Thirty percent, roughly $1.07M, activates six to seven new bioregions from internal surplus rather than from a new catalytic ask. Twenty percent, roughly $711K, capitalizes the network resilience reserve against the cyclicality of catalytic capital. The cumulative total, $3.55M across four years, is more than twice the original raise.
The headline
By Y7, more capital has recycled back to the ecosystem than the original $1.5M raised.
Source: Marcus financial model, 2026-05-14, Section 9.
Three governance gates
The recycling is structural, not discretionary.
A recycling commitment without governance is a promise; with governance it is a covenant. Three gates hold the recycling in place: the Nalu’ea Trust instrument that prevents equity-holder distribution at the legal layer, the bioregional stewardship-circle authority that holds Flow Fund deployment decisions at the community layer, and the annual stewardship audit that surfaces the recycling rate to the foundation funder community in the open. Three layers, one commitment.
Gate 01
Trust instrument
The Nalu'ea Living Trust agreement names its purpose as fiscal sponsorship for investment capital, governance architecture, and aligned-capital stewardship. Equity-holder distribution is not in that purpose; the instrument prevents it.
Gate 02
Stewardship circle authority
Each bioregion's Flow Fund is governed by a community-elected stewardship circle, not by the Trust. Capital deployed to a Flow Fund is decided by the local circle, ungated by Trust priority. Sovereignty made operational.
Gate 03
Annual stewardship audit
The impact-measurement function produces an annual report tracking the recycling rate across all three channels. Any deviation requires written explanation to the foundation funder community.
Read deeper
The boundary the recycling protects.
The catalytic finance frame holds because the sovereignty firewall holds. Recycling promises matter only when the bioregions on the receiving side keep final authority over what flows in and what does not. The sovereignty page names that boundary, in the voice the boundary deserves. Read it next, when you are ready.