⚖️ TrueTrade
Launch plan

Start narrow: gardening & car wash, one neighbourhood

The fastest path to proving the retention loop is two high-recurrence, low-ticket services in a single dense cluster. This page is the plan: the verticals, why they're first, how we sequence the rest, and what's in (and out of) the MVP.

The wedge

Why gardening & car wash first

Both are high-recurrence, low-ticket (HRLT) services — ~₡30,000 (≈$60) a visit, repeating every week or two. We deliberately ignore the high-ticket one-off jobs at launch: they pay more per job but teach us nothing about the loop that makes this a platform rather than a directory. HRLT gives us frequent, forgiving, observable transactions to learn from fast.

~₡30,000typical visit Weekly–biweeklynatural cadence No access neededexterior work Geo-clusteredone neighbourhood first Low stakescheap to get wrong

Why HRLT beats high-ticket at launch

Recurrence is the whole thesis. A roof replacement is a once-a-decade lead; a lawn is a relationship. Frequent jobs mean we see the retention loop work (or fail) in weeks, not years — and the low ticket means a bad early experience costs a customer ₡30,000, not ₡3 million.

Why these two specifically

Both are exterior — the customer rarely needs to be home, which removes the hardest scheduling friction. Both have a clear, repeatable scope that's easy to estimate from photos. And both reward route density: a gardener or detailer wants stops clustered, not scattered.

The happy path

How a launch job actually runs

Two concrete walk-throughs — one per vertical — from first request to a standing schedule.

🌿

Gardening — biweekly lawn & edges

María · small front + back garden

✓ Happy path

  1. María describes "lawn mow + edging every two weeks" in chat intake, adds two photos and a gate code.
  2. Admin qualifies it and contacts 3 vetted gardeners already working her cluster.
  3. Two send free initial estimates (₡27,500–32,500/visit). María compares and picks GreenBlade (4.8★).
  4. GreenBlade accepts, finishes payout onboarding, contact unlocks — no need for María to be home.
  5. First mow done; María pays ₡30,000 in-app. GreenBlade is paid out the same cycle.
  6. Positive review → "Put GreenBlade on a biweekly schedule?" → she sets it once and forgets it.
Now it's a standing biweekly visit — auto-scheduled, paid in-app each time, zero re-selling.
🚗

Car wash — weekly mobile detail

Diego · wash at home, outdoor tap

✓ Happy path

  1. Diego asks for a weekly mobile wash at home; intake captures that he has an outdoor tap + driveway space.
  2. Admin contacts mobile detailers already serving his street.
  3. Two send free estimates (₡25,000–30,000). Diego picks ShinePro.
  4. ShinePro accepts, onboards, contact unlocks; water & power access already confirmed from the brief.
  5. Car washed in the driveway; Diego pays in-app, ShinePro paid out.
  6. Weekly cadence set — a guaranteed stop on the same street every week.
Cluster four neighbours on one street and ShinePro's whole route is one efficient morning — density is the moat.
💰 A single ~₡30,000 visit nets the platform almost nothing after processing — the unit that matters is the recurring customer on a dense route. The full money breakdown, and the fee-model options, live on Economics →
Density is the moat

One neighbourhood, not one city

We launch in a single tight cluster and saturate it before expanding. Density does three things at once: it makes a pro's route efficient (the difference between a viable wage and a waste of a morning), it creates visible word-of-mouth on the same streets, and it lets a handful of vetted pros cover all the demand we can generate.

First cluster — decided

🇨🇷 Lindora Village (Lindora / Santa Ana, Costa Rica) — a specific affluent, dense condo, the pilot building.
Next: a single Kelowna neighbourhood (the current demo market), same playbook.
The wedge: a building's resident base is an instant pre-clustered roster.

Which market is first is still an open call — and it changes the payments stack. See Decisions.

Saturate, then expand

Goal: enough recurring customers on enough adjacent streets that a pro can build a full route without leaving the zone. Only once a cluster is dense and self-sustaining do we open the next one — same playbook, copy-pasted.

After the wedge

How we sequence the rest

Services sort into three tiers by recurrence and ticket size. We start where recurrence is highest, then layer in medium-recurrence work to the same customers, and only later chase the high-ticket one-offs — by then we own the home relationship and can win those jobs without paying for the lead.

Tier 1 — High recurrence, low ticket Launch now

~₡20,000–35,000 · weekly–biweekly · the retention engine

Gardening · car wash. Later: veggie/produce delivery, grill & BBQ cleaning. Frequent, forgiving, route-dense — the jobs that teach us the loop.

Tier 2 — Medium recurrence, medium ticket Phase 2

~₡40,000–125,000 · seasonal / few times a year · cross-sell to existing homes

Fumigation · gutter cleaning · window cleaning · light plumbing. We already have the home and the trust — these become reminders on the home profile, not new customer acquisition.

Tier 3 — Low recurrence, high ticket Phase 3

~₡150,000–several million · once a year or less · monetize the relationship

A/C maintenance · appliance repair · hydro-washing · landscaping · small remodels. The high-margin jobs — captured through a home we already serve, so we don't compete on lead-gen for them.

Tiering is from the founder discussion. The sequencing logic: earn the relationship on Tier 1, deepen it on Tier 2, monetize it on Tier 3.
Trust core

When it doesn't go to plan

The trust rule holds across every vertical — no completed, paid job → no fee — but gardening and car wash have their own failure modes. How we handle the common ones:

What goes wrongHow we handle itPlatform
Pro no-shows for a scheduled visitCustomer flags / system detects no completion. We re-route to a backup pro in the same cluster; reputation hit on the no-show.Nothing
Locked gate / no water or power (back garden, mobile wash)Pro does what's accessible or reschedules; the blocker is saved to the home record so it never repeats. No charge if not done.Nothing
Scope bigger than expected (overgrown lot, heavily soiled car)Pro requests a revised amount before starting; the customer approves in-app, or it stays at the estimate.Fee on agreed
Quality dispute (patchy mow, missed spots)Satisfaction guarantee, funded by the customer fee: a free re-do by the same pro, or a refund. The pattern is tracked against the pro.Reversed
"Just pay me cash next time" — leakage (the #1 risk here)Set-and-forget scheduling, payment protection, and the pro's booked-revenue dashboard make in-app the easy path. Off-platform = no auto-rebook, no protection, no reputation.Nothing
Customer skips a visit (vacation, rain, already mowed)One tap — "skip this visit" — in My Home; no charge; the cadence resumes next cycle.Nothing
Seasonal pause (winter — no mowing)The plan auto-pauses; we nudge both sides to resume in spring so the relationship survives the gap.Paused
Leakage is the defining risk for recurring low-ticket work — a trusted weekly pro is exactly the relationship most tempted off-platform. We fight it with value (set-and-forget, protection, reputation), not with lock-in.
Build boundary

MVP scope — in & out

A proposed line for the first release. Everything "in" supports running the two verticals in one cluster end-to-end; everything "out" waits until the loop is proven. This is a starting point for the partner discussion, not a locked spec.

✓ In the MVP

  • Chat intake → structured brief + photos (gardening & car wash templates)
  • Admin console: qualify jobs, add & contact pros, review estimates
  • Compare interested pros → customer selects → pro accepts → contact unlocks
  • In-app payment for the completed job + payout to the pro
  • Two-sided reviews
  • Recurring cadence (set-and-forget) + skip / pause a visit
  • "My Home": saved pros, history, one-tap rebook, care reminders
  • One launch cluster, hand-picked vetted pros

— Out of the MVP (later)

  • Real automated pro discovery (Google/maps import) — manual at first
  • Tier 2 & Tier 3 verticals
  • White-label building portals at scale (one pilot at most)
  • Native mobile apps (mobile web only)
  • Automated SMS/notifications (simulated / manual at first)
  • Pro-side self-serve onboarding (white-glove, in person at first)
  • Multi-city / multi-cluster management
  • Disputes/refunds automation beyond the basics
🧭 The calls that gate this scope — launch market, payment processor, fee model — are tracked on Decisions →, with the money math on Economics →