# solobillionaireclub.com

Site grounding for agents without the solobillionaireclub.com repository: its seven charter files, unchanged except that headings sit two levels lower and every term id the pinned version defines, in the frontmatter blocks too, is followed by its label from the pinned version. The YAML blocks are therefore for reading, not parsing; the repo files are the source.

- Domain: solobillionaireclub.com
- Pins: editorial-charter@1.3.1, sbc@1.2.0
- Repo: 1546d345ac7ac64d6658284c6f86cab291f8dc5b (committed 2026-10-03T14:26:38-07:00)
- Built 2026-10-05T03:25:29+00:00
- Pages: https://taxonomy.tfw.bz/sites/solobillionaireclub.com/

## BRAND.md

Version 1.0.0 · status reviewed · sha256 81881f04bed91099801ab86353ca1fc5c79f76509a2bb1992788024cff592cec

```yaml
charter: 1
profile: editorial-charter@1.3.1
version: 1.0.0
domain: solobillionaireclub.com
status: reviewed
reviewed_by: thomas@prommer.net
archetype: charter:brand-archetype-ruler (ruler)
secondary_archetype: charter:brand-archetype-sage (sage)
claims:
  - id: c1
    text: 149 founder profiles, 140 ranked, with revenue bands graded by evidence strength and a public corrections log.
    basis: charter:claim-basis-documented (documented)
    source: AGENTS.md; data/corrections.json; VOICE.md section 6
  - id: c2
    text: Thomas Prommer is a technology and AI advisor, founder of We The Flywheel, former Global SVP of Engineering at Adidas, CIO at Sweetgreen, and President, Technology at Huge.
    basis: charter:claim-basis-documented (documented)
    source: VOICE.md section 6; https://prommer.net/en/about/thomas-prommer/
```

### BRAND

#### Name and entity
Solo Billionaire Club (SBC), published by We The Flywheel, bylined to Thomas Prommer. Entity home: https://solobillionaireclub.com/. Contact via /en/contact/ (press, correction, partnership, listing).

#### Promise
The race to the first one-person billion-dollar company. Tracked in public. Verified at the source.

#### Personality
The ruler: the leaderboard that grades you. Every number graded and sourced, failures printed next to wins, nothing promised. Sage underneath: the verification ladder and the corrections log explain how a grade was earned. First-plural "we" for the site's own methods and board.

#### Visual pointers
See `DESIGN.md` and the taxonomy-driven verification grades (`taxonomy/sbc-profile.v1.json`, `sbc:claim-verification`) that the leaderboard renders.

#### Do / Don't
Do: show the grade and the source next to every figure. Do: label third-party estimates as estimates. Do: print corrections.
Don't: affiliate links, paid placement, fees from ranked founders. Don't: invent net-worth figures. Don't: rank the Academy against the communities it lists.

## VOICE.md

Version unset · status unset · sha256 11fbbb95ffd409a6e6aed24ff37736ad25e138b47593965c7325debaf48ff88e

### VOICE — Solo Billionaire Club (solobillionaireclub.com)

> Loaded by /humanizer (Step 0) and the content publishing gate (drafting Step 1
> + humanizer Step 3). If absent, both fall back to generic mode.
> Built 2026-09-30 from the live copy in `src/pages/index.astro`,
> `src/pages/en/one-person-billion-dollar-company.astro`, `src/pages/en/trustmrr.astro`
> and `src/pages/en/academy.astro`.

#### 1. Identity & Register
- Voice owner / who speaks: the site, as an editor keeping a public ledger. Bylined to Thomas Prommer. First-plural "we" for the site's own methods and board ("we track", "our board ranks"). No first-person "I" anecdotes unless Thomas supplied them.
- Register: practitioner, with a data desk's discipline
- Language/locale: en (US spelling)
- One-line essence: "A public ledger of one-person companies: every number graded and sourced, failures printed next to wins, nothing promised."

#### 2. Audience
- Primary audience: founders running or planning a one-person company, plus indie hackers and solopreneurs who read build-in-public posts and want to know which figures are real.
- Reader's job-to-be-done: find out what actually makes money for people working alone, and how much of any claim can be checked.
- Assume they know: MRR, SaaS, Stripe, build in public, what a newsletter or a course is.
- Always explain: what a grade means (claimed, screenshot, press, dashboard, processor-verified), what "solo" includes (contractors and a VA count, cofounders and staff do not), and the difference between revenue, valuation and net worth.

#### 3. Tone Axes
- Formal   ───●───  Casual
- Authority ─●─────  Peer
- Serious  ●──────  Playful
- Concise  ●──────  Expansive
- Default editorial_track: factual

#### 4. Person, POV & Cadence
- Person: third for founders and companies, "we" for the site's own method. Never "you will make", never second-person promises.
- Answer first. The first sentence under a heading answers the heading's question in plain words, often with a flat "No." or "Yes, with a caveat."
- Sentence rhythm: short and declarative. One claim per sentence. A number is followed by its date and grade in the same or next sentence.
- Paragraph length: 2 to 4 sentences.
- Headings: question-shaped H2s ("Who is closest right now?"), one-line dek under each.
- Structural tics to keep: the caveat stated next to the claim, not in a footnote ("It proves processor revenue well, and it doesn't check profit, team size or who the founder is."). Counting things exactly ("Three different numbers get called a billion-dollar company.").
- Avoid: rhetorical build-ups, motivational closers, "imagine if", lists of three for rhythm, em dashes, semicolons.

#### 5. Lexicon
- Preferred terms: one-person company, solo founder, solopreneur (only where the query uses it), build in public, monthly revenue, MRR, range, grade, verified at the source, claimed, self-reported, the board, the Million Board, the Billion Board, the Academy, corrections log.
- Grade names exactly as the ladder in `src/lib/data.ts`: Self-reported, Screenshot, Press, Public dashboard, Payment processor (shown as "Verified"), Open banking, Accountant attestation.
- Team labels exactly as the site shows them: Solo, Solo + contractors, Solo + VA, 2 cofounders, 3+ cofounders, Team of 2 to 10, Team of 11+, Team unknown.
- Money: "$863,632 in a month (Verified, TrustMRR, July 2026)". Always a period, a date and a grade. Ranges read "$768K to $959K".
- Banned phrases (on top of the humanizer list): passive income, financial freedom, quit your job, escape the matrix, the Matrix, fire your boss, six figures in, 7-figure, get rich, hustle, grind, side hustle to millions, secret, proven system, guaranteed, easy money, while you sleep, laptop lifestyle, wealthy, millionaire mindset, game-changer, crushing it, unlock, journey, empire.
- Never: an income claim or a projection about what the reader will earn; a net worth that is not a sourced third-party estimate labelled "estimate"; anything about a founder's spouse, children, family or home; affiliate links; em dashes.
- Capitalization & spelling: TrustMRR, Indie Hackers (the site), indie hacker (the person), Stripe, Paddle, LemonSqueezy, X (not Twitter, except in a quote), AI, SaaS, micro-SaaS, GEO.
- Domain-jargon level: moderate. MRR and SaaS unexplained; grades, bands and "solo" explained on first use.

#### 6. E-E-A-T / Experience Claims
- Named author + bio source: Thomas Prommer. Canonical facts only from `~/opt/prommer.net/src/pages/en/about/thomas-prommer/index.astro` and the prommer.net `profile.json`. Byline links to https://prommer.net/.
- Quantified credential for bios: technology and AI advisor, founder of We The Flywheel; former Global SVP of Engineering at Adidas, CIO at Sweetgreen, and President, Technology at Huge; M.Sc. Computer Science, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. Nothing beyond this list. Thomas is not on the board and does not claim to run a one-person company.
- Citation posture: primary source for every figure (the TrustMRR startup page, the founder's own post, the interview itself), with the date read. A secondary write-up only when it is the only source, and then say so.
- Original-data hooks this voice owns: the Million Board (149 profiled founders, 140 ranked, graded revenue bands), the grade mix (how many figures are verified vs claimed), `data/facets.json` business-model and growth-engine tags, `data/reach.json` follower counts checked 2026-09-29, the public corrections log (`data/corrections.json`).
- "What we got wrong" angle: the corrections log. When a figure moved, say what it was, what it is now and why (example: Jason Zigelbaum's Metafields Manager was logged as sold to Shopify; it was shut down in 2023 after Shopify shipped the feature natively).

#### 7. Gold-Standard Examples
- Example A (from `/en/one-person-billion-dollar-company/`): "The same Fortune piece carries the first caveat. Dan Sutera, cofounder of Muse, warned that some founders would reach the mark "on a technicality" by hiring contractors who aren't employees, and said he would put an asterisk next to them. That asterisk is most of what this site is about."
  - Why on-voice: attributes the claim, names the source, turns the caveat into the site's reason to exist in one short line.
- Example B (from `/en/one-person-billion-dollar-company/`): "Why only verified evidence? Because a revenue screenshot takes a minute to fake. Every figure on the board carries a grade, from a line in a post up to an accountant's signed letter. The weaker the grade, the wider the range around the figure, and the board ranks on the low end of that range."
  - Why on-voice: question heading, answer in the first sentence, method stated plainly with no hype.
- Example C (from `/en/trustmrr/`): "TrustMRR is a startup revenue database and acquisition marketplace run by Marc Lou. Founders connect a read-only key from their payment provider, and TrustMRR publishes the revenue that provider recorded. It proves processor revenue well, and it doesn't check profit, team size or who the founder is."
  - Why on-voice: definition first, mechanism second, strength and limit in the same sentence.

#### 8. Anti-References
- Hustler University / The Real World: unverified earnings claims, lifestyle imagery, "escape the matrix" framing.
- "Passive income" and "make money online" guru copy: screenshots as proof, income promises, urgency, countdowns.
- Generic AI listicles: "Top 25 business ideas for 2026" with no data behind each item.
- Pay-to-play "best of" lists and link-selling copy (see `research/offering/policy.md`).
- Startup-hype tone: "disrupt", "10x", founder worship.

## STRATEGY.md

Version 1.0.0 · status reviewed · sha256 2a3a1b08f29112aaf9693f1eb8ac4fabe2246c8e1e542e17f3b70615e73dac8f

```yaml
charter: 1
profile: editorial-charter@1.3.1
version: 1.0.0
domain: solobillionaireclub.com
status: reviewed
reviewed_by: thomas@prommer.net
mission_shape: charter:mission-shape-serve-x-to-achieve-y (serve X to achieve Y)
horizon: charter:horizon-12m (12 months)
positioning:
  primary: charter:positioning-axis-authority-depth (authority depth)
  secondary: [charter:positioning-axis-speed-of-answer (speed of answer)]
audiences:
  - kind: charter:audience-kind-practitioner (practitioner)
    name: Solo founders
    job_to_be_done: Find out what actually makes money for people working alone and how much of any claim can be checked.
  - kind: charter:audience-kind-consumer (consumer)
    name: Build-in-public readers
    job_to_be_done: Tell which published figures are real before copying a playbook.
  - kind: charter:audience-kind-press (press)
    name: Press
    job_to_be_done: Cite a graded, sourced number for a one-person company.
```

### STRATEGY

#### Mission
We help founders working alone find out what actually makes money and how much of any claim can be checked.

#### Positioning
Authority depth first: the only ledger where each revenue claim carries a verification grade (self-reported text up to accountant attestation), a source URL and a corrections log, with no paid placement. Speed of answer second: the leaderboard answers "who is real" in one screen. We concede practitioner access to the paid communities we list; the Academy is kept out of that comparison.

#### Audiences
Solo founders running or planning a one-person company. Build-in-public readers, indie hackers and solopreneurs who see revenue screenshots daily and want the graded version. Press looking for a citable number.

#### Competitors
TrustMRR (featured as a verification source, not a rival), Indie Hackers, Baremetrics and ChartMogul public dashboards, Stripe public dashboards, Gumroad, and the 44 communities in the directory, several of which sell what the Academy will sell.

#### What we will not do
No affiliate links, no paid placement, no fees from ranked founders. No invented net-worth estimates. No unsourced figure on the board. No ranking bias toward the Academy.

#### Bets for the horizon
1. Grow the graded board past 149 profiles with more payment-processor and open-banking grades (moves content_engaged, gsc_clicks).
2. Academy founding-member waitlist as the conversion (moves signup_completed, newsletter_subscribed).
3. Communities directory and academy pillars as the search entry (moves gsc_clicks, pageview_recorded).

## AUDIENCE.md

Not yet written.

## MONETIZATION.md

Not yet written.

## KPI.md

Version 1.0.0 · status draft · sha256 aba9cb6010c0bfbb84989010bf87fe32ff4eb4004cf9cec1516dde09519a92ae

```yaml
charter: 1
profile: editorial-charter@1.3.1
version: 1.0.0
domain: solobillionaireclub.com
status: draft
reviewed_by: ""
template: charter:kpi-template-product-signup (product signup)
kpis:
  - {key: signup_completed, role: charter:kpi-role-primary (primary)}
  - {key: newsletter_subscribed, role: charter:kpi-role-secondary (secondary)}
  - {key: content_engaged, role: charter:kpi-role-secondary (secondary)}
  - {key: pageview_recorded, role: charter:kpi-role-secondary (secondary)}
  - {key: gsc_clicks, role: charter:kpi-role-secondary (secondary)}
  - {key: crawl_errors, role: charter:kpi-role-guardrail (guardrail)}
catalog_sha: 4304fc97e9ac457725bdc25dcbb724c36257a707cbb3c237b69cd3e7ba04ac39
```

### KPI

#### Why these metrics
signup_completed is the number the site is run on: a confirmed waitlist entry (academy, community or club) through `/api/sbc-waitlist` and Sendy double opt-in. newsletter_subscribed counts the opt-ins that are not waitlist entries; content_engaged tells whether founder profiles and academy pages are read; pageview_recorded and gsc_clicks explain the top of the funnel. crawl_errors is the guardrail while the site is still noindex and 149 profile pages exist.

#### Reading guide
GA4 is not wired yet (noindex, publishing gate open). Until it is, signups are counted from Sendy list sizes; read weekly once GA4 lands. The `(site)` target is not set; the checker warns until it is.

#### Review cadence
Monthly until launch, then quarterly.

## taxonomy/binding.yaml

Not yet written.