Investment memo · Confidential
Forma Designs: a 97% margin product looking for its channel.
Summary
Forma Designs sells listing agents a $949 development package for vacant land, made by in-house software for under $1.50, and is raising capital to find out what it costs to sell at scale.
The product is a conceptual site plan, a 3D rendering and a due diligence summary for one listing, with an optional $1,000 interactive property website. It is produced by Drafted, software the founder built, so each sale keeps about 97% after production and payment fees.
The business is very early. It has $1,230 in revenue from 4 clients, all at legacy $200–$500 pricing, and no completed sale yet at $949. Agents reached by phone show 90%+ interest; the gap is closing after the call.
The bet in one line: margins are already solved; demand per dial at the new price is not.
Current state
As of October 22, 2026, Forma is one month into selling to agents, run part-time by one founder, with $1,230 collected.
| Measure | Value | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue to date | $1,230 | Founder-reported; CRM logs $1,100 of deal value for the same 4 clients |
| Paid clients | 4 | 3 at $200 (Sept 22–23), 1 at $500 (Oct 5) |
| Sales at current $949 price | 0 | Price went live in October |
| Checkouts started | 1 | Package + website, monthly plan, $1,956 total, Oct 19; not completed |
| Active prospects | 20 | Examples or proposals sent; $16.7k at CRM deal values |
| Agent contacts in CRM | 372 | 155 tied to a specific land listing |
| Interest when reached by phone | 90%+ | Founder-tracked, among agents actually reached |
| Close rate at $200–$500 | ~3% | Of all dials, no-answers included; founder-tracked |
| Fixed costs | <$100/mo | Software and hosting |
| Team | 1 | Founder, part-time alongside a day job |
All four paid clients came from cold calls. No paid, email or in-person channel has produced a sale yet.
Product, pricing and Drafted
Forma sells one flat-priced package per listing, made by its own software, and plans to double the price by April 2027.
What the agent gets. A conceptual site plan fit to current zoning and setbacks, a 3D rendering, and a due diligence summary of development costs and potential returns, delivered within 7 days. One revision round is included. It is a marketing and feasibility tool, not a stamped plan, and is not for permitting or construction.
Terms. $949 upfront, or $159 a month for up to 6 payments with any balance due at closing. The card is saved through Stripe at order and charged only on delivery. If the listing is not under contract within 6 months, the next property is done free. The property website adds $1,000 ($1,949 total).
| Period | Package | Website add-on | What happened |
|---|---|---|---|
| Late Sept 2026 | $200 | — | 3 sold; agents called it too cheap |
| Early Oct 2026 | $500 | $500–$1,000 | 1 sold |
| Now | $949 | $1,000 | Agents now say “maybe”; none sold yet |
| Target, Apr 2027 | $1,899 | $2,000 | Only if close rate at $949 holds |
A $3,500 premium tier is planned as a price anchor.
Drafted, the engine. The full flow is live: a property description goes in and a finished package comes out. Drafted pulls the parcel, zoning and LiDAR topography, lays out a concept fit to the buildable area and parking code, builds a 3D model and photoreal render, then produces the due diligence package and optional website. It runs on Claude, image generation, Supabase and Modal workers. The founder reports AI and compute cost under $1.50 per package. Longer term, Drafted can be sold to civil engineering firms as software.
Unit economics
Each sale keeps about 97% of its price after production and Stripe fees, at today’s prices and after the planned doubling.
| Order | Price | Production | Stripe fee | Contribution | Margin |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Package, today | $949 | $1.50 | $27.82 | $919.68 | 96.9% |
| Package + website, today | $1,949 | $6.50 | $56.82 | $1,885.68 | 96.8% |
| Package, after Apr 2027 | $1,899 | $1.50 | $55.37 | $1,842.13 | 97.0% |
| Package + website, after | $3,899 | $6.50 | $113.37 | $3,779.13 | 96.9% |
Stripe is 2.9% + $0.30. Website production is assumed at $5; sites are hosted free on GitHub Pages. Production cost is founder-reported.
What this leaves out is the real cost: acquiring the customer. Today that is the founder’s calling time, which has no cash cost and no measured CAC. Funded, it becomes a caller’s salary, ad spend and email tooling. A sensible ceiling is about $400 of acquisition cost per $949 sale, which still pays back in the first month. Two smaller costs also sit off this table: payment-plan defaults, and free work owed under the 6-month guarantee.
Market
There are roughly 427,000 land listings for sale in the U.S. at any time, and Forma’s base case needs about 0.1% of a developable slice of them each month.
- Realtor.com counted 426,986 land listings for sale in Q1 2026, with inventory still well below pre-pandemic levels (Realtor.com land report).
- Zillow counted 300,242 empty lots of 5 acres or less for sale in June 2026, 17.4% of all for-sale listings (Zillow Research).
- NAR had 1,438,569 members in June 2026, the pool of possible buyers of the package (HousingWire).
Illustrative sizing, not a forecast. If 5% of listed land is developable and worth packaging, that is about 21,000 listings on the market at any time: roughly $20M at $949, or $40M at $1,899. The 5% share is an assumption to frame scale, and listing counts are a stock, not annual volume.
Adjacent markets: Drafted sold as software to civil engineering firms, and packages sold direct to land owners and developers. Neither is in the forecast.
Go to market
The product suits every channel, but only cold calling has been run, so the first use of capital is to test the rest against a CAC ceiling.
| Channel | Status | How it works for Forma |
|---|---|---|
| Cold calls | Proven; all 4 sales | Call agents about a specific land listing; script is well received |
| Cold email | Built, small volume | Free plan and render of the agent’s own listing, sourced by a listing scraper |
| Paid ads | Untested | Meta, Google and LinkedIn aimed at land and commercial agents |
| In person | Untested | Brokerage sales meetings, land agent groups, office drop-ins |
| Repeat and referral | Early | Agents and brokerages with several land listings at once |
The free concept is itself the ad: for under $1.50, every outreach can show the agent their own listing finished. The main leak today is after the call. Interested agents go cold before ordering, so the first fix is a follow-up system: a payment link sent during the call, a second touch within 24 hours, and proposals tracked in the CRM.
Strengths
Forma’s strengths are margin, its own software and a product agents understand in one sentence.
- Margin: about 97% contribution per sale; fixed costs under $100 a month.
- Own software: Drafted produces in minutes what engineering firms bill weeks for.
- Founder fit: civil engineering and land development background, and he builds the software himself.
- Instant clarity: 90%+ of agents reached by phone show interest.
- Pricing power: the main objection moved from “too cheap” to “maybe” as price rose from $200 to $949.
- Low-friction offer: no deposit, charged on delivery, 7-day turnaround, 6-month guarantee.
Holes and weaknesses
The biggest hole is proof: Forma has not yet sold at its current price and has one part-time person to sell it.
- Tiny revenue base. $1,230 from 4 clients, all at $200–$500. Zero sales at $949.
- One part-time founder. Runs Forma alongside a day job. No team, no backup.
- No measured CAC. Only cold calling has run, and it costs time, not cash.
- Leads go cold. Calls go well, but there is no system that closes after the call.
- No outcome proof. No tracked data yet that a package sells a listing faster.
- Thin infrastructure. Framer subdomain and a Gmail sender.
- Offer liabilities. Payment plans can default; the guarantee owes free work.
- Copyable. AI tools lower the bar for firms and new rivals to offer something similar.
- No E&O insurance yet against a claim that a concept or cost estimate misled a buyer.
Most of these are what outside capital would be spent fixing.
Risks and mitigations
The top risk is that $949 does not convert; the plan answers it with a 60-day test and a pull-back point.
| Risk | Likelihood | Response |
|---|---|---|
| $949 does not convert | Medium | 60-day test; if it misses, hold price and delay the April increase |
| Founder bandwidth | High | First hire is a caller; delivery is already automated |
| Paid channels cost too much | Medium | Small test budgets with a CAC ceiling of about $400 per sale |
| Payment-plan defaults | Medium | Card on file, automatic charges, plans capped at 6 payments |
| Copycats and AI tools | Medium | Speed, agent relationships, a developer network, Drafted sold as software |
| Error or liability claim | Low | “Not for construction” terms, a revision round, E&O insurance |
| Land market slows | Medium | Slow-selling listings raise the need; sell to engineers too |
Likelihood ratings are estimates for discussion.
Forecast
With capital, the base case reaches about $44k of monthly revenue by early 2028; without it, Forma grows to under $10k a month.
Lines flatten in year two because the model caps volume at one founder plus one caller and $2,500 a month of ads; growth beyond that needs more callers or a scaled paid channel.
| Scenario | Close per dial | Y1 sales | Y1 revenue | Y1 EBITDA | Y2 revenue |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bootstrap, no capital | 1.0% → 0.6% | 41 | $66k | $62k | $105k |
| Funded upside | 1.5% → 1.0% | 355 | $595k | $468k | $895k |
| Funded base | 1.0% → 0.6% | 220 | $362k | $243k | $522k |
| Funded downside | 0.5% → 0.3% | 108 | $178k | $65k | $252k |
| Stress: price stalls | 0.2% → 0.12% | 40 | $66k | −$44k | $90k |
Close per dial: before → after the April 2027 price move. EBITDA is before tax and includes the founder draw.
Assumptions.
- Volume: bootstrap 300 dials a month rising slowly; funded 1,200 founder dials plus a caller ramping from 800 to 1,500; ads $1,500–$2,500 a month at $150 per lead and 5% close; a small lift from cold email.
- Price: $949 and $1,000 website through April 2027, then $1,899 and $2,000. The doubling is assumed to cut close rates by about 40%.
- Mix: 15% of orders add the website; 40% pay monthly, with 10% of remaining plan payments defaulting.
- Costs: under $1.50 production, $5 per website, Stripe 2.9% + $0.30, about $100 a month fixed. Funded operating costs $9,600–$10,600 a month, including a $4,000 founder draw, a $3,000 caller base, tools and travel.
- The stress case keeps spending unchanged, which the pull-back point is designed to prevent. Reference point: about 3% of all dials closed at $200–$500.
The plan for capital
Delivery is automated; selling is the bottleneck. Outside capital goes to selling capacity, in a set order, with each stage measured before the next starts.
The bottleneck. Drafted turns a property description into a finished package with no manual work. Every sale still depends on one person’s calling hours, and interested agents go cold after the call.
| Stage | When | What the cash does | What it unlocks |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Close the leak | Immediately | Follow-up system, payment link sent on every call, real domain and email sending setup, E&O insurance | More of today’s 90%+ call interest turns into orders |
| 2. Add selling hours | Month 1–2 | Founder goes full-time; first dedicated caller on the proven script | Dials go from about 300 to 2,000+ a month |
| 3. Open channels | Month 2–6 | Paid ads to land agents, brokerage visits, cold email at volume, each held to a CAC ceiling | Sales that don’t depend on phone time; a measured cost per sale for each channel |
| 4. Scale what works | Month 6+ | More callers on the channel that converts, regional field sales, a Drafted pilot with engineering firms | Growth past one team, and a second product line |
The order is the point: fix conversion first, then add hours, then test channels, then put more behind the winner. The forecast’s funded scenarios follow this plan, and every stage is reported monthly from the CRM.
Milestones and reporting
The next six months are built to answer one question by day 60: does $949 close?
| When | Milestone |
|---|---|
| Nov 2026 | First sales at $949; payment link and follow-up on every call; real domain |
| Dec 2026 | Day-60 check on $949; founder full-time and first caller hired, if funded |
| Jan–Mar 2027 | CAC measured per channel; 20+ sales a month; days on market tracked per delivered listing |
| Apr 2027 | Price to $1,899 if the close rate holds |
Pull-back point. If $949 closes fewer than 1 in 300 dials after 60 days, cut spend, hold the hire, and re-test price and offer.
Monthly reporting from the CRM: dials, conversations, proposals sent, orders, revenue collected, plan defaults, and days on market per delivered listing.
Sources
- Forma CRM: contacts, prospects, clients and orders, pulled Oct 22, 2026
- Founder-reported: revenue collected, production cost, interest and close rates, price history
- Realtor.com land listings report, Apr 2026
- Zillow Research, empty lots for sale, Jul 2026
- HousingWire, NAR 2026 Member Profile
- Forma Designs website for current pricing and terms