What Simma is
Vision. Simma is one platform to run a small business — its website, email, customers, bookings, products and money, all Simma's own — with AI agents that help the owner run it. Other "AI operating systems" connect to a business's rented tools; Simma owns the tools, so its agents work on one permanent record of the business.
Where it stands today
Measured, status.html re-measure, 2026-09-24.
- In production since 2026-09-03; built solo by the founder (7,775 commits since January 2025).
- 0 paying customers and £0 revenue — pre-launch by design. The raise funds the first customers.
- Our design partner is a UK dance school. Its website, timetable and bookings were built in Simma, and it shapes what we build next.
- The full, dated list of what works and what doesn't is on the status page.
The company
Measured. Simma Labs Limited, United Kingdom. Founder: Paul O'Connor.
The ask
Plan. £750k pre-seed on a SeedLegals SeedFAST, £4m cap (pre-money), £250k SEIS (lifetime cap) then £500k EIS. The seed raise starts at month 12; runway runs to month 18 to cover it.
Four layers, one record
Vision.
- See it — six lenses across the whole business: Home (the business feed), Compass, Inbox, Calendar, Insight, Cashflow.
- Run it — thirteen areas: Marketing, Website, Sales, Customers, Support · Services, Products, Work, Money · Library, Team, My Business, Settings.
- Meet it — where customers and staff touch the business: the website, the customer portal, Simmi (the business's own AI for its customers), Simma Station (in-person).
- Found — Google Business Profile, SEO and AI search, kept up to date from the same record.
The agents
Vision. Named agents help the owner — Maya (marketing), Sam (sales), Charlie (customers), Fiona (finance), Oli (operations), coordinated by Sage, the chief of staff. They draft; the owner approves. Nothing reaches a customer or moves money without a person's yes. Measured. Agent identities, permitted tools, per-step attribution and an audit log are built; the named business agents are the next build.
The Cascade
Measured. One platform, a version for every business: eight layers (platform, industry, specialism, niche, franchise, country, business, person) decide features, menus, words, emails and currency. 22 industries, 181 specialisms, 364 niches and 23 countries are mapped; 180+ email templates are published across the layers.
Simma builds Simma
Measured. Simma's own development runs through Simma's task system: 2,223 work items, 568 commits attached to 74 items, 15 coding-agent claims with 12 of 15 check-ins verified inside their lane.
Honest position
Measured, 2026-09-25.
- Paying customers: 0. Revenue: £0. Design partner: a UK dance school (not named without its permission) whose website, timetable and bookings were built in Simma.
- Production last released 2026-09-03; 1,597 commits of finished work await the next release.
- Customer websites on simmasite.com are not reachable today — fixed in code on 2026-09-25, waiting on DNS and deployment steps.
- Known gaps are named on the status page, including: Simma Pay's plan prices not yet applied on every payment path; the Google Business Profile connection; customer-portal booking changes.
What is not claimed
No measured customer economics are given: acquisition cost, lifetime value, churn and retention can't be measured without customers. The margin and churn figures in the financial model are assumptions, labelled as plan.
Sizing
Estimate, 2026-09-24. Priced at what a business would spend with Simma (subscription plus Simma Pay), not total software spend.
- TAM ~£392bn a year — every business worldwide, all sizes, priced to local incomes. £114.4bn of it in the UK and US.
- SAM £62.3bn a year — UK+US service businesses under 250 staff (19m businesses).
- Beachhead £43.7bn a year — service businesses with up to 9 staff, UK and US (17.9m businesses).
- First customers £6.1bn a year — Instruction, fitness & personal services (UK 85/93/96; US NAICS 61/713/812).
Obtainable
Plan. 50,000 customers by the end of year 5 (47,000 micro, 2,500 small, 498 medium, 2 enterprise) — £116.5m revenue in year 5, £172.9m exit ARR, 0.28% of SAM. Built bottom-up from the customer ramp, not as a share of SAM.
Sources
UK Business Population Estimates 2025; US Census NES/SUSB 2022; Eurostat 2023; World Bank 2025 income groups; SME Finance Forum / Statista. Method: UK+US spend per head by size band x (group GNI per head / $83,022) x population; World Bank 2025.
Subscription
Plan. Priced per business, per month. Extra users £5 a month.
- Free — £0 a month · 1 user · up to 25 customers
- Lite — £49 a month · 2 users · up to 100 customers
- Starter — £99 a month · 5 users · up to 500 customers
- Business — £199 a month · 10 users · up to 5,000 customers
- Pro — £299 a month · 25 users · up to 25,000 customers
- Scale — £499 a month · 50 users · up to 250,000 customers
Simma Pay
Plan. Every payment a business takes runs through Simma Pay, built on Stripe Connect. The Free plan gives away the whole operating system and earns only on payments; paid plans cost a subscription and take less per payment. Simma's rate falls with the plan: 5% + 50p (Free) down to 2.5% + 25p (Scale); the underlying processor cost is 1.75% + 20p. In the model, Simma Pay is 61.3% of year-5 revenue. The rates will be tested with the first studios before they are fixed. Measured. The priced rates are the single source of Simma's fee (founder decision, 2026-09-25); applying them on every payment path is in progress — see the status page.
Franchises
Plan. Custom contract.
Five-year model
Plan — draft of 25 September 2026 — £750k pre-seed; hiring plan of 2026-09-25 (sales/CS month 2, engineer month 4, sales/CS month 6); seed raise from month 12. As of 2026-09-25.
- Year 1 — revenue £58k (subscriptions £27k, Simma Pay £31k) · EBITDA −£367k · 50 customers at year end · 4 people
- Year 2 — revenue £1.2m (subscriptions £569k, Simma Pay £642k) · EBITDA −£1.4m · 1,000 customers at year end · 20 people
- Year 3 — revenue £9.4m (subscriptions £4m, Simma Pay £5.3m) · EBITDA −£3.1m · 6,000 customers at year end · 65 people
- Year 4 — revenue £38.2m (subscriptions £15.8m, Simma Pay £22.4m) · EBITDA £996k · 20,000 customers at year end · 152 people
- Year 5 — revenue £116.5m (subscriptions £45m, Simma Pay £71.5m) · EBITDA £24.8m · 50,000 customers at year end · 287 people
EBITDA break-even in year 4. Gross margin rises from 74.8% in year 2 to 85.8% in year 5.
Rounds
- Pre-seed — £750k, now (SeedFAST, £4m cap)
- Seed — £3m, raise from month 12, close by month 18
- Series A — £10m, start of year 3
The workbook, with live formulas, is available on request.
Terms
Plan.
- £750k pre-seed — SeedLegals SeedFAST (UK advance subscription agreement).
- £4m valuation cap, pre-money — about 15.8% for investors at the cap.
- 6-month long-stop. £250k SEIS (lifetime cap) then £500k EIS.
- SEIS/EIS: advance assurance applied for before first close, and before anything is signed.
Use of funds (18 months)
Plan. People 64.5% · marketing 18.5% · product and infrastructure 7.1% · legal, admin and other 9.9%. £720k spent and £137k of revenue over 18 months, leaving about £167k at month 18. Hires: the founder full-time from month 1; a sales and customer-success hire from month 2; an engineer from month 4; a second sales and customer-success hire from month 6; a marketing agency from month 3. The seed raise starts at month 12, with about £328k still in the bank; a raise takes a few months.
Milestones
Plan (draft).
- Before first close — IP assigned to Simma Labs Limited; SEIS/EIS advance assurance applied for
- Months 0-3 — Founder full-time from first close; First sales & customer-success hire (month 2); First studios onboarded by hand
- Months 3-6 — Engineer joins (month 4); First paying studios; payments live through Simma Pay; Second sales & customer-success hire (month 6)
- Months 6-12 — 50 paying customers; Sage live behind the approval gate; Start raising the seed round (month 12)
- Months 12-18 — Close the seed round; Evidence of what studios pay for and keep using; First franchise conversation
Paying customers: 10 by month 6, 50 by month 12, 140 by month 18.
Founder
Measured. Paul O'Connor — paul@simma.ai · https://www.linkedin.com/in/o-c/
- Head of Product, Event Platforms, Informa plc (2024-01–now): 50-person team, three squads; £3m+ budget; 2,000+ live sites; 386-site migration onto one platform
- Senior Product Manager, Event Platforms, Informa plc (2021-11–2023-12)
- Senior Product Manager, Vacancy Filler (now HireRoad) (2021-05–2021-11)
- Founder, Workwear City (2020–2021): 22,000+ SKUs; sold via trade sale 2021
- Managing Director, Rail Media (2017–2021): 40-person company; revenue doubled
- Product Director, Rail Media (2012–2017): built Datlyn (CRM, subscriptions, events, sales in one system); RailwayPeople.com to 1m+ monthly users and £100k+ monthly SaaS revenue
- Designer to Product Manager, Rail Media (2002–2012): launched RailwayPeople.com; co-designed iStudio Publisher ($100k/month in sales)
The people who'd join
Plan. Eight people the founder has worked with for years, who know Simma and want to join as the plan makes room (initials until they consent to be named): VT (CTO), PH (Head of Sales), DI (Customer Success), LO (Head of Marketing), JG (Product), MS (Operations), MS (Creative), ST (Content and media). First hires: sales, customer success and engineering.
From Series A
Vision. The company organises around four outcomes — Build, Acquire, Retain, Scale — each with one owner, a small team and agents alongside.
Who first
Plan. One-person service businesses: Pilates instructors, Dance teachers, Hairdressers, Driving instructors, Dog groomers, Florists. Later: franchises and multi-location groups.
Customer ramp by channel
Plan (draft).
- Year 1 — 50 paying customers: 50 direct and self-serve
- Year 2 — 1,000 paying customers: 600 direct and self-serve, 150 referral, 200 partners, 50 franchise and multi-location
- Year 3 — 6,000 paying customers: 2,700 direct and self-serve, 1,100 referral, 1,500 partners, 700 franchise and multi-location
- Year 4 — 20,000 paying customers: 7,500 direct and self-serve, 4,500 referral, 5,000 partners, 3,000 franchise and multi-location
- Year 5 — 50,000 paying customers: 17,500 direct and self-serve, 12,500 referral, 12,500 partners, 7,500 franchise and multi-location
UK-only in years 1–2, then 35% outside the UK by year 5.
Channels
Direct and self-serve (the product sells itself to a one-person business), product-led referral (every Simma site, portal and receipt carries it), partners (industry bodies, franchisors, accountants), and franchise and multi-location groups.
Plan — the founder's view of what could go wrong, and what's being done.
- No customers yet. The raise funds the first 50; month-6 target 10 paying studios, chosen by hand.
- Solo founder today. A bench of eight known people; three hires in the first 18 months.
- Founder employment and IP. The founder is employed full-time; IP is assigned to Simma Labs Limited before first close, and the employment position confirmed with a lawyer.
- Code ahead of production. 1,597 commits await release; a weekly release cadence resumes with funding.
- Payments revenue depends on fees being applied everywhere. Being fixed now (status page).
- "AI operating systems" from larger companies. They connect to rented tools; Simma owns the record and the public faces.
- Payments and data regulation. Stripe Connect carries card data (Simma never touches it); KYC is audited; GDPR footers by country.
Why £750k if about £167k is left at month 18? The seed raise starts at month 12, and raising takes a few months. Runway to month 18, with £167k still left, means the seed is a choice rather than a deadline.
How much of the round pays the founder? A market salary for a Head of Product, set out line by line in the private model. No individual salaries are published.
Why does revenue jump so much from year 1 to year 2? Year 1 is about proving the first 50 customers by hand; the seed round (raised from month 12) funds the channels. Customers go from 50 to 1,000, and Simma Pay volume follows them.
How do Simma Pay's rates compare with Square or SumUp? They're higher on the Free plan by design. On Free, the whole operating system costs nothing: website, bookings, customers, invoicing and payments. Simma earns only when the business gets paid, at 5% + 50p (Free): about 7% on a £25 class. Every paid plan lowers the rate, down to 2.5% + 25p (Scale), so a growing business moves to a plan. Processor cost is 1.75% + 20p. The honest answer on the exact rates: they'll be tested with the first studios.
How will 50,000 customers be won? Four channels: direct and self-serve, referral from every Simma site and receipt, partners, and franchise groups — see Go to market.
Why a SeedFAST and not a SAFE? A UK advance subscription agreement keeps SEIS/EIS relief available to UK investors; a US SAFE would not qualify.
What's live today? The status page answers this, dated and line by line. It is re-measured before each conversation.
When do the eight people join? In step with the plan: sales, customer success and engineering first; the rest as the company grows.
Shared privately with investors who are engaging:
- The financial model — the five-year workbook and the monthly 18-month budget, with live formulas.
- Cap table — the founder holds 100% today.
- IP readiness — what is being assigned to the company, and how.
- The full evidence ledger — a file, query or probe behind every line of the status page.
- The BARS operating model — how the company scales from Series A.
- Architecture notes and decision records.
Ask Paul: paul@simma.ai
