Hugo van de Haar

Three weeks on who buys what you build, and how you say so.

This is commercial positioning, not brand identity. The question is who pays, and for which decision. What they need to believe before they will is the second question, and most of the work. The site and the profiles are where the answer ends up, and they are the easy part.

Demand-Side Teardown

The place to start: for any space or deep-tech team that wants an outside read before committing to anything

A five-page memo and a call: a read of your whole commercial presence, not just the website, set against my audit of 105 European space company websites and against your own market. The three fixes that matter, and the order to do them in. About ninety minutes of your time, one week turnaround.

It comes off the sprint price in full. Book a sprint within 30 days and the sprint costs €6,500 in total, so the read has cost you nothing. If you decide not to, you keep the memo and we are done.

Start here
€1,500fixed · excl. VAT · one week · comes off the sprint price in full
Book a teardown See a sample teardown Score your own site (free) See the benchmark dataset

Commercial Presence Sprint

For space and deep-tech companies, seed to Series A, including ESA BIC incubatees

The aim: three weeks to move from technically impressive but commercially invisible, to a positioning your next customer or investor can follow without a briefing.

  • Week 1, positioning. Founder interviews and a demand-side read of your market, worked into a messaging hierarchy
  • Week 2, presence. The positioning applied where buyers look: new website copy, rewritten executive profiles, and a one-pager for BD and investors
  • Week 3, transfer. The system documented and handed over; your team runs it without an agency
  • Your time: two interviews and one handover call, about four hours total
  • The week-one clause: week one is invoiced separately at €1,500. If you are not convinced when it ends, we stop there and that is all you pay
Fixed price
€6,500pre-seed and seed · €12,500 post-Series A · excl. VAT · two sprints a quarter
Book a scoping call

Week one is €1,500 of that, invoiced on its own. If the positioning does not convince you when week one ends, we stop and that is all you pay.

Fractional Narrative Lead

For founders whose story has to stay credible to investors, primes and agencies as the market moves, but who are not ready to hire for it

Procurement windows, defence budgets and funding rounds move through the year. This keeps your positioning in step, so the right people already know how you think before you walk in. It is the part of a marketing hire you actually need at this stage, without the seat.

  • Monthly market briefing on your segment: what moved, what it means for your story
  • One substantive analysis per month under your name, researched and drafted with you
  • Positioning upkeep ahead of raises, trade shows and procurement windows
  • On call for the messaging decisions that come up in between
Two at a time
€3,000 / mothree-month minimum · excl. VAT
Check availability

A marketing manager in the Netherlands costs €100,000 to €140,000 a year once employer costs are counted. This is a fraction of a seat, for the part you need now.

What you are left holding

Everything below is yours, in editable form, with the reasoning written down so a new hire can pick it up.

The thinkingweek one A demand-side read of your segment: which organisation actually signs, and which decision your technology sits inside. Then an ICP, a messaging hierarchy, and one sentence that survives being repeated by someone who was not in the room.
The surfacesweek two Website copy for the pages that carry the argument. Executive profiles rewritten, which for an early company often moves before the site does. The company page. A one-pager that gets forwarded inside a fund or a customer when you are not there.
The systemweek three A three-month content calendar, drafts in the founder's own voice, and the templates and working instructions to keep going. One handover call. The point is that you do not need me afterwards.

What €6,500 is, in your numbers

0.2%of a €3m seed round
~3 daysof runway at a typical seed burn rate
~5 weeksof one in-house marketing hire, all-in
4 hoursof your own time, across three weeks

Seed burn and round sizes are sector benchmarks, not your figures. The in-house comparison uses €100,000 to €140,000 all-in for a marketing manager in the Netherlands.

How this pricing compares to the market
OptionTypical costFits when
Deep-tech marketing agency€13,000 to €55,000 / monthSeries B+, marketing lead in place
B2B tech PR firm (Europe)€4,500 to €17,000 / monthRecurring news flow
Fractional CMO (Europe)€4,500 to €14,000 / monthYou need someone running marketing
Marketing manager, in-house (NL)€100,000 to €140,000 / year all-inThe volume justifies a seat
Positioning specialist (Fletch PMM)from €8,700 / 2-week sprint, no execution, no sector researchEarly-stage SaaS, positioning only
Commercial Presence Sprint€6,500 fixed, execution and handover includedPre-seed to Series A, first commercial push

From published pricing pages and salary data, checked July 2026, converted to euros at the rates of that month. Fletch PMM publishes $10,000, $20,000 and $30,000 tiers by company size; the figure above is their entry tier.

On the price point: the best-known positioning specialist charges from $10,000 for two weeks, and says plainly in their own FAQ that they will not learn your industry or talk to your customers. This sprint includes the sector research, the build and the handover, and still sits below that line, because the scope is fixed and there is no agency overhead. The week-one clause carries the risk that is left.

Experience, AI and independence, addressed directly

Why work with someone early in their career? You're buying a defined deliverable, not years. Fixed scope, visible outcome in three weeks, and the published research shows how I think before you spend anything.

Where does AI fit? I use it extensively for research and drafting. What you are paying for is sector judgement: who buys, and what they need to believe before they do.

Independence. Public sources only in the research, client work stays confidential, and I don't advise companies while reporting on them to their investors.

ESA BIC companies, plainly: your €60,000 incentive almost certainly cannot pay for this. The published terms restrict it to IPR and product development, with only a small share allowed for marketing, and several centres also require the money to be spent in their own country. So budget this from your raise, not from the incentive. I'd rather say that now than have your incubation manager say it for me. The teardown is the sensible size to start at, and I'll provide whatever documentation your centre asks for.

I take two sprints a quarter, because the work needs the weeks.

If a full sprint is more than you need yet, start with a teardown. It comes off the sprint price in full, so if you go on to book, the read has cost you nothing.

Book a scoping call Book a teardown Fixed prices, and a week-one clause that caps your risk at €1,500.