We ante up first.
Ante builds the AI growth engine that fills your pipeline and pays for the ad spend. At our cost, at our risk, no retainer. We're paid a small share of the new revenue it produces, or a stake in the company.
We take on a handful of companies a year and turn most down. The math has to work for both sides.
Run your numbers.
Three sliders, no email. The share is illustrative and every assumption is on the page, because a bet you can't check isn't one you should take.
Be honest here. The proof sprint measures this before anyone signs anything.
The engine's floor is 20 qualified meetings a quarter. Most partners see more once it's tuned to their market.
Same year, with a retainer agency
An $8,000 monthly retainer plus $5,000 a month of ad spend you fund. Owed whether or not a single deal closed, and gone if it didn't work.
Same year, with Ante
Our share exists only after the revenue does. If the engine doesn't produce, you've paid nothing and we've eaten the build and the media.
Illustrative, not a quote. Deals per year = meetings × 12 × close rate. Share shown at 9% of net-new revenue the engine can be traced to in your CRM; real terms are set per deal and run on a defined term, not forever. The retainer comparison uses typical mid-market agency pricing and isn't a quote from anyone in particular.
Two deals. Only one of them is a bet.
You pay every month.
You hire an agency and the invoice arrives whether the pipeline shows up or not. They're paid for effort: meetings booked, hours logged, reports sent. The outcome is your problem.
- Who carries the riskYou
- What they're paid forEffort
- If it doesn't workYou paid anyway
We're paid when you grow.
We fund the build and the media and carry the risk. We don't earn a dollar until new revenue or enterprise value shows up, and then we share in it. Our only incentive is your growth.
- Who carries the riskWe do
- What we're paid forOutcomes
- If it doesn't workYou paid $0
An agency is paid for effort. We're paid for outcomes, because we own a piece of them.
Two ways to pay us. Neither is a retainer.
A slice of the new revenue we source.
You pay nothing up front. Once the engine is producing, we take a share of the net-new revenue it can be traced to, closed-loop, end-to-end in your CRM. We only get paid on what we can prove.
- We put inThe full growth engine, build cost, and ad spend, at our expense.
- We takeA single-digit share of attributable net-new revenue, on a defined term.
- Best forEstablished firms with a real sales team and a clean CRM. Cash stays in the business.
A stake instead of a cut.
Trade the revenue share for points of equity. We join the cap table as a growth partner and we're paid the day you are, at the exit. Highest upside for you up front, fully aligned for the long run.
- We put inThe same engine, plus operator time. Real sweat equity.
- We takeA negotiated stake. Vests as we deliver, not on day one.
- Best forVenture-track companies where pipeline is the real bottleneck and cash is precious.
What counts as new revenue, and the two clauses that protect the bet
Six channels. One engine. Run at our expense.
The same system other firms charge six figures to install. We put it in, fund the media, and bet on what it produces.
The AI SDR engine
Prospects identified, researched, and approached across email and LinkedIn, then qualified meetings booked straight onto your calendar, around the clock. The pipeline most teams can't hire fast enough to build.
Paid acquisition
Google Search and paid social, with strategy, creative, and management in-house. Calibrated to your ICP and tracked against qualified-lead cost, never vanity metrics.
We fund the ad spend
Visitor identification
We unmask the companies already on your site and route the ready-to-buy ones into the engine, so the warm demand you already earned never leaks away unworked.
AI search authority
Become the company ChatGPT and Perplexity name when buyers ask. Buyers ask AI before they ask Google; we make you the cited answer, not the one it forgets.
Workflow automation
The back-office hours your closers shouldn't be spending, on data entry, routing, and follow-up, reclaimed and handed back to the people who move revenue.
Retargeting and the intelligence loop
Accounts that lean in get surrounded, and every channel feeds one report that tells the system what to change next. Each pass sharpens the last instead of resetting.
We can afford to give it away, ad budget included, because AI collapsed the cost of building it. So we bet on the outcome instead.See what's under the hood
We pick companies the way an investor would.
Because we're taking the same risk. A partnership only works when the upside is real, so we're honest about who this is for.
A product that already sells
We multiply demand. We don't manufacture product-market fit. The product has to work before we pour fuel on it.
A team that closes
We fill the calendar. Someone on your side has to win the meeting. A perfect pipeline into a broken sales motion helps no one.
Healthy margins
A share of unprofitable revenue is worth nothing to either of us. The unit economics have to leave room for both sides to win.
Room to run
Enough market that scaling pipeline actually moves the number. We're built for companies with a ceiling worth chasing.
We earn the stake before we take it.
The proof sprint
Before anyone signs an upside deal, we prove two things: the engine produces, and your team converts what it produces. Short, low-risk, eyes open on both sides.
We set the terms
Passed the sprint? Pick your currency, revenue share or equity, and we paper a clean, plain-English deal. No fine print designed to trap you.
We scale and share
We run the engine at our expense and grow into the upside alongside you. We win when you win. Never a dollar before.
The team behind Ante has built and scaled companies through fourteen Inc. 5000 finishes, including DevelopIntelligence, which hit 30% annualized growth for four straight years and was eventually acquired.
That track record isn't a credential. It's the bet. It's the same playbook we put our own money behind when we choose to back you.
Figures reflect the founding team's track record across prior ventures.
Field notes on growth you can bet on.
The Q4 fork: cut the agency, or cut the risk?
Every founder hits the same three options in October. Two of them are usually wrong, and the one everyone is tempted by is the most expensive.
October 7, 2026 · 6 min The modelSix terms that tell you whether a performance deal is real
Pay-for-performance is having a moment, and most of the offers are retainers wearing a costume. Here's how to tell, with our own answers on the record.
September 30, 2026 · 7 min The engineThe ante is the ad budget
Anyone can say they share your risk. Funding the media is the part that costs real money, and it changes which channels we're willing to run.
September 23, 2026 · 5 minTell us what you're building. We'll tell you if we'd bet on it.
We read every application and partner with a few. If the math works for both sides, you'll hear from us within a week. Either way, you get a straight answer.