The ship
Every fleet needs a small, fast ship that goes where the big ones can't. Not consultants, not headcount: a two-man unit — Šarūnas inside, with nine years of context and direct access; Linas outside, with fresh eyes, zero political baggage, and a private AI research stack. Self-contained, own tools, one mandate: find asymmetry — the places where one unit of input, an hour or a euro, returns a multiple instead of a percent.
Where we hunt
Three concentric rings. We don't know yet which holds the asymmetry — we know precisely where we're looking, and every find comes back as a proposal with a decision gate. A named decision owner makes the call, every time.
The current company
MN's team, products, and processes: the economic perimeter, where margin leaks, and the one or two places a small move creates the biggest change.
The team, aimed outward
Opportunities outside the current products that MN's existing team, infrastructure, and know-how could be pointed at — in part, at first. New lines on existing rails.
Capital & network
Asymmetric opportunities that never enter the MN team — deployed through its capital and, where useful, its network. Each arrives as a standalone proposal with its own gate; nothing is pre-authorized.
What we commit to
The honest answer to "what exactly will Kairos deliver?" is: we don't know yet. Real boots-on-the-ground research will surface things none of us can see from here; fixed targets named today would be fiction dressed as rigor. What we commit to instead is the machinery that makes not-knowing safe to fund:
- A written update every Monday. Five fixed lines: decisions made · numbers moved · next 7 days · blockers and who unblocks them · spend. No meeting attached.
- Every idea becomes a killable hypothesis, tested at the cheapest possible price and kept or killed on evidence. The initial sweep behind this proposal already killed twelve of our own favorite ideas — the graveyard is open. That discipline is the product.
- A monthly decision gate. One page, in writing: what was found, what it argues for. Then the named decision owner chooses: continue or stop. No open cheque, ever.
Returns, framed honestly
We hunt defensible asymmetries: bounded bets whose credible upside materially exceeds their cost, each with a clear hypothesis and a cheap way to be proven wrong early. Bigger upside may exist — the first pass maps the conditions — but it is a possibility, never a promise. The first weeks are diagnostic by design: understand the foundation before betting on it. Plug the leaks first, then soar.
What we need
Two kinds of access, both from day one:
1 · The money floor. A named owner of the numbers who answers within 48 hours: revenue by product line, costs per line, the client list, pricing by geography, burn. Necessary — but not sufficient.
2 · Listening access. Most of what Mysterium knows is written down nowhere — it lives in the team. Slack presence and informal coffee conversations, opt-in, zero meetings added. Listening, not auditing: nobody's sprint gets disturbed.
Terms
| Rate | €50 per hour, per team member, pre‑tax — Šarūnas + Linas. Invoiced monthly for hours worked, with payment dates fixed in the calendar. |
| Capacity | Up to 200 combined hours per month across both team members. A different cap can be suggested or approved by Robertas. |
| Runway & gate | Proposed: a three-month starting commitment. Still open: how it coexists with the monthly continue/stop gate. The signed agreement must define committed spend, cancellation, and payment mechanics. |
| Tools | Our own AI stack, at our own cost — included in the hourly rate. Mysterium never sees a tooling invoice. |
| Experiments | ~€300/month traffic valve (≈€10/day) — enough to read first signals from live tests, and we say so plainly: it reads signals, it doesn't prove conversions. Anything bigger is proposed case-by-case with a budget and the expected signal, and runs only if Mysterium approves and funds it. |
| Start | When the services agreement names the contracting entity, authorized signer, and payment dates. |
Plumbing
Three boring sentences that keep everything clean. The agreement names the contracting entity and its authorized signer — so the invoice has an address. Payment dates are fixed in the calendar, unaffected by anything else. Neither side uses the other's name publicly without written approval — in both directions, for both our sakes.
And one page at kickoff with four names on it: executive sponsor · data owner · implementer · budget owner. Data requests have named owners and a 48-hour response line; when blocked, the work clock pauses. That is all the process there is.
The long game
Ordinary work stays hourly. Before the hunt, the parties sign a Mammoth Framework: how a material opportunity is registered, owned, measured, and protected. Before any material build, launch, outreach, transfer, or spend, they sign a one-page Opportunity Schedule for that opportunity. No signed schedule, no material pursuit. Kairos's internal allocation is agreed separately between Šarūnas and Linas. Base fees never trade away for speculative upside.
The initial research behind this proposal — everything we found, everything we killed so far, and the limits on the optimism — is open in the Kairos research map.
Linas Matulis
