Foragers.io Book your 30 minutes

Optimal foraging for startups, distributed systems, privacy and cryptographic organisations

Complex technology turned into a business model.

Technical and market work from one team. We read your architecture, pick the segment worth entering, and build the funnel that feeds it. You pay per milestone, not per hour.

Book your 30 minute introduction See the model first

  • 3 at a time

    At most three engagements run at once, so yours gets priority

  • Both halves

    Solution architecture and go to market from one team

  • 25+ years

    Combined experience in privacy, cryptography and decentralized systems

  • No hype

    No airdrops, no KOL buys, no engagement farming

01 / Selected work

Anonymized, because most of it is not ours to publish

Teams working on anonymity systems rarely want their name on a case study. Names and references come on request, once we are writing a scope.

Case studies

All case studies

  • Go to market / 4 min read

    A working protocol that looked inactive

    2 paid integrations requested by new clients

    Interviews, two field campaigns, a treasury plan and a governance proposal for a post-quantum mix network.

More projects

2 paid integrations requested by new clients of a post-quantum mix network, after two field campaigns and business development.

  • Post-quantum
  • Campaign
  • BD
Context
A cryptography team running a working post-quantum mix network with years of research behind it. Deep technology, a still-present community, almost no market surface, and a public story that left the protocol looking inactive.
Missing
A field test of adoption, a treasury plan that did not depend on selling into weakness, and proof that business work produced revenue rather than just spending the treasury.
Milestones
  1. Stakeholder, investor and user research across foundation, council, node runners and early backers
  2. Treasury and token analysis, with a liquidity plan sized to cover operating costs without forced selling
  3. Revenue designs around the API surface, plus brand and website direction
  4. Two field campaigns during a major ecosystem week: an in-person hackathon and a cryptographic quest
  5. Business development that opened paid integration conversations
Counsel
A token was involved, so the rule applies: we are not a law firm and we do not write communications that are securities promotions. We connect you with lawyers who do that work, and when the scope needs it, we put a credible lawyer on the team under the same milestone terms.

Read the case study

All business units of an encrypted peer to peer organization, reached by the campaign we initiated, led and maintained.

  • P2P
  • Launch
  • Campaign
Context
A privacy-first peer to peer stack launching a new umbrella of products into a crowded ecosystem.
Missing
Writing that explained the system to audiences beyond its engineers.
Milestones
  1. Technical writing across the core product surfaces
  2. Launch event organized
  3. A campaign initiated, led and maintained, which scaled to all business units

EUR 30,000+ raised for a privacy research collective, plus an audit service that outlived its grant.

  • Ecosystem data
  • Audit design
  • Fundraising
Context
An open collective mapping the privacy landscape, run largely by volunteer contributors.
Missing
Genuine data and credibility, but no product built on either and no funding line for the contributors.
Milestones
  1. Ecosystem explorer built, along with the scoring method underneath it
  2. Repeatable privacy audit service designed on top of that method
  3. Fundraising and the contributor process run to pay for both

EUR 20,000+ of revenue in four months for a privacy first property platform, from a standing start.

  • Zero to one
  • MVP
  • Revenue
Context
A regulated market where every incumbent treats personal data as inventory.
Missing
Everything. This one was a founding rather than an engagement.
Milestones
  1. Privacy and security workflows designed before the product was built
  2. MVP shipped to the narrowest segment that would pay for it
  3. Front end and funnel built around the first paying cohort
Consistently delivered high quality work during our time spent working together on various projects, as well as when winning prizes in a multitude of hackathons during which the team's skillset was invaluable in securing all of our team's wins.
E. N., Senior Smart Contract Engineer
Just amazing, clear and great event.
R. G., attendee at a protocol launch event we ran

Ask for a reference

02 / Services

Two halves of the same job

The positioning has to survive the architecture, and the architecture has to be explainable to whoever signs. We do both, so each is checked against the other.

Technical

Architecture and technical strategy

For teams whose hardest constraints are cryptographic, distributed or regulatory

  • Technology and architecture review
  • Developer docs stress test
  • Feature work from client discovery
  • Product backlog prioritisation
  • Technical and business incentive optimisation
  • Privacy and trust positioning review
  • Specifications: protocol, product, bounty, grant and integration

Cadence One to four weeks per milestone

Pricing Scope and fee fixed before anything starts

Not A formal cryptographic or smart contract audit. We will say so and point you at someone who does that work.

Market

Product market fit and demand

For teams with real technology and no repeatable way to put it in front of a buyer

  • PMF discovery: segment mapping, interviews, and a ranked list of patches worth entering
  • Positioning and message testing against the segments that survived the ranking
  • Technical narrative
  • Funnel design from first touch to signed integration
  • Event and program design
  • Launch execution alongside your team

Cadence Two to six weeks per milestone

Pricing Scope and fee fixed before anything starts

Not A team shopping a KOL package, or a retainer against vague strategy.

Flagship engagement

The product market fit rescue

For teams three years in who still cannot name the buyer in one sentence

  1. Patch survey

    Interview candidate segments and rank them by cost of entry.

  2. Entry test

    One segment, one narrative, one funnel. Demand appears or it does not.

  3. Scale or leave

    Build the motion and hand it over, or test the next candidate.

Commitment Stage by stage. Stop after any stage and keep the work.

Not Pre-architecture vapor. The machine has to exist before we price a market for it.

03 / How engagements run

Milestones, not hours

We agree what done looks like, cut it into pieces, and you pay against delivery. Two partners scope every engagement and bring in specialists from a bench when the work needs them.

  1. Slice it

    Milestones with written acceptance criteria, each small enough to stop after without stranding the work.

  2. Fix the price

    Scope and fee agreed before anything starts. Hourly billing pays an agency to stay in a patch that stopped producing. We are paid for the decision.

  3. Decide

    Continue, re-scope, or leave. You keep every artifact, and if the numbers say leave, we will say it first.

The first paid milestone

The one week diagnostic

It starts after the introduction, if that conversation shows a problem we can work on. The week produces an initial plan that identifies what is actually blocking you and sets out the milestones that get you past it.

Interviews

Your team first, then the people whose decisions matter: users, integrators, partners or buyers.

Research

Everything you can share: architecture, docs, repo, data, past campaigns. Then the market around it, and what entering each segment would cost.

Initial plan

A written report: what is actually blocking you, the segments worth testing, and a first set of milestones with acceptance criteria and a price.

Price From EUR 4,500. The final fee reflects the technical complexity of your system and the depth of documentation and access you can provide.

Credit If you continue, the full diagnostic fee is credited against your first milestone.

Your exit You can stop after the week. The plan, report and analysis are yours to keep and use.

Outside it Media, events and travel are scoped and priced separately.

04 / The principle

Optimal foraging theory, applied to startups

A model from behavioral ecology describes the go to market problem of a deep technology company better than any funnel diagram does.

The animal that survives is not the one that finds the richest patch. It is the one that knows when a patch has stopped paying, and moves. Charnov's marginal value theorem gives the rule: leave when the rate of return falls to the average of the whole environment, including the cost of reaching the next patch.

Most deep technology teams never price that search, so they stay in one segment for three years. The rule also runs the other way: the harder the next patch is to find, the longer it is rational to stay.

An hourly agency is paid for residence time. We are paid per milestone, so we are paid to tell you when to move. More on optimal foraging theory.

This is your last three years. Search cost is how long it takes to get a real conversation in a new segment.

medium

Research, intros and dead ends before the next segment produces anything.

medium

A shallow segment pays at once and flattens. A deep one keeps paying for longer.

Move the controls and watch the moment to leave move with them.
  • Validated progress in the segment
  • Best achievable rate
  • Entering the segment

05 / The difference

Work that converts, not work that trends

When the product is a mixnet, an encrypted transport or a proving system, a standard agency playbook is the problem. We write the strategy from your architecture.

What we do not sell

  • Airdrops and points farming
  • KOL packages and paid threads
  • Engagement farming
  • Claims the code does not support
  • Reach dashboards with no line to a signed integration

What milestones are accepted against

  • Qualified conversations, logged with what was said
  • Design partners who commit engineering time
  • Integration commitments, dated, with blockers named
  • Retention after the incentive ends
  • Cost per validated learning

06 / Contact

Start with the problem, not the package

Tell us what is actually going wrong. If we are the wrong people for the job, we will say so in the first reply and point you at someone better.

Fastest: Signal. Message us and we will set up the introduction. Or pick the closest fit on the right and your email app opens a draft you can edit.

Message us on Signal
Signal
m_f.27
Email
mf@foragers.io
Elsewhere
Portfolio: Michiel (business partner) Evi (technical partner)

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