Hyrax · GTM · September 2, 2026
Rationale behind the vendor-level workbook. Structured to the Iru marketing budget template, Feb 2027 through Jan 2028.
Ask $1,500,000 for FY28, with a defined $1,005,000 reduced case. The category split matches Iru's own FY27 spending pattern to within half a point, so the shape of the budget needs no defending. The only argument is the total, and the total is a share-of-marketing decision rather than a benchmark exercise.
~/Desktop/hyrax/budget-model-2026-09/Hyrax - Marketing Budget FY28.xlsxThe FY27 plan booked roughly $9.1M across Q1 to Q3, split 67.7% paid media, 28.5% PR and events, 2.5% professional services, 1.2% software. That split is the strongest available argument for how a Hyrax budget should be built, and it beats any external benchmark for an internal submission, because the reviewer already approved it once.
| Category | Iru FY27 Q1–Q3 | Share | Hyrax FY28 | Share |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Paid Media | $6,158,085 | 67.7% | $1,020,000 | 68.0% |
| PR & Events | $2,594,757 | 28.5% | $420,000 | 28.0% |
| Professional Services | $229,628 | 2.5% | $42,000 | 2.8% |
| Software | $108,132 | 1.2% | $18,000 | 1.2% |
| Total | $9,090,602 | 100% | $1,500,000 | 100% |
Vendor rows reuse names already in the FY27 plan wherever the function is the same: Google, LinkedIn, Reddit, Microsoft Advertising, Meta, G2, Capterra, Adroll, Onescreen.ai, Slashdot Media, Siege Media, Zylun Staffing, Manifest Labs, and the two open placeholder rows for a new PR agency and a new social agency. Finance can process most of this without onboarding a vendor.
Performance channels have a computable ceiling and it sits well below the paid media line. Search, Reddit, X, LinkedIn, YouTube and retargeting together absorb about $45.5K/month at target efficiency, or $546K a year. Past that the incremental dollar buys broad-match drift and audiences outside the ICP.
| Paid media, by role | FY28 | What sets the number |
|---|---|---|
| Google search, non-brand plus conquest | $180,000 | ~12,400 four-country non-brand searches/month exist in the category; conquest terms add ~24,700. At 80% impression share and 5.11% B2B SaaS search CTR that is ~510 clean clicks/month. |
| Google, YouTube and Demand Gen | $90,000 | Step function. ~50 conversions needed to exit learning; at the $130 devtools CPL that is $6,500/month minimum or nothing. |
| $108,000 | 13.1M members in six core developer subs. Inventory would take $45K+/month; published B2B CPAs of $50–150 cap the quality slice. | |
| X | $72,000 | $8–15 B2B tech CPM, a fifth of LinkedIn for the same audience. Measurement is the constraint. |
| $60,000 | Named-account list saturates at $1,000–3,600/month before frequency fatigue. | |
| Retargeting | $36,000 | Runs efficiently at 10–15% of prospecting spend. |
| Performance subtotal | $546,000 | The measurable ceiling, at the ceiling |
| Onescreen.ai, out of home in developer metros | $300,000 | Four bursts. Same role this vendor plays in FY27 at $100K/month. |
| G2, Capterra, Slashdot Media | $102,000 | Category listings and buyer-intent data. Bottom-of-funnel placement, priced off the FY27 vendor levels. |
| Microsoft Advertising, Meta | $72,000 | Incremental search coverage and a warm-audience layer. |
| Paid media total | $1,020,000 |
The ceiling is not an argument for a smaller budget. It is the reason the budget is built this way. Above $546K a year, media dollars have to buy brand and placement rather than clicks, which is exactly what Onescreen.ai, G2 and Capterra do in the FY27 plan. Anyone who proposes putting the full $1.02M through search and social is proposing to spend roughly half of it at CPAs above target.
Three checks, none of which depends on Hyrax having revenue.
| Check | Result | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Share of Iru marketing | ~12% | $1.5M against an FY27 run rate of roughly $12.1M annualized off three booked quarters. A new product line taking an eighth of total marketing. |
| Net-new ARR the budget supports | $2.8–3.6M | Median new-customer CAC ratio is $2.00 of sales and marketing per $1 of net-new ARR; marketing carries 35–45% of that, and programs are 54% of marketing below $25M ARR. Working the chain backwards from $1.5M of programs. |
| Closest competitor | $5.2M | CodeRabbit at 11.6% of a $45M ARR estimate, from the AdClarity US panel sample. Social alone, US only, so the real figure is higher. Hyrax at $1.5M across every category is well under a third of one competitor's social spend. |
$1.5M of programs supports $2.8–3.6M of net-new ARR at median efficiency, not $10M. Getting to $10M through marketing spend alone needs $3.8–4.9M of programs, which is what ICONIQ's chain independently produced at $5.6M of marketing OpEx. Two methods agree.
The gap closes through average seats per paying account, not through a bigger media budget. At the $30 pooled floor, a 100-seat account is worth $36,000 a year and a 10-seat account is worth $3,600, so the same marketing dollar produces ten times the ARR against larger accounts. That is a sales-motion and packaging decision, and it belongs in the budget conversation because it decides whether any number on this page reaches the target.
If the ask is cut, these are the rows that come out, in this order, to reach $1,005,000. Naming them beats letting someone else pick.
| Row | Cut | Consequence |
|---|---|---|
| Onescreen.ai, one burst instead of four | −$225,000 | Out of home becomes a single test flight rather than sustained presence in developer metros. |
| YouTube and Demand Gen held at zero | −$90,000 | No loss of efficiency. This channel only works fully funded, so zero is a legitimate setting and a partial budget is not. |
| KubeCon skipped | −$60,000 | Revisit once the company can pre-book 10 to 15 relevant meetings. A booth without a meeting pipeline is the worst dollar at any event. |
| New PR agency at $6K/month | −$72,000 | Fractional operator or boutique instead of a specialist agency retainer. Launch coverage only, not sustained media relations. |
| Siege Media at $4K/month | −$48,000 | Roughly half the content and SEO cadence, which pushes organic compounding out by two quarters. |
| Reduced case total | $1,005,000 | Performance media, review sites, events at regional scale and the software stack all survive intact. |