Start here — from a qualified workflow to a signed pilot

New (2026-10-29): the commercial doctrine is page 39 — paid pilot, then purchase. We are a one-founder instrument maker and optical computation company. We sell a free bounded benchmark, $4,800 of milestone-paid pilot engineering credited to the instrument, and one product built to order on a deposit: the bench surface profiler (H1 head on the D1 stand, $12,900) — not software by the token. Parts cost is a design value; the first unit has not been built; prices are offers. Hardware costs and the private plan are on the private sales build (sales-flock sign-in and passcode). Read page 39 first.

New (2026-10-13): the first-100-customers sales system (proof packet, qualification, discovery, offer ladder, pipeline review, demo runbook) is indexed on page 38. Start there after this page.

Who this is for: you, today, with no background. Read this page, then do the pages it links in order. Every step ends in a verifiable artifact — a logged row, a saved file, a reply in an inbox, a countersigned PDF. If a step did not produce its artifact, it is not done. Nothing here asks you to invent a number or make a claim we cannot back; the limits are on page 09 and in the claims boundary.

New this month? Do page 23 — the 30-day pipeline plan first. It tells you which of the pages below to run on which day and sets your quotas. Then come back here for the background and glossary.

What you are actually doing

We host a service that turns a hologram (a special photo taken on a microscope) into a 3-D height or phase map plus a provenance record — a receipt that says exactly which software and settings produced the result, so anyone can recompute it. Labs buy that receipt-grade repeatability when they need to prove how their numbers were made.

Your job is not to collect signups. It is to move labs through five stages, each proven by an artifact (full definitions on page 00):

#	Stage	Exit criterion	Artifact
1	Qualified workflow	workflow-fit verdict `tested` or `needs_review`, named contact, use in one sentence, not a do-not-approach target	saved workflow-fit JSON + log row `qualified` (page 24)
2	Frames + metadata received	their own frame(s) with wavelength, pitch, distance; result back inside 48 h	result ZIP + time-to-result (page 17)
3	Reference measurement secured	one independent measurement of the same target, file or dated commitment	reference file or commitment email, logged
4	Budget owner identified	budget owner, source type, signer role, decision window	budget columns + `decision_date` (page 31)
5	Pilot signed	a $4,800 milestone-paid pilot (M1 invoiced) or a Phase 2 deposit under page 39 countersigned (a Software Design Partnership for a software-only lab)	operator-filed PDF (page 39, page 22)

Signups are a diagnostic only: if they drop to zero, a listing or the form broke. Report them; never chase them at the expense of a stage.

How each segment hears it (use the matching buyer page)

Segment	What we are to them	What we are NOT	Buyer page
Biomedical QPI / DHM	reproducibility and continuity: the setup survives a student leaving; a reviewer can recompute how a phase map was made	a diagnostic, a clinical tool, or a medical device — research tooling only	for biomedical QPI
University holography / interferometry labs	frame + settings → result ID → a methods citation and a methods supplement a student can paste	a replacement for their own code	for holography labs
Industrial QA (lab-side)	a lab-side comparison of our reconstruction against their reference measurement	in-plant, in-line or line-speed anything (page 29)	for industrial QA

The path

Learn the one rule that governs every word you send: read the claims boundary (page 09). You may not say anything until you can state what we do not claim.
Pick your segment. Page 15 — Who we sell to and the positioning table above.
Claim your rows. Open the prospect log (page 12) and the design-partner targets; put your name on the rows you will work. One owner per row.
Start conversations that can reach stage 1: the message test (page 16), guest methods talks (page 25), the monthly lab clinic (page 26), referral notes from satisfied researchers (page 28), core facilities (pages 32–33) and single-author Watcher emails (page 35).
Qualify every reply with the workflow-fit check — page 24. No check, no stage 1.
Work every frame inside 48 hours. Page 17 — The 48-hour loop. Send back the result with its evidence record and methods supplement.
Ask for the reference measurement (stage 3) and offer the design partnership to labs that have one.
Map the budget owner (stage 4) — page 31; send the procurement packet when the signer asks for paperwork. No budget yet? Co-apply for a grant with the lab — page 36.
Close — page 22 for the Software ($10,000) or Hardware ($25,000) Design Partnership, page 20 for plans. Live pricing only.
After signing: offer co-publication of one comparison (page 27) and ask for one referral (page 28).
Industrial inquiries go through page 29; what we cannot serve yet is logged on page 21.
Report every Friday: the five pipeline KPIs on page 00, then the signup diagnostic.

Pages 01–08 (listings, registries, the demo Space, community accounts) are discovery plumbing (secondary): do them once, never instead of the above.

What "done" looks like

When	Done means
End of day 1	Claims boundary read; segment chosen; rows claimed; sending mailbox ready (plain text, no tracking pixel); one practice workflow-fit check run and saved. Artifact: owned rows + one saved workflow-fit response.
End of week 1	At least 3 qualified workflows (stage 1) and one set of frames worked through the 48-hour loop. Artifact: 3 saved workflow-fit responses, one result ZIP with logged time-to-result.
End of week 3	At least one reference measurement secured (stage 3), one budget owner mapped (stage 4), one guest talk or clinic slot booked. Artifact: the reference file or commitment email; filled budget columns; a calendar invite.

Glossary

Hologram / frame — the raw microscope image we take as input (an interference pattern, not an ordinary photo).
Reconstruction — the result our service computes from a hologram: a height or phase map, a 3-D mesh, and a provenance record.
Provenance record / evidence record — the receipt: the software version, a fingerprint of the input and of the settings, and a content-addressed result ID that re-hashes to the same value. It proves how a result was made, not how accurate it is.
Methods supplement — a lab-ready methods paragraph shipped in the result ZIP, citing the result ID and settings, that a researcher can adapt for a paper (buyer page).
Workflow-fit check — the no-account checker (POST /public/workflow_fit, or the form on /docs/workflow-fit) that answers tested, needs_review or unsupported for a described setup. tested means accepted and processed by our test suite; it says nothing about accuracy.
Reference measurement — one independent measurement of the same target from an instrument the lab already trusts.
Budget owner — the person whose budget pays (PI grant, core-facility recharge, QA budget, department). Often not the signer.
Trial — a free 3-month account with full access.
Design partnership — one of the two paid engagements on page 22: the Software Design Partnership ($10,000, ~90 days, lab's own rig) or the Hardware Design Partnership ($25,000, ~4 months, our capture instrument built to order, plus everything in the software deal).
Free validation — the bounded, unpaid step before either partnership (up to ~20 frames, one reference measurement, 10 business days).
PO (purchase order) — how an institution commits money; often timed to their fiscal-year end (page 31).
ICP (ideal customer profile) — ICP1 = university labs; ICP2 = industrial production (closed, page 15).