07 — Risks and Go-to-Market (v2)

Status: Stub. Reframe July 2026 as a pilot, not a market launch.

Risks: what to keep, what to add, what to drop

Keep (with sharpening)

• Participant funding gaps — keep, but add specificity about which funding categories the practice can claim against
• Geographic distance — keep, but reframe as a structural feature of the contractor-architect model, not a risk to be mitigated
• AI tool safety risks — keep, but cross-reference the safeguarding appendix rather than handwaving at “Failure First”
• NDIS pricing changes — keep, but tie to the actual change cadence (v1.1 effective Nov 2025; new framework planning mid-2026; navigators 2026–2028)

Add

• Single point of failure (James) — if James is unavailable, the practice stops. This is the cost of the contractor-architect model and should be acknowledged.
• AI deployment to minors — both the technical risk (tool malfunction, inappropriate output) and the relational risk (parasocial attachment, dependency, displacement of human connection). Mitigations are documented in the safeguarding appendix.
• Regulatory transition — launching during the new framework planning rollout means participant plans may change mid-engagement. Practice needs an explicit response if a participant’s plan category changes.
• Reputational risk — Adrian’s name is publicly associated with SPARK and other projects. A bad outcome with a deployed AI tool could affect both the practice and Adrian’s separate work. Worth being clear-eyed about.
• Capacity creep — both for James (if 20 participants becomes full-time work) and for Adrian (if “on-call escalation” becomes unscoped on-demand work).

Drop

• “Unregistered status limits market” as currently framed. Self- managed and plan-managed participants are the entire target market. Registration would expand market access, not “limit” it. Frame this honestly.

Go-to-market: pilot framing, not market launch

The original’s launch sequence (April–September 2026 with public launch in September) is too aggressive given:

• Pricing v1.1 just landed (24 November 2025)
• New framework planning rolling out from mid-2026
• The practice is unproven
• Adrian’s involvement model needs validation in real engagements

Pilot frame

April–June 2026: foundations

• Practitioner agreement signed
• Worker Screening Checks completed
• Professional indemnity insurance bound (with real quotes)
• Service agreement template drafted with NDIS-aware adviser input
• Documentation system set up
• One paid consultation with a privacy/data lawyer on participant data handling

July–September 2026: pilot (3–4 participants)

• Recruit through James’s existing networks
• Diverse participant profiles (age, diagnosis, geography)
• No public marketing
• Document everything: assessment process, handoff between James and Adrian, time per stage, participant outcomes, family feedback
• Adrian tracks his actual hours per engagement honestly

October–December 2026: review and decide

• Honest assessment: did the contractor-architect model work in practice?
• Did the financial model survive contact with reality?
• Were participant outcomes genuinely good?
• Is the safeguarding posture defensible?
• Decision point: continue, modify, or wind down

2027 onwards: only if pilot succeeds

• Public-facing materials
• Plan manager outreach
• Deliberate growth to a sustainable steady state
• Review NDIS registration question at 18 months as originally scoped

What this preserves from the original

• The four-pilot-participants intent for July
• The “document the process” instinct
• The case-study development idea (with consent)
• The relationship-led approach to plan managers

What this changes

• Removes the September 2026 “public launch” milestone
• Reframes Year 1 revenue expectation as “minimal — this is pilot”
• Removes the Year 2 / Year 3 revenue projections from the public document entirely; keep them as internal modelling only

Open dependencies

• Conversation with James — does he agree with pilot framing?
• 03-financial-model.md — what’s a realistic Year 1 revenue expectation if July–September is pilot?
• 04-roles-and-scope.md — affects who does what during pilot