Company Install · Small Tier
Small teams. Light scope. Architecture that grows with you.
2-month engagement. 60-day post-launch support included.
Founders, small studios, focused departments, early-stage operators putting AI on a real footing for the first time.
1–15 employees. The Install sized to the smallest team where a shared brain starts paying off. Built so the architecture stays right when you’re thirty people, not just when you’re ten.
Why the Small tier exists.
Most teams between 1 and 15 people are running their AI through a patchwork. Three people on ChatGPT Team, two on Claude Pro, the founder on Cursor, the operations lead writing custom GPTs. It mostly works. It also leaks — knowledge that should be shared lives in private accounts, the founder ends up being the human cache for the company, and the next hire restarts the learning curve from zero.
The Small tier is the smallest architecturally-coherent version of the two-tier system: per-employee Personal Brains they own + a shared Company Brain the company owns. Priced and scoped for teams where governance can be informal because everyone knows each other.
The architectural decisions made here are the same ones used at the Large tier. The difference is depth, not shape. The platform you put in at 8 employees still works at 80.
What's included
In the Small tier.
Company Brain
Shared brain at a company subdomain, SSO-gated, holding the institutional knowledge that should compound across the team.
3 role-skill types
Pre-installed skill categories tuned to your team's functions — client work, sales, operations, or whatever your shape is.
Governance design
Written governance contract: who can query what, who keeps what when they leave. Writing it down is half the value.
Cross-brain rights
Personal → Company queries default on, scoped. Reverse direction off entirely. Technical enforcement, not just policy doc.
Per-employee installs
Each enrolled employee gets a full Personal Brain — owned, portable. Volume pricing per the Personal Brain page. Minimum 3.
“The architecture at fifteen people is the same architecture at fifty. The work is making sure you set the foundation the larger version is going to need.”
Right tier for you?
Map your team to the install in 30 minutes.
Diagnostic Call (free) walks through your headcount, your stack, and whether Small or Mid is the actual fit. No commitment.
How a Small-tier engagement runs
Two months to launch.
- W1–2
Discovery + governance
Founder interviews. Institutional knowledge mapped. Governance contract written together (real work — usually 2–3 revisions). Skill types agreed.
- W3–4
Corpus + brain discovery
Company Brain corpus extraction. Personal Brain discovery calls with each enrolled employee. Every brain has a draft corpus.
- W5–6
Build
Company Brain deploys. Each Personal Brain deploys. Skill library installs across all brains. SSO + cross-brain rights configured.
- W7–8
Hardening + launch
Team training (2-hour group + 30-min 1:1s). Edge-case shakeout. Final governance walkthrough. Hand-off.
- M3–4
Stabilization
60-day post-launch support. Tweaks, additions, course-corrections. Continue at $1.5K/mo retainer or roll off.
When you outgrow the Small tier.
The Small tier holds clean through ~15 enrolled employees. Past that, three forces push you up to Mid tier: governance complexity (departments that need different access, not just headcount), compliance pressure (audit logs start mattering when nobody knows everyone), and integration depth (M365 / Google / Slack integration becomes worth the budget).
When you outgrow Small, the upgrade path is structured — the existing architecture stays, new layers install on top. We don’t rebuild what already works. Small is the foundation, not a throwaway.
Who this is for
Named by role.
- The founder of a small studioYou've got 5–10 employees. You're tired of being the human cache for the company. You want the institutional knowledge to live somewhere other than your head.
- The COO of an early-stage companyYou've hit the point where ad hoc tooling is leaking. You want to set the AI foundation now, before you're 50 people and the rework is painful.
- The department head with budget authorityYou can run a real install at the team level. The architecture is portable if corporate IT eventually picks a different stack. The work compounds either way.
- The agency principalYou and your team carry a lot of institutional knowledge that walks out with people. The two-tier architecture solves that without making the employees feel surveilled.
What’s included
In the price.
- Company Brain architecture + corpus build at a company subdomain
- SSO integration with Google Workspace or M365
- 3 role-skill types tuned to your functions, installed across enrolled brains
- Per-employee Personal Brain installs (volume pricing — see Personal Brain page)
- Cross-brain query rights, governance contract, technical enforcement
- Team training: 2-hour group session + 30-min one-on-ones
- 60-day post-launch support window
- Documentation written in plain language for the team
- Minimum 3 Personal Brains required
Common questions
Asked, answered.
How does this compare to just buying Claude for Small Business + ChatGPT Team?
You can buy those, and the Install can wrap around them — they become the AI tools your team uses to query the brains. The difference is the architectural layer. Claude for Small Business gives your team access to Claude with shared projects. The Install gives your team access to a structured corpus of your company’s institutional knowledge, queryable from Claude (and ChatGPT, Cursor, and every other tool that comes after). The vendor accounts solve "we need AI access." The Install solves "we have a real shared brain that compounds."
What's the minimum team size where this makes sense?
Three enrolled Personal Brains. Below that, the cross-brain governance doesn’t earn its complexity. If your team is 1–2 people, the right move is one or two individual Personal Brain Installs ($4,997 each) without the Company tier. You can always upgrade to a Company Install later if the team grows.
Do all my employees need to enroll?
No. The Install can be selective — you might enroll the senior team and operations lead while leaving customer-facing or part-time roles for later. Volume pricing for Personal Brains lets you add brains incrementally without renegotiating the institutional architecture.
What if an employee doesn't want a Personal Brain?
They don’t have to have one. The Company Brain is queryable by any employee with company SSO, brain or no brain. The Personal Brain is a benefit to those who want it — typically the people most invested in their long-term career. Enrollment is opt-in.
What's the right time to start?
Earlier than you probably think. The institutional knowledge that’s leaking today gets harder to recover the larger you get. Most Small-tier installs happen at 5–10 employees, before the patchwork has fully entrenched. If you’re at 15+ and haven’t set this up, you’re still in the right window — but the corpus extraction takes longer because there’s more accumulated mess.
Can we phase the rollout?
Yes. A common pattern: Company Brain + 3 Personal Brains in month 1, then add the rest of the team over the following quarter. The setup fee covers the institutional build; per-employee installs prorate within the volume bands.
Adjacent paths
Where this connects.
Start with the Diagnostic Call.
The Small-tier install starts with a 30-minute Diagnostic Call. Free. We talk about your team, your existing AI footprint, and whether Small is right or whether you’re actually at Mid scale even at your current headcount.
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