The questions that come up most often in first conversations. If yours isn't here, ask.
One thirty-minute call to confirm fit. If we're aligned, you get a one-page scope agreement that defines the six fault lines to audit, the data inputs needed, and the timeline. Countersign, 50% deposit, and we begin within a week.
From there: a kickoff call to map your stack and access needs, then four weeks of structured discovery, synthesis, and the rebuild brief. No surprise deliverables; you see the work as it lands.
Two ways in: (a) you complete a Blueprint first, and the engagement is its natural sequel — the rebuild brief becomes the scope. Or (b) you already have a clear thesis and need the build, in which case we'll spend the first week defining the operating system before signing.
Engagements lock to outcomes — three to six months, defined deliverables, milestone-based. The shape is custom; the methodology is consistent.
Three things happen in week one:
Yes — mutual NDA, signed before any sensitive material is shared. If you have a standard form, we'll use it. If you don't, a clean two-page mutual is available on request.
Always. Blueprint is a one-page fixed-scope agreement. Engagement is a multi-page SOW with defined deliverables, payment schedule, IP terms, and a clean off-ramp clause. Both executed via DocuSign.
Two surfaces, by design:
You get full access to both. At engagement close, both are yours.
Standard stack: GitHub for artifact versioning, Notion for working docs, Slack Connect for daily communication, Google Meet or Zoom for synchronous sessions, Figma when design lands. Plus your data systems (CRM, marketing automation, etc.) for read access.
Heretics uses Claude and other AI tooling extensively for rapid prototyping, narrative drafting, and hypothesis testing. The engagement produces more per week than a traditional advisory because of it. Tooling is disclosed up front; nothing's hidden.
Same business day on Slack and email during engagement. Async updates daily on weekdays. Anything urgent gets a real-time response — that's what the Slack Connect channel is for.
Blueprint: one weekly 45-minute working session. Engagement: weekly 60-minute working session plus one shorter check-in mid-week. Sessions are recorded with consent and summarized into the running log in Notion.
Standing exec sync if and when leadership wants to be in the loop — typically once a month, or before major milestones.
Slack Connect channel is preferred — keeps a clean boundary on what's engagement work versus what's internal team chat. If your environment requires a guest account in your workspace instead, that works too. Either way, communication stays inside one channel.
A single artifact: the Blueprint brief. Four parts — current state, diagnosis (the six fault lines scored by economic weight), economic impact (what the current state is costing in pipeline, revenue, time-to-recovery), and the action plan (four sequenced tiers, dated and owned).
Plus a 90-minute presentation session to the exec team and a written summary your CEO can forward to the board in one click.
The full operating system. Roughly 20-25 artifacts across six categories: narrative architecture, strategy operating system (multi-layer hypothesis tracker), market research, partner motion, design system, and a running session log. The exact count depends on what your stage and category demand.
You can see a sample of a real engagement at work.heretics.io — the Arcology engagement (pre-seed cyber vendor).
You do. All deliverables are work-for-hire — full IP transfer on final payment. Heretics retains the right to abstract the work (client name redacted, identifying details removed) for portfolio use, as shown in the Arcology sample. If you'd rather keep the work fully private, flip that contract clause when you sign — before the work begins.
Yes — references on request, by introduction. Some past engagements are public (case patterns referenced in the Blueprint and across the network), some are still under NDA and can't be named. Past clients who are willing to take a reference call will say so when you ask them.
Blueprint — $25,000 fixed. 50% on signature, 50% on delivery. Wire transfer, ACH, or credit card (with processing pass-through).
Engagement — milestone-based. Typical structure: deposit, then payments tied to defined deliverable milestones. Net 15 from milestone acceptance. Full schedule defined in the SOW.
Fractional retainer — monthly, billed in advance. 30-day notice on either side.
The SOW names every deliverable explicitly. Anything not named is out of scope. New asks that come up mid-engagement get logged in Notion as scope-request items — we'll either fit them in if there's room, push them to a follow-on phase, or quote them as a change order.
No surprise invoices. Ever.
Change orders are simple — one-page amendment to the SOW with the new scope, timeline impact, and incremental cost. Countersign and we adjust. Most engagements have one or two by the end; the world moves while the work runs.
Every SOW has a clean off-ramp clause. Either side can pause or end the engagement on 14 days notice; you pay for work completed through that date, including any artifacts in flight that we'll finish during the notice period.
It's rare — but if the chemistry isn't right or the company pivots away from the engagement's premise, the clean exit serves everyone better than dragging it out.
Not during your engagement, and not for 90 days after — for any vendor competing in the same category. Category is defined narrowly in the SOW (e.g., "human attack surface detection," not "cybersecurity"). Beyond 90 days, prior clients have first-right-of-refusal on continued exclusivity by extending the retainer.
Read access only to your systems — never write. Data stays in your systems; what comes into the engagement is analysis output (charts, summaries, redacted samples) saved in the private repo and Notion workspace. No customer PII or sensitive identifiers leave your environment without explicit per-instance approval.
Working copies in the heretics-side workspace are archived, encrypted, and held for 90 days in case you need clarification on any artifact. After 90 days, anything not explicitly retained for the portfolio sample (redacted, abstracted) is permanently deleted. The full deletion certificate is on request.
It surfaces in the Blueprint brief, named with evidence, and stays in the artifact. The job is to make the system legible to the exec team — including the parts they'd rather not see.
Nothing discovered during the engagement gets shared outside the engagement without written permission. The artifact itself is yours; the discovery stays between us.
Full-time GTM leadership is the right answer when you have the pipeline to keep one busy, the org maturity to support one, and a clear thesis they're operating against. If any of those three is missing, a full-time hire spends the first quarter figuring out what's there, the second building basics, and by the third the board is asking why metrics haven't moved.
Heretics shows up with the operator instincts of a full-time VP, paid as a fixed engagement, with no equity overhang and no severance risk. After the engagement, you'll know whether you actually need that full-time hire — and you'll know exactly what they need to do.
Three situations:
Top-tier strategy firms are excellent at structured analysis and board-grade decks. They're expensive (often 5-10x), they take longer, and they exit with a deliverable that often needs a second engagement to actually implement.
Heretics is operator-altitude. The deliverable is a sequenced operating plan someone inside the company can run with on Monday — written in the language of the exec team, not the management consultant.
Then Fractional GTM Leadership is the right fit — embedded operator running the plan you've already aligned on. Or a referral to one of the operators in the NetherOps network who specializes in your specific category. Either way, the conversation is short.
Heretics is Nick Sorenson. That's who you engage and that's who does the work. The other properties are the methodology and surfaces around the firm:
Engaging heretics means working with Nick directly. The other properties are the tools and outputs around that.