How Simma makes money.
Three ways: a subscription per business, AI credits for heavy use, and a fee on every payment that runs through Simma Pay. Free has no monthly subscription: payment fees apply, and AI credits can be bought; paid plans add people, customers and AI capacity. Draft prices (11 October 2026), not yet charged.
Free to start. Priced to grow with the business.
No monthly subscription on Free: payment fees apply when the business is paid, and optional AI credit top-ups can be bought. Paid plans are priced against what a business pays today for separate tools, plus the AI team that stands in for work it would otherwise do itself or pay someone for. As it grows, it pays for the whole system: one record, the AI team, nothing to join up.
| Each plan includes | Free | Lite | Starter | Growth | Pro | Scale | Enterprise |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Team members | 1 | 2 | 5 | 10 | 25 | 50 | Custom |
| Customer records | 100 | 500 | 2,000 | 10,000 | 50,000 | 250,000 | Unlimited |
| Locations | 1 | 1 | 2 | 5 | 10 | 25 | Unlimited |
| AI allowance | Taster | Light | Standard | Plus | Pro | Max | Custom |
Every plan, Free included, has the website, bookings, CRM and payments, and the planned AI team (six teammates and Sage; what's live today). Paid plans add people, customers and AI capacity; who each plan is for is indicative; the table shows what each plan includes. AI credits top up any plan, Free included. Extra team members £5 a month. Paying for a year up front takes 20% off, team members included. UK prices: Free, Lite and Starter include VAT, because most of their buyers are sole traders who can't reclaim it; Growth and up are plus VAT. Enterprise is a contract, from £3,499 a month (the model assumes £5,000 on average).
3.5%+ 40p on Free, online
1.9%+ 25p on Scale, online
Total per payment, online, with a standard UK consumer card: the card's actual cost (1.5% + 20p for this card, passed on at what Stripe charges) plus Simma's fee. Premium and international cards cost more; in person, the card cost differs (Stripe: 1.4% + 10p for UK cards). Whether Simma's fee carries VAT is pending accountant review: if it does, it is included on Free, Lite and Starter and added on Growth and up. The business sees one fee per payment, not itemised. Simma's share falls with the plan: 2% + 20p on Free, 1.5% + 15p on Lite, 1% + 10p on Starter, 0.75% + 10p on Growth, 0.5% + 5p on Pro, 0.4% + 5p on Scale; negotiated on Enterprise. Only Simma's share is revenue. Payouts weekly on Free, twice a week on Lite and Starter, every working day from Growth. On Free, Simma's fees are at least £2 in any month it pays out. Draft rates.
Five years, three rounds. Base plan: positive EBITDA in year three.
Month by month for five years, plan by plan: customers join, move up or down a plan and leave, and Free accounts convert or go quiet. Customer numbers come out of what Simma spends, not targets. Revenue is subscriptions, AI credits and Simma's payment fees. A plan, not a forecast, and a draft until the accountant has reviewed its tax assumptions.
£3m pre-money. Paul full-time, two Local Partners, 30 paying customers by month six.
Prove the UK machine: the core team, more Local Partners and central sales, about 1,670 paying customers by the end of year two, and a Head of Local Partners, customer success and two engineers, one owning infrastructure and releases, as soon as it lands. If it is late, those hires wait until it lands.
Take it international, starting with the US. In the base plan the business doesn't depend on it: without it (the pre-seed still arrives; costs and countries as modelled), about £4.0m is still in hand after amounts owed to HMRC at the end of year three. It does not cover the combined downside below.
Global scale. Not needed by this five-year plan; sized by the opportunity.
Key assumptions, all labelled guesses until there are customers. Customers come from what Simma spends, never from targets: self-serve sign-ups from the marketing budget (one in five starts on a paid plan; 3% of Free sign-ups move to a paid plan within six months), Local Partners winning about five customers a month each, central sales for larger accounts, and Enterprise contracts from year three. New self-serve and Partner customers start on Lite 55%, Starter 35%, Growth 10%. Customers lost a year: Lite 40%, Starter 30%, Growth 20%, Pro 15%, Scale 12%, Enterprise 8%. 60% of paying customers take payments through Simma Pay (20% on Free). 30% pay yearly, 12 months up front. Each plan's AI allowance is costed at half use (tested at full use); AI is metered per business and per person and capped by plan: how. Free accounts that stop being used are warned at six months, archived at twelve and then deleted. Revenue counts Simma's own payment fees; Stripe Connect's charges (£2 per active business a month, 0.25% + 10p per payout) are a cost. Revenue on the earlier basis, with Connect netted off, is £111.7m in year 5, and gross margin 77%. Cash includes VAT charged when invoiced and paid quarterly, yearly contracts paid up front, and corporation tax by HMRC's timing; two of these are assumptions pending accountant review: VAT on Simma's payment fees (the model takes the cautious case) and the corporation-tax calculation and timing. Not in the model: R&D tax credits, VAT reclaimed on costs, franchise revenue (planned from year two, excluded here), and AI capacity that lets each Partner look after more businesses. Month by month, cash after amounts owed to HMRC is lowest at about £120.0k in month 6, just before the pre-seed lands. The full model, every assumption editable, is available on request.
| Scenario | EBITDA year 2 | EBITDA year 5 | Lowest cash after HMRC | Cash |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Base plan The plan above | −£135.0k | +£32.4m | £120.0k (month 6) | never runs out |
| Customers choose cheaper plans New small-business customers: Lite 80% / Starter 20% / Growth 0% (base 55/35/10). | −£734.0k | +£5.8m | £110.8k (month 6) | never runs out |
| Dearer to win, half as much again Each self-serve sign-up costs 50% more. | −£576.7k | +£6.5m | £114.1k (month 6) | never runs out |
| Simma Pay at half take-up Half as many customers use Simma Pay, on every tier, Free included. | −£483.3k | +£16.8m | £118.6k (month 6) | never runs out |
| Free conversion 1% 1% of Free sign-ups move to a paid plan within six months (base 3%). | −£181.9k | +£29.1m | £119.8k (month 6) | never runs out |
| Higher churn Every paid tier loses 10 points more customers a year. | −£216.1k | +£24.6m | £119.9k (month 6) | never runs out |
| Yearly leavers idle for their whole last term Yearly customers who leave at renewal stop using Simma for their whole last year: they still pay, but take no payments and buy no credits. | −£202.3k | +£29.5m | £119.7k (month 6) | never runs out |
| Payment fees VAT-exempt The other VAT treatment: Simma keeps the whole quoted fee on every tier. | +£7.0k | +£38.7m | £120.6k (month 6) | never runs out |
| Pre-seed 3 months late, no cuts The £1.5m arrives in month 10, not 7. | −£135.0k | +£32.4m | −£9.7k (month 9) | runs out in month 9 |
| Pre-seed late, hiring frozen The £1.5m arrives in month 10; team pay held at month 6's level in months 7-9 (hires start in month 10). | −£135.0k | +£32.4m | £87.4k (month 9) | never runs out |
| No seed The £5m seed in month 25 doesn't happen. Spending unchanged. | −£135.0k | +£32.4m | £120.0k (month 6) | never runs out |
| No follow-on funding Only the £250k Angel round: no pre-seed, no seed. Spending unchanged. | −£135.0k | +£32.4m | −£227.4k (month 15) | runs out in month 9 |
| Combined downside Cheaper plans + 1% conversion + higher churn + full AI use + half Simma Pay + 25% dearer to win. | −£1.3m | −£24.7m | −£29.1m (month 60) | runs out in month 37 |
Spending is unchanged unless the scenario explicitly specifies a hiring or marketing change, so most of these show the damage before anyone acts. The biggest risk is plan choice: if new customers pick cheaper plans, year-5 EBITDA falls from +£32.4m to +£5.8m. If the pre-seed arrives three months late, cash after amounts owed to HMRC goes below zero in month 9; holding the hires it pays for until it lands keeps at least £87.4k, and that is the contingency; the model does not check whether the delayed hires would slow onboarding or support. Pausing marketing does not help in the model, but only because the model assumes early customers pay back their cost within weeks, which is not measured. Without the seed, the pre-seed still arrives and costs and countries stay as modelled; whether the US could be opened without the seed's people is not checked. Yearly contracts guarantee the subscription, not use: if customers who leave at renewal stop using Simma for their whole last year, year-2 EBITDA is −£202.3k. The combined downside is cheaper plans, 1% conversion, higher churn, full AI use, half the Simma Pay use and a quarter dearer to win, all at once.
What one customer is worth, and what it costs to win.
For the first customers, instructors and small studios on Lite and Starter. Simma has no customers yet, so these are the model's assumptions with the working shown. Measuring them is what the Angel round is for.
Straight to a paid plan: 55% Lite, 35% Starter, 10% Growth
- Revenue a year
- £2,785
- Lifetime
- 3.0 years
- Lifetime value
- £7,830
- Cost to win
- £400
- LTV : CAC
- 19.6×
- Cost earned back in
- 2 months
Every sign-up, the Free accounts' costs and support included
- Revenue a year
- £2,698
- Lifetime
- 3.0 years
- Lifetime value
- £6,968
- Cost to win
- £548
- LTV : CAC
- 12.7×
- Cost earned back in
- 3 months
Direct paid; 50% leave, and each costs £1,500 to win
- Revenue a year
- £1,652
- Lifetime
- 2.0 years
- Lifetime value
- £2,627
- Cost to win
- £1,500
- LTV : CAC
- 1.8×
- Cost earned back in
- 14 months
Per customer, before VAT, with Simma Pay used by 60% of customers at the plan's payment volumes. Direct paid (the first card; the third is Lite alone): customers who sign up straight to a paid plan, at the first customers' mix, after hosting, messaging, AI use, Stripe Connect and payment losses, but not the support team or any Free accounts; £400 is the model's year-3 cost to win a paying self-serve customer, calibrated from the earlier model's guess (£200 by month 12, £400–£700 in years 3–5), not measured. Fully loaded (the second card): a paying customer from the whole self-serve funnel in year 3 (its plan mix includes the Free accounts that upgrade, mostly to Lite), where each sign-up costs £90, four in five start on Free, and only 22.4% of sign-ups end up paying (directly or by upgrading); its cost to win adds the running cost of every Free account in the funnel (about £41 each over its life), and its lifetime value takes off the support team's cost (about £14 a paying customer a month). The direct-paid figures alone are not the economics of self-serve. Lifetime value = monthly contribution × 12 ÷ the share who leave each year. Cost earned back = cost to win ÷ monthly contribution. A common rule of thumb is lifetime value at least three times the cost to win, earned back within a year. Free costs money: an account in use costs about £2 a month after its payment fees. Followed from sign-up to deletion, the running cost per Free account that becomes a paying customer is about £1,370 in the model, before the cost of winning it; a scenario result, not a measured acquisition cost. Halving Free's hosting cost would cut it to about £217, but that saving is a sensitivity until it is shown in real serving costs; the plan keeps the higher cost.
Every plan: assumptions only, untested
| Plan | Revenue a year | Contribution a month | Leave each year | Lifetime value |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lite | £1,652 | £109 | 40% | £3.3k |
| Starter | £3,268 | £218 | 30% | £8.7k |
| Growth | £7,327 | £496 | 20% | £29.8k |
| Pro | £12,462 | £806 | 15% | £64.5k |
| Scale | £24,170 | £1,523 | 12% | £152.3k |
| Enterprise | £71,332 | £4,484 | 8% | £672.6k |
Larger plans come mostly through Local Partners, central sales and Enterprise contracts, whose costs are carried as people rather than a cost per customer.
Small businesses close. The plan assumes it.
Some customers will leave because their business stops, not because Simma failed them. The official numbers set the floor.
How many new businesses are still trading
| Started in 2019 | 1 year | 2 years | 5 years |
|---|---|---|---|
| All UK businesses | 94.6% | 74.7% | 38.4% |
| Other education | 95.7% | 80.2% | 50.5% |
| Sports activities | 95.9% | 76.4% | 44.1% |
| Other personal services | 94.7% | 81.3% | 51.4% |
Instructor businesses survive better than average: about half are still trading after five years, against 38% of all UK businesses. Among established businesses, 7.8–10.0% in these groups close each year (9.8% across the UK).
What the plan assumes, and what works against it
- 40% a year leave Lite, the smallest plan, and 30% Starter: closures (8–10% a year once established, more in the first two years) plus switching. 50% is the stress case above, and every plan is also tested 10 points higher.
- Leaving is costly. The website, the domain, the customer history, the reviews and the payments all live in Simma.
- Customers grow into it. Land with the website, then add bookings, payments and the team, so each customer pays more over time.
- Larger customers leave less. The plan assumes 20% a year on Growth, 15% Pro, 12% Scale and 8% Enterprise: more people trained on it, more to move, and contracts. An assumption; we haven't found an official source that splits closures by size. Yearly customers can only leave at renewal.
- Measured from month three: how many are still here at 90 days, and why the ones who left did. On the Go-to-market page.
Source: ONS, Business demography, UK: 2024 (November 2025), Figure 2 and reference tables 2.2, 3.2 and 5.2a. It counts VAT or PAYE registered businesses only; unregistered sole traders aren't counted and probably close more often. Groups: other education (SIC 855: sports, dance, music and driving tuition), sports activities (931), other personal services (960).