SPEC — The KG Papers: German Fund Plumbing in English

One-page spec. Judge score at intake: 8/30 — scoped anyway per orchestrator instruction; the score reflects the guide’s tiny TAM. Council revision (2026-07-15): the guide is no longer the business. The flagship is the €5,000–7,500 Structuring Sprint; the guide is the credibility artifact and lead magnet; the Walkthrough is the qualifier. One Sprint clears the €5k/30-day target — the guide alone never could (17 sales into a low-hundreds TAM).

Customer

English-native (or English-preferring) emerging fund managers standing up — or seriously scoping — a GmbH & Co. KG fund structure in Germany. Concrete profiles:

1. First-time GPs in DACH — US/UK/international operators in Berlin, Munich, Zurich, Vienna raising a first micro-fund (€5–30M), often impact/climate-flavored, with a Delaware/Cayman vocabulary and zero map of KAGB/Satzung/Handelsregister. ← Sprint buyers.
2. Angel syndicates and solo GPs converting to a fund vehicle — being told by counsel “you need a GmbH & Co. KG and a sub-threshold BaFin registration” with no explanation of what that means or costs. ← Sprint or Walkthrough buyers.
3. Non-German LPs’ operating partners / venture studio founders who need the structure legible enough to negotiate. ← Guide buyers.
4. Secondary: fund admins, ESG consultants, junior fund lawyers onboarding into German fund work in English. ← Guide buyers; the lawyers are also a channel.

What they buy today: €300–450/hr from German fund counsel (P+P Pöllath, YPOG, SMP and their smaller cousins) who explain the plumbing badly and bill for the explanation. There is nothing between “free law-firm blog posts selling hours” and “€25k formation mandate.” The offer ladder fills that gap at three price points — and the Sprint’s pitch is that their €25k mandate becomes a €15k mandate because the billable hours go to decisions, not vocabulary.

Offer ladder (bottom = reach, top = revenue)

Compliance framing for every paid tier (RDG/StBerG): education and preparation, never individualized legal or tax advice. Joshua explains how the standard structure works, which decisions belong to the founder vs. their counsel, and what to ask — the client’s own qualified counsel makes every legal and tax determination. Deliverables are briefing materials for counsel, not structure recommendations. Banned phrases in all copy: “your situation mapped,” “we design your structure,” “walk me through my situation.” House phrases: “what I did, what to ask your lawyer,” “counsel briefing pack,” “structured orientation.”

0. Free — “The German Fund Stack on One Page” (built: entity-map.svg + lead-magnet.html): the entity map + 10-term glossary. Email capture; also the day-4 LinkedIn giveaway.
1. The KG Papers — €299 (€249 first-10): PDF guide + editable template pack, ~100–140 pages. Entity map, Satzung anatomy, LPA skeleton, GP/ManCo/carry mechanics (VAT question, § 18 Abs. 1 Nr. 4 EStG carry, vermögensverwaltend vs. gewerblich, Prägung/Entprägung), the BaFin sub-threshold path (§ 2 Abs. 4 / § 44 KAGB — sample chapter drafted: chapter-05-bafin-path-DRAFT.md), Handelsregister choreography, SFDR Article 9 checklist, budget sheet, DE→EN glossary (~80 terms), “questions for your lawyer” per chapter. Framing throughout: field notes by a founder-GP, keine Rechts- oder Steuerberatung. Role: credibility artifact + lead magnet for the tiers above. Not the revenue engine.
2. The Walkthrough — €750: everything above + a 60-minute structured orientation session — how the standard KG stack works, which decisions are the founder’s vs. their counsel’s, and the exact question list to bring to the first lawyer meeting — plus a written recap. Cap 3/month. Role: qualifier. €750 is credited in full against a Sprint booked within 30 days.
3. The Structuring Sprint — €5,000–7,500 fixed fee (flagship): for a GP actively forming or converting. Three working sessions across 2–3 weeks + a written entity-education memo (how each piece of the standard stack works and which open decisions the founder must make) + an annotated counsel briefing pack — the founder’s decisions, questions, and constraints documented so their lawyer starts executing on day one instead of educating for five meetings. Promise: “arrive at counsel with the decisions framed — the €25k mandate becomes €15k, and the mandate goes faster.” Explicitly: preparation and education; the client’s counsel designs and executes the structure. Cap 2/month (evenings/weekends constraint). This is the career-capital brief’s #1 “only-Joshua offer” priced like one.

Price & delivery mechanics

• Storefront: Lemon Squeezy as merchant of record (EU VAT handled; B2B reverse-charge invoices — these buyers expense everything). Guide + Walkthrough as products; Sprint sold by invoice after a scoping call, not by checkout button (a €5k+ purchase is a conversation, and invoicing keeps it flexible on 5.0–7.5).
• Refund policy (single source of truth): pre-orders fully refundable anytime before delivery; after delivery, 14-day no-questions refund on the guide. Both go verbatim into the Lemon Squeezy product description and the landing FAQ. Walkthrough/Sprint: reschedule freely; full refund until the first session happens.
• Calls: Cal.com paid booking for the Walkthrough; plain calendar link for Sprint scoping calls (free, 20 min).
• Landing page: static, Unicorn.Land infra (Cloudflare Pages). index.html in this folder — three tiers, Sprint featured. impressum.html / datenschutz.html stubs ship alongside (Joshua fills name/address).
• Fixed costs ≈ $0; platform fees only.

Why Joshua

• The three-way intersection is nearly empty: English-native + C2 German + actually navigated BaFin registration, KG formation, Satzung drafting, and SFDR as a founder-GP, not as counsel. (Credential wording verified against reality in MORNING ACTION #2 before anything ships — see README; “registered with BaFin as a sub-threshold AIFM” is both the likely-precise and the more credible phrasing, since sub-threshold is literally chapter 5.)
• Prior life managing $190–200M in portfolio at USAID (exact figure confirmed in the same morning action) — credible to institutional-adjacent buyers.
• The knowledge is in his head and files; agents draft, he edits for accuracy and voice.
• Brand hygiene: generic-template knowledge, personal track record only, no fund brand or documents. Weekdays belong to the fund; Sprint cap of 2/month keeps this an evenings/margins business.

Month-one plan → €5,000+ (30-day target)

Target: 1 Structuring Sprint (€5,000+) + 1 Walkthrough (€750) + 3–4 guide pre-orders (~€1,000) ≈ €6,750 gross. The Sprint alone clears the target; everything else is gravy and evidence.

Key sequencing insight (per council): nothing about the Sprint or Walkthrough requires the finished guide. The entity map, the outline, and the sample chapter already exist in this folder. The guide is NOT on the critical path and is written only on a GO signal.

• Week 1 — Outreach first, not drafting. Deploy landing + checkout + capture (Morning Actions). LinkedIn story post day 2. Segment-A DMs (Sprint variant) go out days 1–2 — see PROSPECTS.md. Goal: 3 qualified conversations booked, of which ≥1 is an active former (Sprint prospect). Accuracy gut-check of the outline + sample chapter with 2–3 practitioner friends (rows 9–11 of PROSPECTS.md) in parallel.
• Week 2 — Convert. Run the booked calls: free 20-min scoping for active formers → Sprint proposal same day; Walkthrough for the not-yet-formers. Day-4 entity-map giveaway post; community shares (day 5). Score the kill-test on day 7 (VALIDATION.md).
• Week 3 — Write on GO only. If GO: agents draft chapters from the outline; Joshua edits in 2 evening + 1 weekend session, while Sprint sessions run in parallel (the Sprint deliverables are session prep + memo, not the book). If PIVOT-to-advisory: skip the guide, sell the map + sessions.
• Week 4 — Compound. Second post (sample-chapter excerpt: “the sub-threshold BaFin registration, explained in 90 seconds”). Testimonials from buyers and the Sprint client. Pitch EUVC + one more newsletter/podcast (PROSPECTS.md channel table). Deliver pre-orders end of week 4 / early week 5.

Risks / honest caveats

• TAM is tiny for the guide — low-hundreds of English-preferring KG formations/year. This is exactly why the Sprint is the flagship: at €5–7.5k, 1–2 clients/month saturates the evenings-only capacity anyway. The guide’s job is authority and lead flow, capped at €1–2k/mo evergreen.
• Long consideration cycle. Mitigated by hunting people already in motion (segment A) rather than creating demand; the warm-network density is the whole edge.
• RDG/StBerG boundary. Held by the framing rules above (education/preparation, counsel briefing pack, no case-specific structuring recommendations) — enforced in copy, deliverable names, and session design, not just a disclaimer. If a Sprint client asks “so which structure should I pick?” the scripted answer is: “here’s how each option works and what it costs — that decision is yours, confirmed with your counsel; here’s how to frame it for them.”
• Regulatory drift. Version/date stamps, “current as of” per chapter, cited Gesetz sections, free minor updates to buyers.
• Co-founder sensitivity. Personal-credential framing only; Joshua gives final read on every credential sentence (MORNING ACTION #2) and sends the courtesy heads-up.
• Accuracy risk. Week-1 practitioner accuracy read (now on named rows in PROSPECTS.md); conservative hedging on tax chapters; [VERIFY] tags in the sample chapter must be resolved before it circulates.