See the full answer at https://gladiuscrm.com/investor-faq.

For investors · 16 honest answers

Investor FAQ.

Common questions, honest answers. If yours isn’t here, ask: ricardo@gladiuscrm.com.

5 verticals shipped·3 live pilots·Q4 2026 — 30 signed·Self-funded to date

About the company

Who, what, where in the journey.

What does Gladius actually do?

We build the operating system for revenue-intelligence in vertical SaaS — starting with automotive dealerships. CRM + BDC + Detail + Inventory + Defense on one platform, shipped across five verticals (auto, detailing, turf, stone, BDC). Same engine, same data model, same AI brain, same defense layer underneath every vertical.

Where are you in the journey?

Three live pilot rooftops — Bright Lights (Sarasota), Elmer Auto Reconditioning, and Cypress Lawn. See /customers. A 30-account sprint is in progress targeting 30 signed accounts by Q4 2026 — roughly twenty auto rooftops and ten cross-vertical.

Who's on the team?

Ricardo Gamon, founder — twenty-year automotive operator, former GSM (Sales → F&I → GSM). Full story at /founder. Joshua York, non-technical co-founder. Engineering and customer success are being built out behind the 30-account sprint.

About the market

Size, shape, who else is in it.

How big is the market?

Rough TAM estimate: roughly 16,000 US franchise dealers plus 30,000+ independents, plus adjacent verticals (detail shops, stone fabricators, landscape operators). At a ~10% penetration target and a ~$1,500/mo blended ARPA, that lines up around $8B — and the multi-vertical OS angle expands the addressable surface 3-5× on top of that. Detailed market math sent under NDA on request.

Who are the competitors?

CDK Global, Reynolds & Reynolds, VinSolutions, Elead, DealerSocket, DriveCentric — full breakdown at /compare. Legacy CRMs built on 1990s and early-2000s architecture. None ship a public API. None publish a public security log. None are multi-vertical. That gap is the wedge.

About the moat

What makes it defensible.

What's your defensible advantage?

Five moats: the Outcome Graph (cross-rooftop data flywheel), the Rep Reputation graph (network effect across reps moving stores), switching costs that work in the customer’s favor (Postgres schema is a customer asset, not a vendor lock-in), rep-led distribution (operators selling to operators), and taste (the design and voice are us — not committee-built). See /commandments for the philosophy.

Why hasn't a CDK competitor emerged in 20 years?

Distribution. The incumbents bundle CRM + DMS + F&I + finance into single contracts and lock dealers into five- year terms. We attack from the CRM side first — the loosest contract surface — then expand into the surrounding verticals. Operator credibility (Ricardo’s twenty years inside the building) is what cracks that door open. No outsider sells to GSMs without it.

About AWAIS

The defense category we created.

What's AWAIS and why does it matter?

Autonomous Web Application Intelligence System. 66 rules, 53 signatures, 261 patterns, IQ 145. A cross-vertical CRDT mesh propagates new attack signatures across every Gladius rooftop in under 30 seconds. Defense shipped as a product, not a compliance checkbox. See /awais, /awais/mesh, /awais/incidents. No market equivalent.

About money

Funding, pricing, runway.

How are you funded?

Self-funded to date. Open to strategic conversations with investors who understand vertical SaaS plus the multi-vertical platform play. Not a typical seed-round-and-grow story — we’re building from operator cash and revenue first.

Pricing model?

Per-rooftop SaaS. $999 / $1,997 / $3,497 per month (Starter / Professional / Enterprise) — everything in every tier (AI, call tracking, payments, DMS). Group discounts of 5–15% for multi-rooftop deals. See /pricing and /groups.

Burn and runway?

Specifics shared under NDA. We’re disciplined — Ricardo’s twenty years in automotive include running P&L as a GSM, so cash management is muscle memory rather than a board slide. We’d rather you ask in a real conversation than read a number on a public page.

About the bet

Why this, why now, what kills it.

Why multi-vertical (CRM + BDC + Detail + Stone + Turf)?

The Sentinel Mesh and the AWAIS effect make each vertical defensible-by-aggregation. Same OS, same playbook, same defense. Cross-vertical learning compounds — what we learn about no-show forecasting in detail shops feeds BDC’s call cadence in thirty seconds. Single- vertical SaaS gets commoditized; multi-vertical platforms compound.

Why automotive first?

Ricardo’s domain. Twenty years of operator credibility is an unfair distribution advantage. The pain is acute, the budgets exist, the alternative is broken — and we already speak the language of the building before we walk in.

What kills you?

Three risks we name out loud: (1) dealers locked into legacy five-year contracts slow CAC and stretch sales cycles, (2) a compliance or cybersecurity event in a pilot breaks trust faster than we can rebuild it, (3) we run out of capital before ARR hits escape velocity. We mitigate each — switch-tier deals, AWAIS as a first-class product, and disciplined operator-funded burn.

About the ask

Whether we're raising and how to talk.

Are you raising?

Not actively running a process. We read every email, and strategic conversations with vertical-SaaS-native investors are always welcome. If the timing is right on both sides, we move fast.

How do I get involved?

Email Ricardo directly: ricardo@gladiuscrm.com. Subject line: “Investor inquiry.” We respond within seven days, personally. If the conversation has legs, we’ll set a call within two weeks.

Direct contact

Ask the rest in person.

The fastest path to a real answer is a real email. I read every one personally and respond within seven days.

ricardo@gladiuscrm.com

/in/ricardo-gamon-71514b244

Cell

813-442-0253

/founder·/pitch·/why-now·/awais·/our-stack

Gladius Technologies LLC · Tampa, FL · 2026

Gladius