Pitch deck Language / Langue

OTA QUÉBEC

Nota Business Plan

A market for urgent notarial acts, followed by tools that reduce preparation work.

info@gonota.ca

https://plan.gonata.ca/

Proposed raise: 250 000 $ pre-seed. Product development and public deployment are evidenced, repeatable paid demand, live settlement and professional launch clearance are not established by the reviewed records. The financing scenario targets 244 completed acts and approximately 80 813 $ of Nota revenue in Year 1. These are targets, not traction.

This revision reconciles the four-service code catalogue, published fee grid, referral accrual, market arithmetic, payment costs, completion funnel and funding requirements. It replaces the previous claim that approximately 240 000 $ funds the business through Year 3. Under the revised base assumptions, approximately 430 119 $, including a 25 000 $ planning reserve, is required at the worst annual endpoint, monthly timing beyond Year 1 could require more.

French executive summary · Financial model and monthly cash · Review and outstanding evidence

The decision surface

One market. Three durable wins.

Nota turns a deadline into a coordinated outcome: a client gets clarity, a notary gets qualified capacity, and the company earns a transparent fee for making the match work.

Investor lensEvidence-led liquidity, contribution after costs, and disciplined gates before expansion.

244targeted Year 1 completions

80 813 $modeled Nota revenue

30recruited notaries in the first cohort

3×value created by one reliable match

Trust loopSimple acts get clearer with every reviewed cycle.

Userquestions and flow

Modelguided preparation

Notaryaccept · correct · reject

Next versionheld-out and reversible

Usage signals tune guidance only. Notary review qualifies model changes. A notary may collaborate under a separate potential-equity agreement or choose a monthly subscription without direct feedback.

Chapter 1 of 15

1. Executive summary

ThesisCapacity infrastructure · not a replacement for notaries

Nota connects a client who needs a notarial act by a particular date with a notary who has suitable capacity. The client supplies the service, date, location, relevant facts and offered professional fee. A notary can accept, counter-propose, request information or pass without publishing a private calendar. Joining and browsing are free for notaries.

Nota is capacity infrastructure for notaries, not a replacement for notaries. Our promise is explicit: Nota is not intended to break the profession or remove notary jobs. We are repairing a broken supply-and-demand market where time-sensitive clients struggle to find an available professional, while qualified notaries lose capacity to fragmented discovery, empty calendar slots and repetitive preparation work. Nota organizes qualified demand, makes available capacity easier to use and keeps the practising notary responsible for professional judgment, client advice and the act itself. The reasons for the shortage and the size of the incremental market remain validation questions, so each cohort must be measured rather than assumed.

The future model-enabled layer follows the same boundary. Its target is to automate up to 80% of validated, repeatable intake, checks and dossier assembly under a notary's review, so a practice can accept more qualified demand, increase its potential earning capacity and help restore supply. It is a tool in the notary's hands, not a substitute for independent legal judgment. The target will be measured by act type, reviewed by notaries and released only with the required legal, security and quality controls.

Learning loop and notary participation. For supported simple notarial acts, Nota's models can improve over time from permitted, aggregated user signals and structured notary feedback. The loop measures where users need clarification, where a dossier is abandoned or corrected, and which preparation steps a notary accepts, changes or rejects. Nota then turns those observations into versioned model and workflow improvements, with privacy controls, act-specific evaluation, notary review, auditability and rollback before any production release. No identifiable client file becomes training material by default, and no live model update can change a professional conclusion without a new review gate.

User-behavior signals can tune question order, clarity and guidance. They cannot label legal facts or make a legal conclusion. Model changes are prepared offline, tested on a held-out set and approved before release.

The participation model is designed to let the whole network benefit. A practising notary who contributes workflow feedback, reviewed examples, edge cases or evaluation time may receive a potential equity instrument, subject to written terms, securities review, professional independence rules and the absence of any guaranteed value. A notary who prefers not to contribute directly can use the model-enabled layer through a monthly software subscription. The subscription provides access without requiring direct feedback contribution, while the equity path recognizes deeper collaboration. Neither path transfers legal responsibility from the notary to Nota. Users should receive clearer next steps and fewer preparation loops, participating notaries should gain a more useful capacity tool, and Nota should improve its product through evidence rather than assumptions.

The proposed initial commercial focus remains financing and refinancing in Québec City and its surrounding service area. The current repository also supports wills and powers of attorney. Those services need their own demand, pricing and professional validation, their revenue is excluded from the financing scenario rather than assumed to subsidize it. No catalogue change is made by this plan.

Nota charges its own disclosed service and date fees to the client. The notary receives the agreed professional fee in full under the implemented settlement design. This structure is a product decision, not a legal opinion. Launch depends on the outstanding professional, tax, payment and operating conditions in §7.

The investment thesis has three stages: establish reliable local matching, reduce the notary's preparation time with evidence-backed work packets, expand geographically and by service only after those results are measured. The longer-term opportunity is a reusable market for urgent demand and privately held provider capacity. International and adjacent-industry expansion are options, not funded promises in this round.

The money collected for notaries is not Nota revenue. The operating result includes illustrative service and loss costs, and the stated operating budget, it is not audited net income. The 250 000 $ raise supports the first-year experiment under the assumptions in §12, with a follow-on financing decision needed before the second-year cost base is committed.

2. Customer problem and value proposition

ProblemDeadline demand · fragmented supply · clearer next step

Initial customer. A Québec City homeowner or buyer with an approved financing need, a real lender or transaction deadline, and enough documentation for a notary to assess feasibility. A renewal alone does not necessarily require a new notarial act. Intake must distinguish simple renewal, refinancing, lender transfer, new hypothec and any separately required sale act.

The working problem hypotheses are that customers struggle to locate suitable near-term capacity, compare the complete price and determine which documents are missing. Notaries may value qualified incremental work that fits existing capacity. The plan does not claim that every notary has unused capacity, that urgency always commands a premium, or that online competitors do not exist.

Participant	Value to test	Evidence needed
Client	Find an appropriate notary before the deadline, with a comprehensible quote and next steps	On-time paid completions, abandonment reasons, total-price comprehension
Notary	Optional incremental work, full agreed honoraires, fewer preparation loops	Acceptance, repeat participation, preparation time and net incremental benefit
Referral partner	A useful destination for an eligible client, with disclosed reward terms where permissible	Attributed settled acts, partner activation, complaint and cancellation rates
Nota	Earn its own fee while delivering reliable matching and preparation	Contribution after payment, service, acquisition and loss costs

One additional standard financing per month at the current starting professional fee represents 21 600 $ in annual gross professional fees, refinancing represents 24 000 $. These are arithmetic illustrations before notary expenses and taxes, not predicted income. The product must demonstrate genuinely incremental work rather than simply move existing clients onto a paid channel.

Validation plan. Interview at least 10 notaries and 10 eligible clients or recent borrowers, document actual recent workflows and rejected requests, then follow the first 30 real eligible requests to their outcome. These are proposed discovery targets. Separate interview enthusiasm from commitments, accepted requests and paid completion. Review notary interviews and the 30-day validation plan.

3. Product and current catalogue

Product4 coded services · date signal · notary validation

3.1 Prices and the date mechanism

The following table is generated from the current domain defaults. Starting fees are product inputs, not evidence of market-clearing prices. Production admin overrides and a customer's frozen quote can differ, the dated September 8 production receipt verified the two financing tariffs, not deployment of all subsequent code changes.

Service	Starting professional fee	Nota standard service fee
Refinancement hypothécaire	2 000 $	279 $
Financement hypothécaire	1 800 $	229 $
Testament notarié	1 800 $	229 $
Procuration notariée	1 500 $	209 $

Tier	Days to signing	Suggested notary multiplier	Nota date fee
Standard	15+	1.0×	0 $
Rapide / Fast	8–14	1.8–2.2×	149 $
Prioritaire / Priority	2–7	2.7–3.3×	299 $
Urgence / Urgent	1	3.3–3.7×	449 $
Extrême / Extreme	0	3.7–4.3×	549 $

The date addition belongs to Nota. The suggested urgency multiplier affects the offered notary fee. They must remain distinct. The notary assesses the facts, fee and feasibility independently, an urgency band is not a finding that an act can safely close in that time. The domain enforces a starting floor and a five-times premium cap. Criteria can increase the base, so that cap does not bound collection losses adequately by itself.

A client-facing quote must identify the suppliers, services, Nota fee, any date fee, taxes and disbursements or their explicit exclusions. A requested date and a notary's acceptance are different states. The scope and remedy of any “date guarantee” require approved terms and measured capacity before it is marketed as guaranteed performance.

3.2 Workflow and boundaries

The intended journey is qualification → itemized quote → request posted → notary assessment and acceptance → complete dossier → professional act → payment capture, transfer and reconciliation. Counter-proposals, missing documents, failed authorizations, cancellation and unfilled deadlines require explicit recovery paths.

The domain and API enforce shared prices and offer validation. The bilingual public UI and private admin console have zero runtime dependencies. These architectural choices support maintainability, they do not make a new jurisdiction, regulated act or external integration merely a data change. Each requires its own rules, contracts, operating process and verification.

An acte de vente is not a current catalogue service. A financing request attached to a purchase must clearly identify whether another notary or workflow handles the sale, publication and funds. Wills and powers of attorney have separate capacity, consent, scope and possible protection-mandate questions. Do not treat their preparation as a financing template with a new label.

4. Evidence of readiness and traction

ProofReadiness evidence stays separate from commercial traction

This plan reviews repository files and dated release reports. It does not certify the current live environment or inspect the company's bank account, customer ledger or signed contracts.

Area	Evidence reviewed	What remains unproven
Public product	September 8 release, production checks and search submissions	Paid demand, actual indexing/ranking and customer outcomes
Payments	Real Stripe sandbox checkout, capture, transfer, reversal and refund, live secrets staged	Live activation, bank payout, recovery cases and correct merchant branding
Tax	Operator registration evidence recorded September 8, product discloses exclusions	Tax calculation/collection and responsibility for notaries' separate supplies
Four-service catalogue	Current domain definitions and service-specific preparation tests	Deployment parity and professional validation for every service
Signing room	September 9 working rehearsal, with synthetic ceremony and evidence receipt	Legally operative notarial signing, provider authorization and archival compliance
AI preparation	Structured, source-cited preparation and synthetic tests	Passing live extraction evaluation and measured professional time savings
Acquisition	Search Console/Bing setup and submitted public pages	Organic traffic, CAC, partner conversions and repeat notary activity

Sources: launch evidence, payment readiness, working rehearsal, Bedrock verification, four-service evaluation.

Traction reporting rule. No verified commercial count is supplied here. Keep signups, verified providers, active providers, requests, acceptances, completed acts and settled revenue separate. Demo fixtures, test payments, rehearsal signatures and search submissions never count as customer traction.

5. Market and competition

MarketQuébec first · 110 000 financing acts remains a planning hypothesis

5.1 Addressable market and attainable volume

The legacy estimate of 60 000 new-financing acts plus 50 000 refinancings per year is retained only as a planning hypothesis. It is not a published Québec act count. Mortgage renewals, lender switches, residential transactions and notarial acts cannot be equated one-for-one. Validate the shares requiring each act, eliminate overlap and segment by geography and service before presenting an investor-grade SAM.

At current starting values, that hypothetical 110 000-act financing market implies:

Planning case	Acts	Value
Financing	60,000	13 740 000 $
Refinancing	50,000	13 950 000 $
Starting-fee professional volume	110,000	208 000 000 $
Nota fee ceiling at standard fees	110,000	27 690 000 $
Nota fee ceiling with assumed date mix	110,000	35 632 000 $

The fee opportunity assumes all eligible acts use Nota, it is a theoretical ceiling before competition, willingness to pay and execution constraints. The urgency extension assumes the same date mix as the financial model. It is not observed demand. These figures exclude wills, powers of attorney, sale acts and software subscriptions.

The proposed Year 3 volume of 11 000 financing acts would require 10% of this assumed provincial volume, a substantial execution challenge. The plan needs to earn that expansion through local liquidity. At the 30-notary Year 1 target, 244 completions imply 8.1 acts per notary annually before adjusting for recruitment dates and inactive providers. At 700 notaries in Year 3, 11 000 acts imply 15.7 each. Aggregate provider counts alone cannot prove availability for a particular service, region or deadline.

Local bottom-up test. Count verified participating notaries by service and service area, obtain a weekly estimate of eligible incremental cases they can actually accept, compare that capacity with qualified incoming requests. The model is active notaries × available suitable cases × realization rate, checked against demand-side conversion. Do not substitute the entire provincial profession for available launch supply.

CMHC's May 2026 report says renewal activity peaked in 2025 and is expected to ease during 2026. Deadline-driven needs remain relevant, but the previous plan's 2025 renewal-wave claim is not evidence of accelerating demand today. CMHC, May 12, 2026.

5.2 Competitive position

Notairo currently advertises online preparation, availability checking and in-person signing for property transactions. Its public starting price for refinancing is 949 $, excluding taxes and disbursements, with possible additional charges for urgency or complexity. That package is not directly comparable with Nota's platform fee alone. The previous 295 $ intake-fee comparison is removed because it was not substantiated by the current homepage. Notairo, checked September 9.

Alternative	Competitive implication	Nota's proposed response
Traditional practice and an existing referral relationship	Trust, continuity and direct access may outweigh switching	Demonstrate incremental availability and simpler qualification
Online closing/intake platforms such as Notairo	Digital intake and advertised prices already exist	Prove the value of a date-specific request and provider response mechanism
Practice software and signing providers	Notaries already depend on established tools	Integrate reviewed work packets rather than require wholesale replacement
General legal-document tools	Some customers primarily want a document, not urgent professional capacity	Qualify the need and avoid acquiring unsuitable demand

Nota's proposed differentiation is explicit deadline-based demand, optional provider response and a transparent Nota fee. Claims of being the only marketplace, having no price-discovery competitors, or being impossible to copy are removed. A competitor's operating model does not establish legal approval of Nota's.

Defensibility must be earned through provider retention, repeat partner distribution, reliable operations and lawful aggregated outcome data. A proposed urgency curve is not an existing proprietary asset. Publish it only with adequate sample sizes, privacy protection and controls for service complexity and selection bias.

6. Go-to-market and measurable liquidity

LiquiditySupply first · qualified demand · measured cohorts

Supply first. Concentrate on Québec City financing/refinancing, with named service coverage and a fallback for a declined or unfilled request. Target 30 recruited providers, at least 25 verified and configured, then measure how many respond and complete work. Wills and powers of attorney receive separate validation cohorts and no assumed contribution to the financing targets.

Demand channels. Mortgage brokers and real-estate brokers can introduce clients at a real transaction milestone. Organic service pages can build demand over time. Paid search should target demonstrably eligible intent after fulfillment and contribution are understood. Organic content and partnerships consume staff time, neither is zero-cost acquisition.

6.1 Referral economics and operating terms

The domain specifies 50 $ for a referred client and 250 $ for an activated referred notary. These rewards come from Nota's acquisition resources, not a deduction from professional fees. However, the current referralLedger accrues the client reward when status is retained, and the notary reward when premierActe is present. The code does not demonstrate a settlement-only reward gate.

Before launch, reconcile eligibility, earning event, payout event, cancellations, refunds, duplicate/self-referrals, disclosure and professional permissions in both terms and implementation. Preserve obligations already incurred. The financial model includes rewards inside acquisition budgets, not as a second expense below those budgets.

With the Year 1 target of 307 retained requests, rewarding every one would consume 15 350 $ of the 40 000 $ client-acquisition envelope even though only 244 complete. Rewarding all 30 recruited notaries would consume 7 500 $ of the 15 000 $ supply-acquisition envelope. These are upper-bound budget illustrations, not expected referral shares. An unimplemented settlement-only policy cannot be assumed to save those costs.

6.2 Funnel and measurement definitions

Metric	Definition and purpose
Eligible visitor → qualified request	Use a stable cohort and remove test, duplicate and ineligible traffic
Acceptance rate	Requests receiving a confirmed notary acceptance ÷ eligible posted requests
Completion after acceptance	Completed professional acts ÷ accepted requests, after the observation window matures
Paid completion rate	Completed, successfully collected acts ÷ eligible posted requests
Time to first qualified response / acceptance	Median and 90th percentile, separated by service and urgency
On-time fulfillment	Completed by the agreed deadline ÷ matured accepted cases with a deadline
Net contribution per eligible visitor	Revenue less payment, service, acquisition and realized loss costs, divided by eligible visitors
Active supply	Verified notaries with a recent substantive response, completions reported separately
CAC	All attributable acquisition spend, rewards and labor ÷ new paid customers, allocate costs once

The finance model now distinguishes 534 posted, 307 retained and 244 completed requests in Year 1: approximately 57.5% acceptance and 79.5% completion after acceptance. Retention is not the same as revenue. Follow cohorts to maturity and show failures, pending files and refunds explicitly.

Proposed release of acquisition spend. Start with a 5 000 $ discovery/controlled-acquisition tranche inside the existing 40 000 $ envelope. Release more only after launch gates clear and the first 30 matured eligible requests show a viable acceptance-to-paid-completion path with positive expected contribution. Treat that sample as diagnostic, not proof of PMF or statistical certainty. Review weekly, pause the affected campaign or segment if contribution is negative or deadlines repeatedly fail.

7. Professional, tax and payment launch gates

Launch gatesProfessional review · tax map · payment controls

The separate Nota fee replaces the retired professional-fee share in the current code and later decisions. The repository's AGENTS.md still describes an older commission model. That contradiction needs a separately reviewed governance update, this document does not silently change repository instructions or revive the old arrangement.

Québec's Loi sur le notariat, art. 32.1, regulates specified intermediary arrangements. Keeping a notary's fees whole does not by itself resolve every question under that provision. Art. 46 allows a notary to authorize remote signature exceptionally on a party's request when the circumstances and parties' interests permit. An interface cannot grant that authorization. Loi sur le notariat.

Professional independence, fee sharing, third-party benefits/disclosure, advertising and fee reasonableness require review under the Code de déontologie, including arts. 29.1, 32–34, 49 and 70–72. A published software subscription, separate fee or referral reward is not automatically compliant because of its label. Code de déontologie des notaires.

Gate	Accountable role	Required evidence before the dependent launch
Commercial model and referral program	Founder + retained Québec counsel	Written opinion covering actual contracts, fee flow, rewards, advertising and date promise
Tax and invoicing	Founder + accountant	Correct supplier identities, tax treatment, invoice responsibility, tested quote/capture/refund accounting
Provider eligibility	Notary advisor + operations	Identity and current professional status verified, suspension/removal procedure
Live payments	Founder + payment operations	Correct merchant brand, active configuration, eligible connected account, controlled capture/transfer/payout and recovery evidence
Loss-making offers	Founder + engineering	Supported collection/eligibility policy before commitment, measured costs and explicit exception handling
Signing	Notary advisor + authorized providers	Applicable professional requirements, approved provider arrangements, retention and legally operative ceremony verification
Privacy and security	Named privacy lead + counsel	Data map, rights/access/retention procedures, vendor terms, cross-border assessment, incident and restore exercises

The payment receipt records operator tax registrations but still identifies collection implementation and the notary-supply model as unresolved. Describing taxes as excluded is disclosure, it is not implemented tax collection. September 8 readiness.

The signing room is an internal rehearsal and does not complete an act, charge the client or establish CNQ approval. Hosting in Canada and passing tests do not establish complete Law 25 compliance or SOC 2 certification. Rehearsal boundaries, privacy and legal materials, SOC 2 gap analysis.

8. Business model and unit economics

ModelAgreed honoraires stay with the notary · Nota fee stays separate

8.1 Revenue and collection costs

Nota's revenue is its own earned fee. Professional fees passed to notaries, collected tax and other third-party amounts must be tracked separately. The simplified planning model recognizes Nota fees on completed paid acts, an accountant must confirm gross/net presentation, recognition, refunds and any contingent liabilities under the final contracts.

Future model-enabled monetization. Once the proprietary models pass a notary-reviewed, held-out validation by act type and the commercial and professional gates are closed, Nota can introduce a separate software subscription or usage fee for the model-enabled preparation layer. The subscription path is intended for notaries who want the product without a direct feedback commitment. A deeper collaboration path may use a potential equity instrument for notaries who contribute structured feedback and evaluation, subject to counsel, professional review and written terms. This future revenue stream and any equity arrangement are intentionally excluded from the base scenario until pricing, support cost, data rights, security, valuation and professional compliance are evidenced. The purpose is to put more capacity in a notary's hands, not to remove the notary: the target is to automate up to 80% of repeatable intake, checks and dossier assembly while the practising notary keeps independent legal judgment. A notary who can safely handle more qualified demand can create more earning capacity and help repair the current supply shortage. Actual income still depends on demand, accepted work, professional fees, operating costs and the final contracts.

The settlement design collects the client's combined amount on the platform and transfers the notary's fee. Published Canadian domestic-card pricing is 2.9% plus 0.30 $ per successful charge. Stripe Payments. The modeled Connect arrangement adds 2 $ per payout-active account-month and 0.25% plus 0.25 $ per bank payout. Stripe Connect.

These are public-price assumptions, not verified Nota invoices. One act per payout is assumed. Account fees use the monthly Year 1 ramp and all target notaries active each month in Years 2–3. The prior assumption of ten acts per active notary per month was inconsistent with the plan's much lower provider utilization.

Stripe's comparison also lists a funds-routing feature at 0.25% of payout volume. Confirm whether an additional fee applies under Nota's contract, it is not silently counted twice in the baseline. If incremental, it would cost approximately 6.98 $ per modeled act. Reconcile optional products, international cards, currency conversion, refunds and actual balance transactions before treating this estimate as a forecast.

The calculation is: Nota fee − processing on the entire charge − payout/account costs − service costs − losses. Acquisition is subtracted once, within operating budgets in the annual model.

Blended completed act	CAD
Notary professional fee passed through	2 794 $
Nota revenue	331 $
Card processing	−91 $
Connect payout/account allocation	−9 $
Payment contribution before service/loss	231 $

The mix is 40% financing/60% refinancing and 70% standard/18% fast/7% priority/3% urgent/2% same day, at starting bases and recommended multipliers. It is unobserved. The 30 $ service cost and 0.5% of charge loss allowance are planning assumptions covering incremental preparation/support/tooling and net refunds, disputes, cancellation costs or unrecovered funds. Record components separately as data arrives, do not count refunded revenue and the same loss twice.

The model treats the service cost as incremental to budgeted founder/advisor/contractor capacity. If their paid time performs the same work, reclassify it rather than double-count it. Conversely, measure abandoned-file work and any professional validation costs not covered by that allowance.

8.2 Loss segments and optimization order

The margin audit shows that permitted high-honoraires offers can be unprofitable even on domestic cards. The standard financing fee does not rise when the offered honoraires rise, processing does. A five-times offer cap is not a profit guarantee. The newly included will/procuration services need the same whole-envelope analysis before commercial promotion.

Prioritize actual cost instrumentation and a billing eligibility safeguard, then collection alternatives and pricing experiments. Canadian bank debit may reduce costs for suitably early bookings, but settlement delay, disputes and authorization differences must be reflected in the customer journey and reserves. This plan neither enables a new payment method nor changes prices.

Test 249/289 against 229/279 only after sufficient qualified volume exists, preserving frozen quotes and measuring contribution per eligible visitor. These are candidate fees from the earlier audit, not optimal prices. Include customer conversion, notary acceptance, completion, support and losses. Set sample size and stopping rules from observed baseline data before declaring a winner.

8.3 Acquisition and retention

The Year 1 client-acquisition envelope implies approximately 164 $ per completed client. After modeled payment, service and loss costs, roughly 22 $ per act remains after that acquisition allocation and before the rest of overhead. This is much narrower than the previous 76 $ claim.

The supply budget implies 500 $ per recruited notary if all 30 are recruited. Cost per verified, active or retained notary will differ. The prior 29× LTV/CAC claim is withdrawn: three-year provider retention, demand cost and contribution were not demonstrated. Report supply cohorts and repeat participation, do not assign the entire margin stream to both client and provider LTV.

9. Operations, service quality and resilience

OperationsReliable fulfilment · recovery paths · service quality

The founder owns the initial operating queue. The proposed practising notary advisor owns professional workflow review, not every participating notary's independent decision. Define named cover before taking time-sensitive cases, a solo founder cannot promise continuous service without staffing it.

Operating area	Required routine	Trigger for intervention
Intake and matching	Check eligibility, documents, deadline feasibility and available providers	Missing critical facts, no suitable response, incompatible sale/loan workflow
Client communication	Explain status, next action, quote changes and charge timing in FR/EN	A pending request approaches its deadline or authorization fails
Completion and payment	Reconcile act evidence, capture, transfers, payout status and bank records	Mismatch, duplicate event, failed transfer or unrecovered refund
Complaints and cancellation	Record cause, fee entitlement, remedy and professional escalation	Disputed representation, missed deadline or vulnerable-client concern
Security and continuity	Least privilege, vendor inventory, backups, restore exercise and incident owner	Access anomaly, data incident, unavailable critical provider
Notary supply	Recheck status and watch response/fulfillment concentration	Suspension, repeated failed deadlines or dependence on one practice

Set response targets by supported business hours and urgency during the pilot, publish only targets the team can staff. Keep a daily financial exception queue, a weekly customer-outcome review and a monthly close. Money due to notaries or tax authorities is excluded from unrestricted runway. Confirm insurance coverage and limits for the actual platform activities, the budget is not proof of coverage.

10. AI, signing and expansion roadmap

RoadmapUp to 80% repeatable preparation target · notary review · signing gate

Immediate objective: reduce whole-file preparation time while preserving professional control and evidence quality. Documents, answers and third-party instructions can produce a source-cited checklist and preparation inputs. Capacity, consent, legal conclusions and signing readiness remain decisions of the responsible notary.

The current live financing extraction benchmark is blocked by provider access/payment prerequisites and has no accepted extraction output in the recorded runs. The four-service evaluation uses synthetic cases not reviewed by a notary. Neither demonstrates professional accuracy or time saved. Bedrock verification, evaluation.

Before promotion, obtain lawful data-use permissions and vendor/region approval, establish a notary-reviewed held-out set per act, measure omissions, unsupported facts, conflicts, abstentions, failures and review time. Measure cost per accepted, reviewed file including OCR, inference, retries and human correction. A 90% or 99% time-saving ambition is a hypothesis, not a forecast assumption. Cross-region model profiles can process outside Canada even through a Canadian endpoint.

The gate sequence is qualified intake → evidence-backed preparation → notary review → authorized signing provider → publication/funds workflow → reconciliation and retention. Refer to service coverage, cost/performance plan and learning strategy.

10.1 Controlled learning loop and notary participation

Nota's model layer improves through a controlled learning loop. Aggregated user behavior shows where a client abandons intake, misunderstands a question or needs a clearer next step. Notary feedback supplies the high-confidence signal. A notary can accept, correct or reject a proposed field or preparation step and record the reason. Those signals improve the next qualified model version for simple financing, refinancing and other supported acts.

Dynamic improvement means daily signal collection and monitoring, held-out evaluation, notary review, a small canary release and a reversible rollback. It does not mean that live client behavior silently rewrites a legal field or changes model weights overnight. User behavior can improve question order, explanations and workflow routing. Only authorized, de-identified or synthetic data and separately approved notary feedback can enter an offline training set. Every generated output remains a draft until the responsible notary reviews it.

Notaries choose how they participate:

Feedback partner: an opt-in notary contributes structured reviews, corrections and edge cases under a separate agreement and may receive potential equity or equity options. This is not guaranteed value, is not a referral reward and is subject to corporate, securities, tax, privacy and professional review. It cannot affect ranking, pricing, referrals or the notary's independent judgment.
Paid software user: a notary may use the AI layer through a monthly subscription or usage plan and decline the model-improvement contribution program. Paid access provides the tool, it does not purchase influence over the marketplace or reduce the notary's professional responsibilities.

The intended win-win is practical. Clients receive clearer intake and faster next steps. Notaries receive a tool that can absorb repeatable preparation and help them serve more qualified requests. Nota receives evidence to improve the product. Contribution remains voluntary, and the model never replaces the responsible notary's advice, decision or signature.

The operating scorecard should track model acceptance and correction rates, abstentions, unsupported-field errors, time per accepted dossier, client friction, feedback contribution, subscription conversion, churn, support burden and gross margin. No model update reaches production without a documented version, a notary-reviewed evaluation result, an approval owner and a rollback path.

The commercial thesis for this layer is capacity expansion. Nota gives participating notaries a tool that absorbs repeatable preparation, so they can respond to more qualified requests, complete more acts and increase their potential professional income while preserving the notary's independent role. This is how the product repairs a market with too little supply for its demand. It is a future monetization path, not a promise of a fixed income uplift or a plan to eliminate notaries.

The learning loop is a managed product process, not automatic clinical or legal decision making. Keep a frozen evaluation set for each supported act, record the model version in the dossier, require a notary review before a model change reaches production, and publish outcome metrics separately for users, participating notaries and subscribed notaries. The contribution choice must remain voluntary, transparent and independent from the notary's professional judgment.

Province-wide matching follows measured local fulfillment and professional readiness. Other provinces and civil-law jurisdictions require local service definitions, qualified professionals, contracts, identity/signing rails and data assessments. Adjacent urgent-service industries reuse parts of the demand mechanism but need their own economics. No revenue from these expansions, model-enabled subscriptions or data products is included in the base financial scenario.

11. Milestones and decision rules

Milestones30 recruited · 25 verified · 244 Year 1 completions targeted

Month 1 begins when the operating plan is funded and starts, it is not a claim that September's deployment began a paid trading history. Dates are targets conditional on evidence, not automatic launch permissions.

Window	Deliverable	Exit evidence / decision
Months 1–2	Legal, tax, provider and payment gates, discovery interviews	Written decisions and verified collection workflow before paid operation
Months 1–3	30 recruited / 25 verified and configured notaries	Service-area coverage, response exercise and named operating cover
Months 4–6	First controlled financing cohort, 20 cumulative paid completions in the ramp	Mature funnel outcomes and cost ledger, diagnose before scaling
Months 7–9	Repeatable local fulfillment, 87 cumulative completions	Positive segment contribution, on-time outcomes and repeat supply
Months 7–12	Invite a notary feedback cohort and test the equity or paid software paths	Written contribution terms, professional review, model-quality evidence and measured software margin
Months 10–12	Reach 244 cumulative completions in the base scenario	80 813 $ modeled revenue, reconciled costs and evidence for follow-on funding
Before expansion	New region/service readiness	Local supply, legal/integration requirements, measured acquisition and capacity

Target more than 60% acceptance and at least 80% completion after acceptance in mature cohorts before broad acquisition expansion. These are proposed management gates, not observed rates. Also require positive contribution and adequate on-time delivery, acceptance alone cannot justify growth. Set an on-time target from the promised service and pilot evidence before marketing a guarantee.

Review the plan monthly. Stop or narrow an unprofitable segment, delay new geography if supply is thin, preserve cash when the launch date slips. Start fundraising or cost reduction when the forecast shows fewer than six months of unrestricted operating cash. A revenue run-rate alone is not a Series A trigger, especially when the prior 700 000 $ threshold was below the plan's annual Year 2 revenue.

12. Financial plan and cash requirements

Capital250 000 $ proposed envelope · modelled scenarios

12.1 Use of the proposed 250 000 $ raise

Budget	CAD	Scope / unresolved assumption
Founder compensation envelope	96 000 $	8 000 $/month total budget, confirm salary vs employer burden
Legal, contracts and privacy	20 000 $	Obtain scope and quote, do not assume it covers every expansion
Practising notary advisor	25 000 $	Defined deliverables and professional workflow review
Design/front-end contractor	25 000 $	Prioritize observed conversion and accessibility problems
Client acquisition	40 000 $	Includes content, partner rewards, acquisition labor and paid tests
Notary acquisition	15 000 $	Includes recruitment rewards, outreach and travel
Infrastructure, insurance and tools	12 000 $	Validate invoices and coverage, serverless is not zero operating cost
Contingency	17 000 $	Explicit draw decisions and monthly tracking
Total operating envelope	250 000 $	Payment, incremental service and loss costs modeled separately

Keep compensation costs within the envelope or increase the funding requirement. Founder living needs, existing cash, liabilities, sales tax remittances, employer charges, financing fees and accounts payable have not been verified. Credits, grants, debt and investor commitments are zero in the cash model until documented. Potential SR&,ED/Québec credits, IRAP or Investissement Québec programs require current eligibility and timing checks, they are not assumed runway.

12.2 Base operating scenario

Year	Completed acts	Nota revenue	Payment costs	Service + losses	Contribution	Operating budget	Operating result
Y1	244	80 813 $	−24 303 $	−11 132 $	45 377 $	−250 000 $	-204 623 $
Y2	2,800	927 360 $	−280 109 $	−127 747 $	519 504 $	−720 000 $	-200 496 $
Y3	11,000	3 643 200 $	−1 096 485 $	−501 864 $	2 044 851 $	−1 850 000 $	194 851 $

All three years use the same financing mix and tariffs, Year 3 does not silently assume sale-act economics. The annual operating envelopes remain 250 000 / 720 000 / 1 850 000 $, with client acquisition of 40 000 / 154 000 / 440 000 $ included. The Year 2 and Year 3 cost envelopes are not yet a bottom-up hiring budget. Target staffing remains founder plus contractors in Year 1, four FTE in Year 2 and ten in Year 3, conditional on financing, capacity needs and compensation quotes.

Service and loss assumptions are additional, CAC is not subtracted again. All amounts exclude income tax, financing costs, tax/disbursement cash timing and capital expenditures. Taxes collected are not revenue, collecting them would add payment costs that the current model does not quantify. Therefore the operating result is a planning measure, not net income or a funding guarantee.

12.3 Monthly cash and reserve

The following base ramp includes no completed revenue in the first three months. It assumes collections, transfers and incremental costs settle in the completion month, and operating cash follows the stated budget. It excludes opening obligations and further financing. Maintain 25 000 $ as a proposed minimum cash reserve, not an estimate of the processor's required reserve or a complete measure of exposure.

Month	Completed acts	Opening cash	Contribution	Operating budget	Closing cash
1	0	250 000 $	0 $	−20 000 $	230 000 $
2	0	230 000 $	0 $	−28 000 $	202 000 $
3	0	202 000 $	0 $	−24 000 $	178 000 $
4	4	178 000 $	742 $	−22 000 $	156 742 $
5	6	156 742 $	1 113 $	−20 000 $	137 854 $
6	10	137 854 $	1 854 $	−20 000 $	119 708 $
7	15	119 708 $	2 781 $	−20 000 $	102 490 $
8	22	102 490 $	4 079 $	−20 000 $	86 569 $
9	30	86 569 $	5 563 $	−19 000 $	73 132 $
10	40	73 132 $	7 437 $	−19 000 $	61 569 $
11	52	61 569 $	9 686 $	−19 000 $	52 255 $
12	65	52 255 $	12 122 $	−19 000 $	45 377 $

With zero revenue and the full operating budget spent, the raise is exhausted at Month 12 and breaches the proposed reserve in Month 11. The base case ends Year 1 with approximately 45 377 $ total cash, only 20 377 $ above that reserve. Year 2's planned gross operating spend is 60 000 $ per month. Follow-on funding or a slower cost ramp is therefore essential before committing the Year 2 team.

12.4 Sensitivities and capital

Scenario	Capital incl. reserve	Beyond proposed raise
Downside	1 863 333 $	1 613 333 $
Base	430 119 $	180 119 $
Upside	200 604 $	0 $

Downside halves completions, doubles service cost to 60 $ and raises loss allowance to 1% of collected charges. Upside increases completions by 50%, lowers service cost to 20 $ and losses to 0.25%. All retain the same price/mix and operating envelopes so the assumptions are comparable. These are mechanical stress cases, not probabilities. Downside hiring/spend should be reduced in practice, upside capacity may require more expense.

Capital figures use the worst cumulative year-end operating deficit plus the proposed 25 000 $ reserve. They omit within-year troughs after Year 1, settlement delays, restricted balances and unmodeled obligations. The base therefore indicates at least approximately 180 119 $ beyond the proposed raise, before those items, it does not establish that 430 119 $ is sufficient in all circumstances.

Other required sensitivities: an all-standard date mix, higher-complexity honoraires, actual tax collection, additional Connect fees, foreign cards, slower acceptance/completion, and failed/refunded cases. Calculate them using observed cohorts before expanding. Preserve a weekly 13-week cash forecast and a rolling 24-month funding model once actual opening balances and hiring terms are known.

13. Team, governance and financing readiness

TeamNotary advisor · Québec counsel · documented operating cover

Anthony Paquet is the founder and principal builder represented in the repository. Delivery history supports execution capability, this review does not verify a résumé, ownership structure or employment status. The initial team needs a retained practising notary advisor, Québec counsel, an accountant and documented operating cover. Future engineering, provider-relations and growth hires follow measured workload and available funding.

Before circulating as a financing package, assemble incorporation and trade-name records, current cap table and beneficial ownership, IP assignments, contractor agreements, tax registrations, bank balances, liabilities, insurance quotes/policies, customer/provider contract versions and the regulatory opinion. The September 8 record identifies the tax registrant as GESTION A. PAQUET INC., confirm the relationship between that entity, Nota's trade name, payment descriptor and the entity raising funds.

The learning-loop proposal also needs counsel and a practising notary advisor to approve the feedback agreement, data permissions, equity or option mechanics, tax treatment, privacy boundaries and professional-independence safeguards before any invitation is made.

The proposed instrument remains a SAFE or convertible note, subject to counsel and negotiation. Valuation/cap, discount, conversion terms, governance rights and dilution are not specified and no investor commitment is claimed. Report funds secured separately from the fundraising target. The investment case should rest on a credible local experiment and its evidence, not unsupported precision about later rounds.

14. Risk register and owner decisions

RisksLegal · cash · quality · owner decisions

Risk	Priority	Response and accountable role
Commercial or referral model not professionally cleared	Critical	Founder/counsel close §7 before the dependent launch, do not assume a fallback is automatically legal
Tax or supplier identity wrong	Critical	Accountant maps each supply and verifies quote-to-remittance accounting
Principal loss after paying a notary	High	Payment operations control exposure, recovery, reconciliation and reserves
Allowed offers have negative contribution	High	Engineering implements approved eligibility/collection handling, finance monitors by segment
Demand or provider liquidity insufficient	High	Founder narrows service/geography and releases acquisition budget in tranches
Complete price deters customers	High	Measure quote abandonment and alternatives, test eligible pricing with valid cohorts
Signing/AI capability overstated	High	Notary advisor enforces rehearsal and review boundaries, use measured evidence
Equity for professional feedback or use of client data not cleared	Critical	Counsel and notary advisor approve contribution terms, consent, securities, tax, privacy and deontology, default to the paid path
Privacy breach or provider outage	High	Privacy/technical owners validate vendors, incident response, backups and recovery
Cash shortfall or launch delay	High	Founder maintains weekly cash forecast, defer hiring and start funding early
Dependence on one founder or few notaries	High	Operating cover, documentation and diversified verified supply
Competitors match the mechanism	Medium	Win through fulfillment and distribution, measure retention rather than assert a moat
Plan drifts from code or deployment	Medium	Regenerate tables, compare live tariff evidence and label current-code versus production status

Owner decisions still needed: confirm the fundraising entity and actual cash/liabilities, approve the fully costed compensation and operating envelopes, retain accountable professional/tax reviewers, resolve reward eligibility and payout terms, choose a supported policy for loss-making collections, and set acceptable fulfillment targets before a date guarantee is promoted. None of these decisions is fabricated by this revision.

15. Document control and supporting material

SourcesAssumptions, evidence and document control

The Markdown plan is the content source for the formatted HTML. Financial tables in both language documents are generated from the same current-domain model. Rebuild with:

node docs/planning/business-plan-model.cjs
python3 docs/planning/render-business-plan.py

The renderer requires Python Markdown. It preserves the existing Nota brand stylesheet and mark in the formatted version. Model changes are planning changes only, prices and customer terms remain governed by the application and approved contracts.

Supporting research and operating evidence:

Market and AI research companion broader expansion research, validate dated claims before reuse.
Margin audit collection costs, high-value losses and candidate experiments.
Launch activation dated deployment/search evidence.
Payment readiness staged versus activated payment infrastructure.
Professional/legal dossier and claims audit.
Signing requirements and working rehearsal boundaries.
Current four-service coverage, evaluation and cost/performance.
Review record changes, verification and unresolved evidence.

Nota Sommaire exécutif du plan d’affaires

Contact : info@gonota.ca

Le plan complet en anglais est dans docs/business-plan.md. Le modèle financier reproductible est dans docs/planning/business-plan-model.json et la revue des corrections dans docs/planning/business-plan-review-2026-09-09.md.

Proposition

Nota met en relation un client qui doit signer un acte notarié à une date donnée avec un notaire qui dispose d’une capacité adaptée. Le client décrit le service, la date, les faits utiles et les honoraires professionnels proposés. Le notaire peut retenir la demande, contre-proposer, demander des renseignements ou passer sans publier son agenda privé.

Nota est une infrastructure de capacité pour les notaires, pas un remplacement des notaires. Notre promesse est explicite : Nota ne cherche pas à briser la profession ni à supprimer des emplois de notaire. Nous réparons un marché déséquilibré où des clients avec une échéance trouvent difficilement un professionnel disponible, pendant que des notaires perdent de la capacité dans la découverte fragmentée, les plages vides et la préparation répétitive. Nota structure la demande qualifiée, rend la capacité disponible plus utile et laisse au notaire le jugement professionnel, le conseil au client et l’acte. Les causes précises du manque d’offre et la taille de la demande additionnelle restent des questions de validation, mesurées cohorte par cohorte.

La future couche dotée de modèles propriétaires suit la même limite. Sa cible est d’automatiser jusqu’à 80 % de l’accueil, des vérifications et de l’assemblage répétitifs validés, sous la revue du notaire, afin qu’une étude puisse accepter davantage de demandes qualifiées, augmenter son potentiel de revenu et contribuer à rétablir l’offre. Il s’agit d’un outil entre les mains du notaire, jamais d’un substitut à son jugement juridique indépendant. La cible sera mesurée par type d’acte, revue par des notaires et déployée seulement avec les contrôles juridiques, de sécurité et de qualité requis.

Boucle d’amélioration et participation notariale. Pour les actes notariaux simples pris en charge, les modèles de Nota peuvent s’améliorer dynamiquement à partir de signaux d’utilisation permis et agrégés, ainsi que des commentaires structurés des notaires. Les questions des utilisateurs, les corrections, les abandons et les étapes acceptées ou rejetées alimentent des versions évaluées par type d’acte. Il ne s’agit pas d’un apprentissage en direct qui modifierait silencieusement un dossier ou un modèle pendant son utilisation. Chaque évolution doit franchir des contrôles de confidentialité, de sécurité, de qualité, de revue notariale et de retour arrière. Aucun dossier client identifiable ne devient par défaut une donnée d’entraînement et aucun modèle ne remplace le jugement professionnel.

Les signaux de comportement servent à améliorer l’ordre des questions, la clarté et le guidage. Ils ne servent pas à tirer une conclusion juridique ni à étiqueter un fait légal. Les changements de modèle sont préparés hors ligne, testés sur des cas réservés et approuvés avant toute mise en production.

Un notaire qui contribue des commentaires, des cas limites ou du temps d’évaluation peut recevoir un instrument potentiel d’equity, selon des modalités écrites et sous réserve des avis juridiques, professionnels et financiers requis. Un notaire qui préfère ne pas contribuer directement peut utiliser la couche de modèles avec un abonnement logiciel mensuel. L’objectif est partagé : le client obtient des prochaines étapes plus claires, le notaire dispose d’un outil qui augmente sa capacité potentielle et Nota améliore le produit avec des preuves réelles. La participation demeure volontaire et ne transfère jamais la responsabilité juridique du notaire à Nota.

Le lancement commercial proposé demeure concentré sur le financement et le refinancement hypothécaires dans la région de Québec. Le code actuel comprend aussi le testament et la procuration, leur demande, leur tarification et leur validation professionnelle sont traitées séparément et ne financent pas le scénario de lancement.

Nota facture au client ses propres frais de service et de date, affichés séparément des honoraires professionnels. Le notaire doit recevoir les honoraires convenus en entier selon la structure de règlement actuelle. Cette structure n’est pas un avis juridique : l’avis professionnel, les taxes, les contrats, les paiements en production et les contrôles d’exploitation restent des conditions de lancement.

Monétisation future des modèles propriétaires. Après une validation par des notaires sur des cas réservés par type d’acte et la fermeture des conditions commerciales et professionnelles, Nota pourra offrir une version dotée de ses modèles propriétaires contre un abonnement logiciel ou des frais d’utilisation distincts. Un notaire collaborateur pourra aussi être admissible à un instrument potentiel d’equity en échange d’une contribution structurée, sans garantie de valeur et sous réserve des modalités écrites et des avis requis. Cette couche ne vise pas à enlever les notaires. La cible est d’automatiser jusqu’à 80 % de l’accueil répétitif, des vérifications et de l’assemblage du dossier, tout en laissant au notaire son jugement juridique indépendant. Un notaire pourra ainsi traiter davantage de demandes qualifiées, augmenter sa capacité de revenu potentiel et contribuer à réparer le manque d’offre actuel. Le revenu réel dépendra toutefois de la demande, des actes acceptés et complétés, des coûts et des contrats finaux.

Ce que les preuves permettent de dire

Le produit public, l’API, les tests, l’administration, les flux Stripe de test et une répétition de salle de signature sont documentés.
Les paiements réels en production ne sont pas encore établis : les secrets sont préparés, mais l’activation, les versements bancaires, les reprises d’erreur et la marque du marchand restent à vérifier.
Les inscriptions fiscales de l’opérateur sont documentées, mais le calcul et la perception ne sont pas encore implémentés et la responsabilité fiscale des honoraires du notaire doit être tranchée.
L’évaluation IA en direct est bloquée par l’accès et la facturation du fournisseur, les cas des quatre services sont synthétiques et non révisés par un notaire.
Les demandes de recherche et de sitemap ne sont pas de la traction commerciale. Le plan ne présente aucun acte client vérifié comme traction.

Économie et financement

Les valeurs par défaut actuelles du domaine sont : 229 $ pour le service de financement, 279 $ pour le refinancement, puis 0 / 149 / 299 / 449 / 549 $ pour le service de date selon le palier. Les frais de carte et de Connect sont calculés sur la somme encaissée, y compris les honoraires transférés au notaire. Le modèle ajoute 30 $ de coût de service et une provision de pertes de 0,5 % comme hypothèses à mesurer, elles ne sont pas des résultats observés.

Le scénario de base vise 534 demandes publiées, 307 retenues et 244 actes complétés en année 1, pour environ 80 813 $ de revenu Nota. Après paiements, coûts de service, pertes et budget d’exploitation de 250 000 $, le résultat opérationnel modélisé est d’environ −204 623 $. Le modèle annuel suggère environ 430 119 $ de capital incluant une réserve de 25 000 $, le financement proposé de 250 000 $ ne couvre donc pas automatiquement l’horizon des trois ans.

Les récompenses de référence du domaine sont de 50 $ pour un client et de 250 $ pour un notaire activé. Le registre actuel comptabilise la récompense client à la retenue et la récompense notaire lorsque premierActe est présent. Les conditions de règlement, d’annulation, de divulgation et de remboursement doivent être alignées avant le programme partenaire.

Le scénario financier de base n’inclut aucun revenu d’abonnement ou d’utilisation des modèles propriétaires. Ce revenu sera ajouté seulement après la validation de la performance, du coût par dossier, des droits sur les données, de la sécurité et de la conformité professionnelle.

Séquence de décision

Fermer l’avis professionnel, la cartographie fiscale, l’identité des fournisseurs, la vérification du statut des notaires et l’assurance.
Vérifier la capture, le transfert, le versement bancaire, le remboursement, le litige et la réconciliation en production contrôlée.
Instrumenter le parcours : visite admissible → demande → retenue → dossier complet → acte payé, avec coûts et échecs par segment.
Libérer l’acquisition par tranches après une cohorte locale mûre et un résultat positif par visite admissible.
N’élargir le catalogue, la géographie, la signature à distance ou l’IA qu’avec les preuves et les contrats propres à chaque service.

Les cibles ne sont pas des résultats acquis. Le plan complet expose les hypothèses, les scénarios défavorables et favorables, les responsabilités et les décisions qui restent à prendre.