Zontally’s cost structure reflects the kind of company we are building.
We are not optimising for short-term margin extraction or low-touch scale at any cost. We are building a durable, AI-native, enterprise-grade platform designed to solve one of the hardest problems in modern organisations: turning strategy into execution at scale.
That choice has clear implications for where we invest — and where we do not.
As an AI-powered strategy-to-execution platform, a meaningful portion of Zontally’s cost of goods sold is driven by model inference, orchestration, and data processing.
Unlike traditional SaaS platforms, where marginal usage costs approach zero, AI systems incur real and variable costs as customers derive value. Every insight generated, every execution risk surfaced, and every recommendation produced represents computation, inference, and intelligent processing.
We treat these costs not as a burden to be minimised, but as a direct investment in customer value. The more insight, clarity, and decision support Zontally provides, the more cost we incur — and the more value customers receive in return.
This reinforces our commitment to a pricing model that aligns revenue with execution value, ensuring that AI capability remains sustainable, scalable, and continuously improving.
Zontally is, at its core, a technology and product company — and our cost structure reflects that reality.
We expect research and development to be one of our largest ongoing investments, encompassing:
This is not incidental spending. It is a deliberate choice.
We are explicit in our intent to reinvest a significant percentage of revenue back into R&D over the life of the company. Strategy-to-execution is not a static problem; as organisations, markets, and technologies evolve, so must the systems that support them.
Sustained innovation is not optional — it is foundational to maintaining relevance and leadership in this category.
Because Zontally is not a product-led growth business, customer acquisition costs are necessarily higher on a per-customer basis than in self-serve SaaS models.
Our buyers are senior enterprise leaders. Our sales motion is consultative. Our go-to-market model prioritises depth of engagement over volume of sign-ups.
This means investing in:
We accept higher CAC as a natural consequence of selling to the C-suite — and we design the business model accordingly.
Critically, this is balanced by:
We license organisations, not individuals. As a result, the economics of customer acquisition are evaluated at the account level, not the user level. When done correctly, this creates a healthy and scalable ratio between CAC and lifetime value.
Across AI infrastructure, R&D, and customer acquisition, Zontally’s cost structure reflects a clear philosophy: we invest where it compounds long-term value.
We are deliberate about avoiding:
Instead, we focus on building a company with:
In doing so, we align our cost structure with our purpose: closing the gap between ambition and execution — not just today, but for the long term.
Zontally’s cost structure is shaped by three deliberate commitments:
These costs are not incidental. They are the foundation of a business designed for credibility, durability, and meaningful impact.
This is part of the series on our Open Business Model