From $18k Mistake to $5 Solution

The Wake-Up Call

I watched a project manager miss a single deadline buried in a 60-page contract. The penalty: $18,000. She was competent, careful, and had reviewed the document three times. The system was broken.

The Pattern I Couldn't Unsee

Across construction, healthcare, and manufacturing, I saw the same thing: professionals spending hours on contract archaeology instead of actual work. They weren't bad at their jobs—they were drowning in paperwork.

The Breaking Point

The moment I decided to build was watching a procurement team manually highlight obligations across 200 supplier contracts. Two weeks of work, just to find what they'd already agreed to.

What I Built

ContractObligation does one thing well: it extracts deadlines, penalties, and requirements from contracts in seconds. Not AI magic—just focused automation for a specific, painful problem.

The Pricing Gambit

$5 per contract. No subscriptions. You preview for free, pay only when you want to save results. Why? Because contract managers hate recurring fees almost as much as they hate missing obligations.

Early Truths

• They don't want another "platform"—they want solutions to specific pains

• Accuracy beats features—every time

• Source tracing matters—professionals need to verify, not just trust

The Question I'm Wrestling With

Is pay-per-use the right model? Part of me thinks monthly subscriptions would be easier. But another part knows that aligning cost with actual usage feels more honest for my users.

What's your experience with usage-based pricing vs. subscriptions? Especially in B2B tools where users have budget constraints but real pain points.