Go-To-Market Strategy — TLC data products
TL;DR
- Positioning: the only door-to-door true-cost layer — time AND dollars from posted prices, per hex and per listing, repriced on GPU in 21 seconds, r=0.90 vs the academic standard.
- Segment order: MLS warm channel (13-year TLC relationship; CJMLS data already inside our NJ model) → proptech resellers (ATTOM's ResiScore launch validates the category) → portals → energy comparison.
- Pricing hypotheses: API $499–$7.5K/mo; per-MLS $1–2/subscriber/yr (the existing TLC model); data feeds $15–50K/yr/metro + $25K national benchmark; energy white-label per-switch.
- Pilot motion: 30-day NYC pilot, max 3 concurrent, 'we build your metro during the pilot' — lands on the 21-second repricing capability.
- Assets shipped with it: 13-slide deck (pptx+PDF), 6 three-touch email sequences + playbook, 59-target seed list wired to the /admin CRM import.
GTM Strategy — TLCengine Data Products
Owner: Krishna Malyala (NMLS #1875937) · Date: 2026-06-12 · Status: v1, pre-launch Scope: Commute-Cost Data/API · True Lifestyle Cost Index · Utilities Estimator API · EnergySavings data Live proof: commutingcost.com/TLCcosts/ · energysavings.certihomes.com (live today) · commutingcost.com/map (in build) · api.commutingcost.com
1. Positioning
Google Maps and TravelTime tell you how long a trip takes — for one mode or two, for one person. With gas near $5 a gallon, what's wrecking family budgets isn't how long the commute is, it's what it costs — and nobody prices it. TLCengine computes the True Cost of any trip, by every mode, for everyone who has to take it. Time is a solved problem. Cost, multimodal, and multiuser are not — that's the market we own.
The 2×2 — where the incumbents stop and we start. Trip intelligence has two axes the market has only ever filled one quadrant of:
| Time only | Time + true cost | |
|---|---|---|
| One person, 1–2 modes | Google Maps, TravelTime API — best in class, and the whole market today | — |
| Every mode · two people at once | nobody | TLCengine — drive, transit, walk, bike, rail and chained multimodal; the True Cost in real dollars; solvable for two commuters at once |
Google and TravelTime nailed the top-left and stopped. The other three quadrants — cost, multimodal, multiuser — are empty, and they're exactly the dimensions that move a household's budget.
Why now — the $5-gas family-budget pain. Gas near $5/gallon has made the cost of getting to work, school, and life the thing that actually hurts, in a way travel time never captured. People are making the biggest financial decisions of their lives — where to live, where to work — with only half the picture (time), missing the half that moves the budget (cost). We give them the other half.
Where it applies (this is not just commuting): the True Cost of a trip changes the decision in real-estate search, job-site selection, concert/event ticket choices ("what does it really cost me to get there and back?"), relocation, and benefits/HR — anywhere a trip has a price.
One-line variants by audience:
| Audience | One-liner |
|---|---|
| MLS / agent | "Your buyers see drive time — never drive cost, and never for both partners' jobs at once. We answer all three, in dollars, per listing." |
| Portal / proptech | "Maps and Walk Score tell them where and how long. We tell them how much — by every mode, for everyone in the household. That's the next neighborhood-data upgrade." |
| Lender / fintech | "Affordability that includes the commute cost and the utility bill — HUD-AMI based, on the same income bases your HomeReady/Home Possible tools already use." |
| Relocation / HR | "A transferee's town in Summit vs. Hoboken differs by $2,302/month in commute cost alone — and a two-earner household has two commutes to solve. We compute both, per address, before they sign." |
| Energy | "Gas near $5 and utilities climbing — we put the true cost of a location, commute plus bills, behind one API, with provider-level switch-and-save numbers." |
Why we win (the four moats):
1. Cost, not just time. Google Maps and TravelTime own time. Nobody prices the trip. We ship $15.07 vs $58.80 one-way and rail saves $2,302/mo with a leg-by-leg receipt — fares, tolls, the $9 CRZ, parking, fuel, even utilities at the home. Time is solved; cost is the open field.
2. Multimodal + multiuser. Incumbents do one or two modes for one origin. We compare drive, transit, walk, bike, rail and chained multimodal head-to-head — and we can solve for two people at once, finding the home that works in time and money for both partners' jobs (§2, flagship line item). No one else does this.
3. Dollars from posted prices, not scores. Everyone in neighborhood data ships an index (Walk Score 0–100, CNT % of income, ATTOM ResiScore percentile). We ship dollars with sources. The methodology is public; the curated price database and the engine are the IP.
4. The warm channel + GPU economics. TLCengine has sold True Lifestyle Cost to MLSs for 13 years (Inman covered the MLS launch in 2014); we're upgrading an installed base, not cold-calling. And the cost layer is live, not a batch report, because a $1,200 GPU reprices a whole metro in seconds (the proof point — §2; it makes the live multiuser/multimodal cost map possible, it isn't the pitch).
2. Product set (anchor numbers)
| Product | What it is | Proof numbers | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Commute-Cost Data/API | Door-to-door time + true cost (posted fares, tolls, $9 CRZ, parking, fuel) per H3 hex, per OD, per departure window; mode chains | 10-day CPU job → 21 s; 73 ms/departure sample; 124,240-row NYC hex map v1; 30-town matrix: rail cheaper 30/30, avg $15.07 vs $58.80 one-way ≈ $1,924/mo; acceptance 4/5 OD pairs in published OTP bands; walk legs validated 12/12 vs OSRM | NYC live; national hex↔Census crosswalk 403M rows + CNT benchmark layer (97.45% join) shipped; top-100 metros on roadmap |
| True Lifestyle Cost Index | H + U + C affordability in dollars and % of income, selectable income basis (HUD AMI default), per county/town → per listing | r = 0.90 (ρ = 0.87) vs CNT H+T® on the comparable construct; H-layer r = 0.95; 48% affordability line; HUD AMI runs +47% over CBSA median HH income (quantified, user-selectable) | v1 live at commutingcost.com/TLCcosts/ (44 dollars-first pages); 13-yr per-listing MLS heritage |
| Utilities Estimator API | Address → monthly electric/gas/oil/propane estimate + serving providers and price-to-compare | RECS-2020-calibrated (n = 18,496); NJ backbone 2,540,595 homes (MOD-IV roll + assessor sqft + CJMLS); provider-aware via EIA-861 (3,230 utilities), BGS PTC, choice registry; FastAPI, 25/25 tests | Built, demoed on :8096; production target api.commutingcost.com |
| EnergySavings data | Provider rates, territory, switch-and-save deltas, supplier price-to-compare, fuel cost per MMBTU | PSE&G→JCP&L = $515/yr; ACE worst at +$839/yr; PSE&G PTC 10.938¢ (2026 BGS auction); gas $13.41/MMBTU vs oil $42.15 (oil ≈ 3.1× gas); US avg 17.6¢, ND 11.64¢ → HI 43.00¢; 15 electric-choice + 16 gas-choice states | 761-page site live today; data layer national (EIA-861 2023+24) |
The cold-open number (lead with the cost, not the clock): Every map app will tell you Summit→Manhattan is about an hour either way. None of them tell you that driving it costs $2,302/month more than the train. That's the gap — time is solved, cost is invisible, and cost is what hits the budget. (All-in cost of the Summit lifestyle: $3,178/mo; ~$79,500/yr keeps it under the 48% line. Live: commutingcost.com/TLCcosts/town/summit-nj.html. Range across the 30 towns: rail saves $1,635–$2,429/mo.)
The flagship product line — Multiuser two-commuter home-finder: a household isn't one commuter. Enter two workplaces; the map shades every home by the combined time + cost for both partners' jobs, filterable to "both under X minutes / $Y." It's "like a home-match index, but multimodal and cost-aware" — and no incumbent (Google, TravelTime, Walk Score, Zillow) can do it, because it falls straight out of our per-hex time+cost isochrones (intersect two, score each hex). Buildable today on the shipped hexmap-api (/v1/isochrone already returns {h3: time, cost} per destination). Spec'd in gtm/MULTIUSER-FEATURE.md; flagged for Krishna's greenlight, not yet built.
3. Segment priority
| # | Segment | Why this order | Motion | Revenue speed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | MLSs + MLS tech vendors (warm) | 13-yr installed relationship; per-listing TLC is a proven MLS purchase; NYC/NJ MLSs sit exactly on our live data (OneKey = NY metro, CJMLS/GSMLS = NJ) | Relationship email → new-capability demo → 30-day pilot on their own market | Fast (existing budget line) |
| 2 | PropTech data resellers | They already sell neighborhood layers to thousands of sites (Local Logic SDKs in Delta Media/Inside Real Estate/MoxiWorks; ATTOM just launched ResiScore June 9 — the category is hot); one deal = wide distribution | Data-partnership pitch: "add the dollars layer" | Fast-medium (rev-share or feed license) |
| 3 | Portals & brokerages | Homes.com is in a differentiation war (Homes AI, Feb 2026); true-cost per listing is consumer-visible differentiation; brokerages (Compass NJ/NY, eXp) want listing-page edge | Product-led: live links + per-listing API demo | Medium (longer cycles, bigger checks) |
| 4 | Energy marketers & comparison sites | Switch-and-save numbers are their entire funnel; adjacent-vertical lead economics are proven ($150–250/lead at SmartAsset/Bankrate); our provider-delta data + estimator API improves conversion | White-label EnergySavings or API; rev-share on switches | Fast (performance budgets) |
| 5 | Mortgage / affordability fintech | NerdWallet/SmartAsset/Bankrate run COLI city-level data — ours is address-level and commute-priced; GSEs anchor on AMI (we default to HUD AMI already) | Content/API licensing into calculators | Medium |
| 6 | Relocation & HR | Cartus/Sirva/Graebel/Weichert (Weichert = NJ-based) price cost-of-living deltas for every move; per-move report is a natural unit | Per-report API or annual license | Medium |
| 7 | Media / data licensing | Cost-of-living explainers cite CNT today; we're current-vintage + dollars; every citation feeds GEO/SEO | Free-with-attribution tier-1, paid datasets below | Slow $, fast strategic value |
| 8 | Public sector (deprioritized) | MPOs/transit agencies (NJTPA, NYMTC, NJ TRANSIT, MTA) buy accessibility analysis — but procurement is slow | Respond to RFPs only; list for inbound | Slow |
4. Pricing hypotheses (to validate in pilots)
All numbers are starting hypotheses; the pilot motion (section 5) exists to price-discover.
A. API tiers (api.commutingcost.com)
| Tier | $/mo | Includes |
|---|---|---|
| Dev (free) | $0 | 1K calls/mo, NYC only, non-commercial, attribution required |
| Starter | $499 | 25K calls/mo, commute-cost + utilities endpoints, 1 metro |
| Growth | $2,500 | 250K calls/mo, all live metros, hex-tile bundle, TLC Index per-listing endpoint |
| Scale | $7,500+ | 1M+ calls/mo, SLA, custom destinations/windows, priority metro builds |
B. Per-MLS licensing (the existing TLC model, extended)
- $1.00–2.00 per subscriber per year for the TLC Index + commute-cost per-listing layer (e.g., a 100K-subscriber MLS = $100–200K/yr; CJMLS-scale ≈ low five figures — priced to renew, not to negotiate).
- Includes member-facing widget + IDX/VOW data rights; portal display rights priced separately.
- Anchor: MLSs already pay per-subscriber for tax data, Realist/Matrix add-ons, RPR-style layers.
C. Data-feed licensing (parquet/CSV, quarterly or on-change refresh)
- Per-metro hex feed (time + cost, AM/off-peak, all mode chains): $15K–50K/yr per metro by population tier; top-100 bundle negotiable.
- National benchmark layer (hex↔Census crosswalk + CNT-comparable index, 403M rows): $25K/yr standalone, free inside any per-metro deal.
- EnergySavings data feed (provider rates, deltas, PTC, territories, 51 states): $12K–24K/yr; weekly refresh Oct–Mar (heating fuels), monthly otherwise.
- Redistribution/derivative rights: 2–3× the display-only price.
D. White-label EnergySavings
- Setup $10K + $25–40 per confirmed switch rev-share, or flat $3K/mo per state-skin. (Benchmark: adjacent comparison verticals clear $150–250/lead; energy switch payouts commonly $30–100 — we price under market to buy volume.)
E. Relocation / per-report
- $5–15 per move report (address-pair true-cost comparison, white-labeled PDF/JSON) or $36K/yr unlimited per RMC division.
F. Media
- Tier-1 outlets: free with attribution + link (GEO play). Custom cuts: $5K–15K per dataset/story.
5. Pilot motion — "30-day NYC pilot → land"
- Scope (free or $2,500, credited to year-1): partner picks 1 metro slice we already serve (NYC tri-state) + up to 3 destinations; we deliver (a) hex feed sample, (b) API keys, (c) 25 listing-level TLC reports on their own listings, (d) the validation memo (r = 0.90, OD acceptance, methodology).
- Success criteria agreed up front: e.g., widget CTR on listing pages, lead-form conversion, internal data-QA sign-off vs their own spot checks.
- Timeline: Week 1 integration, Weeks 2–3 live on their staging/site, Week 4 readout + proposal.
- Land: convert to per-MLS license / API tier / feed license. Expansion path: more metros as we light them up (the 21-second economics make "we'll build your metro during the pilot" a credible promise).
- Never more than 3 concurrent pilots — scarcity is honest (one GPU) and useful.
6. Competitive landscape
The incumbents we leapfrog — time-only, mode-limited, single-user. Google Maps and TravelTime API define the category and define its ceiling: they answer how long brilliantly, for one or two modes, for one person. They do not price the trip, do not compare every mode head-to-head, and cannot solve for two commuters at once. That's not a knock — it's the whole opportunity. Cost, multimodal, and multiuser are open.
| Incumbent | What they sell | The three things they don't do | Where we differ |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Maps / Routes API | Best-in-class per-trip time, 1–2 modes, sometimes a single fare | No true-cost stack (tolls+parking+CRZ+fuel+utilities), one origin only, no multimodal head-to-head, no hex export or bulk license; ToS forbids our buyers' use cases | We add the cost axis, every mode compared, and two users at once — exportable as a feed/API per listing and per hex |
| TravelTime API | Fast isochrones / travel-time matrices for one mode, one origin | Time only; no dollar cost; single-user; not per-listing or household-aware | We return {time, cost} per hex, all modes, and intersect two travelers' isochrones — the multiuser home-finder is literally a feature they can't express |
Secondary landscape — neighborhood-data & mobility (partner or benchmark, not the wedge):
| Player | What they sell | Where we differ |
|---|---|---|
| CNT H+T® Index | Free; H+T as % of income; modeled all-travel averages; 2022 vintage; block group | We're dollars + %, listing-level, posted current prices, refreshed in seconds. We validate against them (r = 0.90) and attribute — they're our credibility, not our enemy |
| Walk Score (Redfin) | 0–100 walk/transit/bike scores | Scores ≠ dollars, and a score can't say what two commutes cost. Complementary — and its owner (Redfin) is a prospect |
| Local Logic | Location scores, POI, demographics API/SDK | Same: no cost layer, single-location. Position as the missing "dollars" + multiuser endpoint next to their scores — partner-first, compete-second |
| ATTOM (ResiScore, June 2026) | AI neighborhood percentile rank (price appreciation) | Forward-looking investment score, not household cost. Their launch proves demand for neighborhood intelligence; their marketplace is a distribution channel |
| INRIX / StreetLight / Replica | Traffic/mobility analytics (time, flow) for agencies | Time-not-cost, enterprise-priced, not consumer-facing, not per-listing, not household-aware |
| NerdWallet/SmartAsset/Bankrate calculators | City-level COLI comparisons (licensed C2ER index) | City-level index vs our address-level computed dollars — they're buyers, not competitors |
| EnergySage / SaveOnEnergy / Choose Energy | Energy comparison funnels | They need supply: our provider-delta data and address-level estimator make their funnels smarter — sell to, not against |
Honest weaknesses (sales must know): commute compute is NYC tri-state today (national = crosswalk + benchmark layers only); the multiuser two-commuter finder is spec'd and buildable on the shipped API but not yet built (greenlight pending); drive time is OSRM × empirical peak factor (everything in dollars is posted-price, but say it before they ask); journey legs are heuristic until parent-pointer reconstruction ships; CNT comparison crosses vintages (2022 vs 2026).
7. Objection handling
| Objection | Response |
|---|---|
| "How do I know it's accurate?" | Three-layer validation, all public: r = 0.90 vs CNT H+T on the comparable construct; OD acceptance vs an independent OpenTripPlanner within published bands (4/5; the 5th is deliberate model conservatism, documented); walk network 12/12 vs OSRM. Every published number carries a source + as-of date. Public methodology is citable. |
| "You only cover NYC." | The cost and benchmark layers are national today (403M-row hex↔Census crosswalk, every CBSA; 566 transit agencies' fares; national tolls/parking/fuel/utility tables). Commute compute lights up per metro — in days, not quarters (21-second full-metro runs). Pilot clause: we build your metro during the pilot. |
| "Drive times are modeled." | Yes — flagged, and the only modeled element. Every dollar is a posted price. Peak factor is calibrated against 1,593 observed drive-peak polygons; a commercial traffic feed is on the roadmap and slots in without changing the data shape. |
| "We already have Walk Score / Local Logic." | Keep them. Scores answer where's nice; we answer what it costs — by every mode, for everyone in the household. Different field in the same widget, and the lift is one API call. |
| "We already pull Google Maps / TravelTime for travel times." | Perfect — keep them for time. They stop exactly where the budget pain starts: no dollar cost (tolls+parking+CRZ+fuel), one origin only, no multimodal comparison, and their ToS forbids storing/displaying the way a listings product needs. We're the cost and multiuser layer on top, exportable per listing — not a time competitor. |
| "MLS budgets are squeezed." | This is consumer-facing differentiation priced per subscriber, with a 13-year renewal history. Affordability is the #1 buyer question in 2026; the MLS that answers it in dollars keeps eyeballs on member sites. |
| "Why not build it ourselves?" | The math is public (we publish it). The hard part is the curated price database (zone fares for 566 agencies, tolls, CRZ, P&R lots, EIA-861, BGS auctions) and the GPU pipeline that makes refresh free. That's 13 years + a kernel. Buy the feed, spend your engineers on your product. |
| "What about remote/hybrid work?" | Costs are per-commute-day; hybrid is a multiplier (days/week × per-day). v2 adds Census remote-share weighting. The dollars-per-day shape is exactly what hybrid calculators need. |
| "Is the CNT comparison licensed?" | CNT H+T® is used as a benchmark only, attributed, no redistribution. Our index is independent — original sources are ACS, DOE LEAD, EIA, FCC, BLS, HUD + our own commute engine. |
| "Congestion pricing might change." | That's the point — when the CRZ moved to $9, our maps re-priced in one GPU pass. Annual-vintage competitors are stale the day a fare board votes. |
8. 90-day plan (weeks of 2026-06-15 → 2026-09-11)
North-star (day 90): 2 signed pilots converted to paid (≥1 MLS), 1 reseller LOI, 1 energy white-label or feed deal in contract, 1 tier-1 media citation, 100 qualified contacts in CRM.
| Week | Focus | Targets (cumulative where noted) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Assets final: deck, one-pagers per segment, pilot SOW template; map preview hardened; EnergySavings DNS live | Deck + 6 sequences shipped; TARGETS.csv loaded to CRM |
| 2 | Warm wave: CJMLS, GSMLS, OneKey, NJMLS + 2 MLS-tech vendors (FBS, Rapattoni) — relationship openers | 10 warm contacts sent; 3 replies |
| 3 | Warm follow-up (capability reveal w/ live links); start proptech cold (Local Logic, ATTOM, Cotality, Cherre) | 2 demos booked; 10 cold sends |
| 4 | First demos (screen-share the live map + a listing-level TLC report on their market); energy cold wave (EnergySage, SaveOnEnergy, Choose Energy, Arbor, NRG, Constellation) | 4 demos done; 20 cold sends (cum 30) |
| 5 | Pilot #1 signed (target: an NJ/NY MLS); portal wave (Homes.com, Realtor.com, Redfin, Compass, eXp) | 1 pilot signed; 40 cold cum |
| 6 | Pilot #1 integration; lender wave (NerdWallet, SmartAsset, Bankrate, Rocket) | Pilot live on staging; 50 cold cum |
| 7 | Pilot #2 signed (proptech reseller or energy); media pitch wave (Upshot, CityLab, Axios Local, RISMedia/Inman trades) | 2 pilots; 2 media conversations |
| 8 | Pilot #1 readout → proposal; relocation wave (Cartus, Sirva, Graebel, Weichert WM, Aires) | Proposal #1 out; 70 cold cum |
| 9 | Close pilot #1 → paid; conference plan locked (CMLS 2026 fall, NAR NXT, RESO Fall) | 1 closed-won |
| 10 | Pilot #2 readout; second metro build live (Philly or Boston — proves expansion speed on a real prospect) | Metro #2 demo-able |
| 11 | Proposal #2; breakup emails across stale threads; CRM hygiene | 2 proposals out; 90 contacts cum |
| 12 | Close #2; 90-day retro; price-model revision from pilot data; Q4 plan | 2 closed-won, 1 LOI, 100 contacts |
Weekly operating cadence: Mon pipeline review (CRM stages: lead → contacted → responded → demo → proposal → closed-won/lost) · Tue–Thu sends + demos (10 new contacts/week minimum) · Fri: one public artifact (changelog post, new metro number, or methodology note — feeds SEO/GEO and gives sequences fresh links).
9. Channel & asset map
| Asset | Use | Lives at |
|---|---|---|
| Sales deck (12 slides + PDF) | Demos, follow-up attach | gtm/deck/TLC-data-deck.pptx |
| Email sequences (1 warm + 5 cold + playbook) | Outbound | gtm/emails/ |
| Target list (55 researched rows) | CRM seed | gtm/TARGETS.csv |
| Live proof: TLC Index | Every email touch 2 | commutingcost.com/TLCcosts/ |
| Live proof: EnergySavings | Energy sequence | energysavings.certihomes.com |
| Live proof: hex map | Demos (visual wow) | commutingcost.com/map |
| Public methodology | Objection: accuracy; media | commutingcost.com/TLCcosts/methodology.html |
| Multiuser feature spec | Flagship demo story; greenlight | gtm/MULTIUSER-FEATURE.md |
| Canonical pitch | Source of truth for all framing | gtm/PITCH.md |
| Pilot SOW template | Week 1 build | gtm/ (TODO) |
Rules of engagement: drafts only — nothing sends without Krishna; no claims beyond the numbers in this doc; lead with cost / multimodal / multiuser, never with GPU speed (that's the proof point, not the hook — per gtm/PITCH.md); CNT always attributed; never disparage anyone — Google Maps / TravelTime are the time incumbents we leapfrog (not enemies), CNT / Walk Score / Local Logic are benchmark / complement / partner.