Retainer Terms

Gregorio von Hildebrand, operating as Sovran. I deliver it personally. There is no junior team behind me, no subcontracting, and I can't be resold under someone else's brand.

I take three fractional clients at a time, for exactly that reason.

Three levels — In the loop, In the room and In the business — at $2,900, $3,950 and $5,000 a month, holding roughly 20, 30 and 40 hours of attention respectively. Payment is monthly and in advance, in US dollars, with a three-month minimum.

The first twenty hours set the base; every hour after those is $105, which is why the deeper the level, the less each hour costs.

You are not buying hours — you are buying a position in your operation. Hours are the guardrail, not the product.

The work is asynchronous. Check-ins are the visible part: the level you take sets the starting rhythm — one working session a week on In the loop, two on In the room, standing access on In the business — and it adjusts to what the project actually demands. The rest is the building between them: research, compiling, and the human judgement the work needs.

So this does not buy a number of meetings. It reserves capacity.

Unused hours do not roll over into the next month.

That reads harshly until you see what you bought: the hours were reserved, which means they were not sold to anyone else. Attention held for you is spent whether or not you use it. It is also why the committed hour costs less than the $150 of a one-off session.

If the work exceeds the committed hours in a month, additional hours bill at $150 USD an hour — the one-off session rate.

It never happens by surprise: I tell you before we get there, and you decide whether to continue or wait for next month. The commitment is precisely what makes the hour cheaper.

The three-month minimum is a real commitment: if you decide to stop early, all three months still stand.

With one exception — you may pause once, for up to 30 days, if something changes on your side. Paused hours shift; they are not lost.

Better said now than discovered later. This is not:

None of this is a no. It just means we agree it separately, because it changes the size of the commitment:

Everything we build for you is yours, unconditionally: it lives in your folders, on your machine, and it can be read without me. That is the intent from day one.

My methods, templates and skills remain mine, and I reuse them with other clients. Otherwise every client would be paying me to reinvent the same wheel.

API credits, subscriptions, hosting and licences sit on your accounts and your card, and are not included in the retainer.

That is deliberate rather than stingy: your keys, your data, your control — and all of it stays with you when we are done.

What you share with me stays between us. I do not use your work as a case study or mention it publicly without your explicit written permission.

If something changes materially, it is updated here and the date above is adjusted. Changes do not apply retroactively to an engagement already under way.

These terms are governed by the laws of Costa Rica, where Sovran operates.