The 90-day Beta, built layer by layer.
This document breaks down the full scope of the Beta engagement: what will be delivered during the 90 days, why each layer matters, and how the work connects to Ponteo's next milestone.
The goal is to show the deliverables, assets, operating functions, and technical responsibilities required to move Ponteo from a completed platform into a controlled market-entry phase.
From a cost perspective, this document also shows what it would take for Ponteo to assemble this kind of team independently, using average U.S. market rates as the benchmark. At the end of the document, we show the Digital Culture engagement price.
This is not a permanent hiring plan. It is the operating architecture for a focused 90-day Beta.
The engagement is organized into three execution layers — each one a self-contained body of work, each one essential to moving the marketplace from built to trusted.
Strategic Leadership
One accountable leadership layer connecting product, technology, market entry, and founder decisions throughout the 90-day Beta.
During Beta, every product issue becomes a market issue. Every market signal becomes a product priority. This layer makes sure Ponteo does not lose time translating between teams.
It connects Rosalie, engineering, marketing, operations, user feedback, and launch strategy into one daily operating rhythm.
The goal: keep Ponteo focused, fast, and aligned while the market starts telling us what matters.
Build Team Deliverables
The assets that turn Ponteo from a working app into a credible marketplace people can understand, trust, and join.
This includes the website, practice and specialist acquisition funnels, CRM, lifecycle communications, onboarding content, education layer, operating dashboards, and brand system.
The app is the product. But these are the systems that bring people into it, guide them through it, and help the team see what is working.
The goal: turn market interest into active specialist and practice participation.
Engineering Deliverables
The technical layer that protects Ponteo while real users begin using it.
Beta will reveal what no internal demo can: where users get stuck, where trust breaks, where workflows need refinement, and what must be fixed before broader launch.
This layer keeps the platform stable, improves the experience, supports specialists and practices, and turns real feedback into the right product decisions.
The goal: help Ponteo learn from the market without losing control, stability, or user confidence.
The Beta is not a pause before launch. It is the phase where Ponteo learns how the market actually behaves.
Practices will reveal where trust needs to be strengthened. Specialists will reveal where onboarding, availability, notifications, payments, and job acceptance need refinement. The operating team will see which parts of the marketplace need human support, automation, better messaging, or tighter product logic.
That is why the Beta has to be staffed like an operating phase — not treated like a soft launch.
The goal is to exit the 90 days with a stronger platform, a clearer go-to-market motion, validated user behavior, a cleaner Year One roadmap, and the confidence to launch Ponteo with credibility.
Strategic Leadership
During the 90-day Beta, Eddie Menezes will act as both Chief Technology Officer and Chief Marketing Officer for Ponteo.
In a larger company, those roles usually sit in separate seats. But Beta is not a normal operating phase. It is the moment where product, market, users, and launch decisions need to move together every day. That is why this structure works.
The platform is built, but the market has not yet shown us how it will behave. Specialists have not yet shown us where they hesitate, what they trust, or what makes them say yes. Practices have not yet shown us what they need to see before they book, what questions they ask, or where the experience needs to feel more reliable.
During Beta, that feedback cannot sit in separate departments.
- If onboarding creates friction, it affects supply.
- If the booking flow is unclear, it affects demand.
- If the messaging does not create trust, it affects adoption.
- If the app creates friction at the wrong moment, it affects whether the marketplace works.
Eddie's role is to turn that feedback into clear priorities for the team: what needs to be fixed, what needs to be explained better, what needs to be built around the platform, and what should be saved for Year One.
The engagement also includes senior strategic support from Tim Shutes and Michael Tukeva, both included as part of the Digital Culture partnership rather than billed as separate executive roles.
Technology leadership for the 90-day Beta
Guiding the engineering team, setting technical priorities, reviewing product decisions, coordinating releases, protecting platform reliability, managing technical risk, and making sure Ponteo can support real users under Beta conditions.
Market-entry leadership for the 90-day Beta
Shaping Ponteo's positioning, messaging, website strategy, acquisition funnels, onboarding communications, CRM strategy, lifecycle automation, trust-building content, and specialist/practice activation through Dr. Auerbach's warm clinical network.
Tim Shutes
Supporting the 90-day Beta with business judgment, stakeholder alignment, founder-level strategy, operating decisions, and guidance around what matters now, what can wait, where risk is showing up, and how Ponteo should move from product completion into market execution.
Michael Tukeva
Supporting Ponteo's customer experience, market positioning, and trust-building strategy so practices, specialists, partners, and future investors understand the platform clearly and experience it as credible, useful, and ready for the healthcare market.
One accountable leadership layer during Beta
The real value of this role is not that one person is simply "covering two titles." The value is that the product and the market are being managed together.
Every day, Eddie will be looking at what users are doing, where they are getting stuck, what they are asking, what they are ignoring, what they are trusting, and what they need next. That feedback shapes the priorities across engineering, marketing, onboarding, support, and launch planning.
This gives Ponteo a single, accountable leadership layer during Beta — one that connects Rosalie, the product team, the engineering team, the build team, and the market itself. The goal is to avoid slow handoffs, disconnected decisions, and wasted time. Instead, the Beta becomes a tight operating loop:
By the end of the 90 days, Ponteo should not only have a better platform. It should have a clearer market position, a stronger activation engine, a validated Year One roadmap, and a much better understanding of what will actually make the marketplace work.
| Role | Hourly | Weekly (40 hrs) | Monthly | 90-Day |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Eddie Menezes · CTO + CMOSingle fractional-executive engagement covering both functions full-time | $185.00 | $7,400 | $32,067 | $96,200 |
Source: Blended fractional executive rate for NYC senior tech-and-market dual-function leadership over a 90-day engagement. Set below the NYC fractional CTO/CMO market range (typically $250–$500/hr per role) to reflect Eddie's direct-partner involvement and the integrated single-operator structure.
Build Team Deliverables
Everything Ponteo needs around the app
The app is the product. But the app alone does not create a marketplace.
Practices need to understand Ponteo, trust it, and know why they should use it. Specialists need to see the opportunity, feel confident joining, and know exactly what happens next. Investors, partners, and industry contacts need a clear story they can understand quickly.
That is the role of the Build Team. While the engineering team supports the product itself, the Build Team creates the market-facing and operating assets around the product: the website, acquisition funnels, CRM, onboarding communications, education materials, operating dashboards, and brand system. This is the layer that turns interest into participation.
Marketing Website · Ponteo.com
The marketing website is Ponteo's public front door. It is where practices, specialists, investors, journalists, and partners will first judge whether Ponteo feels credible.
The site needs to explain the marketplace clearly, build trust quickly, separate the message for practices and specialists, and guide each audience to the right next step.
- Homepage narrative and page structure
- Clear explanation of Ponteo's marketplace model
- Separate entry points for practices and specialists
- Trust-building content around verification, credentialing, safety, and reliability
- Founding Clinical Voice feature with Dr. Auerbach
- Blog/content foundation for future search visibility
- Analytics and conversion tracking
Specialist Acquisition Funnel
This is the path that moves specialists from awareness to Beta participation.
Specialists will not join just because the platform exists. They need to understand the opportunity, trust the process, and feel that Ponteo protects their time, reputation, and earning potential.
- Specialist-specific landing pages
- Clear explanation of how Ponteo works for specialists
- Lead form to capture interest and qualification details
- Email sequence to educate and move specialists forward
- Calendar booking for onboarding conversations
- CRM routing for proper tracking and follow-up
Practice Acquisition Funnel
This is the path that moves dental practices from curiosity to Beta participation.
Practices care about reliability, patient experience, credentialing, scheduling, cost, quality, and whether Ponteo will make their operations easier. This funnel gives practices the confidence to take the next step.
- Practice-specific landing pages
- Clear explanation of how Ponteo helps practices access verified specialists
- Trust signals around verification, compliance, scheduling, and reliability
- Practice-focused email sequence
- Demo or onboarding booking workflow
- CRM routing separated from the specialist funnel
CRM + Lifecycle Automation
The CRM is the system for managing every specialist, practice, prospect, lead, and active user during Beta.
Without it, follow-up becomes manual and scattered. With it, Ponteo can see where each person is in the process, what they need next, and whether they are moving toward activation.
- HubSpot setup and configuration
- Separate pipelines for specialists and practices
- Lead tracking and qualification
- Automated lifecycle stages
- Follow-up workflows
- Sales-to-onboarding handoff process
- Performance dashboards and reporting
Messaging Framework
The messaging framework defines how Ponteo communicates with specialists and practices throughout Beta — first contact, onboarding, activation, booking, engagement, and re-engagement.
People do not adopt new platforms through one message. They adopt through a sequence of clear, well-timed communications that answer the right questions at the right moments.
- Specialist onboarding sequence
- Practice onboarding sequence
- Activation messages for users who sign up but do not transact
- Engagement messages for active users
- Re-engagement messages for dormant users
- SMS layer for time-sensitive communication
Education Layer
The education layer helps new users understand how to use Ponteo and what to expect.
During Beta, confusion slows adoption. If a specialist does not understand availability, or a practice does not understand booking, the marketplace loses momentum. This layer reduces support burden and helps users get value faster.
- In-product onboarding explainers
- FAQs for specialists and practices
- How-to guides for key workflows
- Searchable knowledge base structure
- Scripts for short explainer videos
Operations Dashboards
Operations dashboards show what is happening during Beta.
Rosalie and the operating team need to see who is signing up, who is getting stuck, where demand is forming, whether specialist supply is strong enough, and whether bookings are moving through the system. These dashboards help Ponteo make decisions from real activity instead of assumptions.
- Live activity dashboard for signups, bookings, and completions
- Specialist supply visibility
- Practice activation tracking
- Funnel performance by audience
- Daily and weekly operating metrics
- Founder-level views for leadership decisions
Brand Identity Refinement
The brand system makes Ponteo feel consistent, credible, and ready for the market.
This does not mean starting over. It means tightening the visual and verbal identity so every touchpoint feels like the same company: website, emails, onboarding materials, dashboards, presentations, social content, and partner conversations.
- Visual system refinement
- Color, typography, and design token cleanup
- Messaging architecture
- Tone guide
- Logo lockups and asset library
- Templates for ongoing production
The Build Team creates the bridge between the product and the market.
Without this layer, Ponteo may have a working app but no clear system for recruiting specialists, activating practices, educating users, tracking leads, communicating consistently, or learning from Beta activity.
With this layer in place, Ponteo enters Beta with the assets needed to look credible, move users through the right journey, capture market feedback, and turn early interest into real marketplace participation.
| Role | Hourly | Weekly (40 hrs) | Monthly | 90-Day |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Senior Brand & Web Designer | $90.86 | $3,634 | $15,750 | $47,250 |
| Senior Marketing Web Developer | $111.06 | $4,442 | $19,250 | $57,750 |
| Senior Marketing Operations Engineer | $97.59 | $3,903 | $16,916 | $50,750 |
| Senior Conversion Copywriter | $87.50 | $3,500 | $15,166 | $45,500 |
| Build team total · 4 senior specialists | $387.01 | $15,479 | $67,082 | $201,250 |
Source: NYC senior-level contractor market rates for the four build specialists, calibrated to the 90-day Beta engagement window. Rates reflect packaged-engagement pricing, conservatively positioned below NYC peak contractor ranges (Robert Half Salary Guide 2026, Mondo NYC Market Reports 2025–2026).
Engineering Deliverables
Protecting the platform while real users begin using it
Ponteo is built. Beta is the phase where we protect it, improve it, and learn from real users before the market sees it at full scale.
The engineering team's role is not to rebuild the platform from scratch. Its role is to keep Ponteo stable while real specialists and practices begin using the app, then turn real feedback into the right improvements.
That matters because no internal team can predict everything before users enter the system. Specialists may get stuck during onboarding. Practices may misunderstand a booking step. Notifications may need to be clearer. Availability, scheduling, credentialing, payments, messaging, and admin workflows may reveal edge cases once real people begin using them.
The engineering layer exists to catch those issues early, prioritize them correctly, and fix the ones that affect trust, adoption, and launch readiness.
A marketplace cannot be judged by whether the app works in a demo.
It has to work when real users are inside it. Practices need to feel Ponteo is reliable. Specialists need to feel Ponteo respects their time and creates real opportunity. Rosalie needs a clear view of what is working, what is breaking, what users are asking for, and what must be improved before broader launch.
That is why engineering stays active throughout the 90 days. This layer protects the platform and protects user confidence.
Every interaction creates signal.
That signal may come from support tickets, onboarding calls, booking activity, app behavior, practice questions, specialist objections, admin observations, or direct user conversations. The team captures that feedback, organizes it, and turns it into clear decisions:
- What needs to be fixed immediately.
- What needs to be improved this week.
- What needs better explanation or onboarding.
- What should become part of the Year One roadmap.
The goal is not to react to every request. The goal is to identify the changes that make Ponteo more reliable, easier to use, and more ready for launch.
Architecture & Engineering Direction
This is the leadership layer that keeps the engineering work organized.
It ensures the team knows what matters most, what should ship now, what should wait, and how each technical decision affects launch readiness.
- Sprint planning and daily engineering coordination
- Technical decision-making for platform changes
- Release planning and accountability
- Rollback planning if something needs to be reversed
- Year One technical roadmap input
- Coordination between engineering, product, build team, and leadership
Marketplace Infrastructure
This is the technical foundation that makes the marketplace work — the systems behind credentialing, matching, payments, availability, scheduling, and secure healthcare data handling.
These are the parts users may not see, but they are essential to making Ponteo feel reliable.
- Credentialing flow hardening and validation
- Matching logic refinement based on Beta activity
- Payment processing support and reconciliation
- Availability and scheduling logic
- HIPAA compliance posture and secure data handling
Specialist iOS Application
This is the mobile app specialists use to receive opportunities, review details, accept jobs, manage their work, and complete key actions.
The specialist app is one of the main places where trust is either built or lost.
- User-experience improvements based on real feedback
- Push notification support and refinement
- Connectivity and offline-state handling
- TestFlight and App Store release support
- Performance improvements as usage increases
Practice Platform & Admin Tools
This is the web platform practices use to manage their side of Ponteo, along with the internal tools the team uses to support users.
Not every workflow should be fully automated immediately. Some parts need white-glove support so Ponteo can learn how the market behaves before locking processes permanently.
- Practice dashboard and booking management support
- Internal admin tools for manual operations
- Override tools for white-glove support
- Customer success and operations interfaces
- Practice onboarding flow refinement
Quality Assurance & Release Management
This is the discipline that allows Ponteo to improve quickly without creating new problems.
Speed matters. Stability matters more. Every release needs to be checked before it reaches users.
- Testing before every release
- Regression testing to make sure existing features still work
- Release testing across iOS and web
- Deployment quality control
- Production monitoring and incident response
Product Management
Product management turns user feedback into clear priorities.
Not every complaint becomes a feature. Not every request should be built immediately. This layer helps decide what affects adoption, what affects trust, what affects revenue, and what belongs in the Year One roadmap.
- Daily review of user friction and feedback
- Weekly priority review with engineering and leadership
- Sprint backlog organization
- Customer interview synthesis
- Year One roadmap development from Beta learnings
Customer Support Engineering
Customer support engineering handles issues that require technical understanding and human judgment.
This is important because early users will run into questions and edge cases that are not yet fully documented, automated, or predictable.
- Human escalation for complex specialist and practice issues
- Production support and incident response
- Reliability support for live operations
- Internal support tools
- Knowledge base updates for the operating team
The engineering layer keeps Ponteo safe while the market begins testing it.
Without this layer, small problems can become trust problems. Users may get stuck, lose confidence, or walk away before the team understands what happened.
With this layer in place, Ponteo can learn without losing control. The platform stays stable. The team responds quickly. Rosalie gets a clearer view of the business. And the Beta produces the real-world insight needed for a stronger Year One launch.
| Role | Hourly | Weekly (40 hrs) | Monthly | 90-Day |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Engineering / Technical Lead | $148.08 | $5,923 | $25,666 | $77,000 |
| Senior Backend Engineer | $141.48 | $5,660 | $24,525 | $73,574 |
| Senior iOS Engineer | $131.01 | $5,240 | $22,708 | $68,123 |
| Senior Web & Admin Engineer | $103.05 | $4,122 | $17,861 | $53,585 |
| Senior QA Engineer | $94.21 | $3,769 | $16,330 | $48,987 |
| Senior Product Manager | $157.08 | $6,283 | $27,227 | $81,680 |
| Senior Customer Support Engineer | $109.10 | $4,364 | $18,911 | $56,734 |
| Engineering team total · 7 senior engineers | $884.01 | $35,361 | $153,228 | $459,683 |
Source: NYC senior-level contractor market rates for seven specialized engineering roles, calibrated to the 90-day Beta engagement window (Robert Half Salary Guide 2026, Glassdoor NYC 2025–2026, Levels.fyi NYC 2025–2026, Mondo NYC Market Reports 2025–2026, Motion Recruitment NYC contract data). Rates reflect packaged-engagement pricing, conservatively positioned below NYC peak contractor ranges.
The cost of assembling this team independently.
To run Beta properly, Ponteo needs a full operating team around the app. Not just engineering.
The 90 days require technology leadership, market-entry leadership, product management, QA, design, web development, CRM, lifecycle communications, and customer support engineering working together. That is what the independent team cost represents.
Not the cost of one hire. The cost of assembling the operating capacity required to move Ponteo through Beta without losing speed, control, or market confidence.
- Strategic LeadershipEddie acting as CTO + CMO$96,200
- Build Team4 senior specialists$201,250
- Engineering Team7 senior engineers$459,683
The Digital Culture engagement.
Digital Culture brings that operating capacity into one coordinated 90-day Beta engagement.
The work is not limited to supporting the app. It includes product leadership, market strategy, engineering support, launch assets, CRM, onboarding, user feedback loops, support, and Year One planning.
Why this structure works
This gives Rosalie the team Ponteo needs for the next 90 days without forcing the company to build a permanent team before the business is ready for one.