Peptide Business — Strategy Follow-Up & Execution Plan

Post-call debrief: Alton, Ed, Jack — April 24, 2026

TL;DR

You're building an end-to-end peptide platform. The real business is Clinic OS + DTC ("Kirkland for peptides"), but the fastest path to revenue is selling 503A peptides to clinics right now, starting next week. Jack validated the model hard and gave you the exact playbook his other client is running ($50M/yr target). You have the supplier (Raja), the sales horsepower (Ed), the engineering (you), and ~6-month window before the market gets crowded.

North star: $1M/month by end of year. 30 LOIs + 3 live customers by end of May.

The Three Bets (Ranked)

Key insight from Jack: Don't get distracted by (3). The money is in (1) and (2). (3) can be a marketing moat layered on top later.

How the Money Actually Flows (Memorize This)

This is the 503A transaction rail — critical to get right for compliance:

1. Patient pays doctor directly (credit card at the clinic). ~$400 for a monthly peptide script.
2. Doctor pays us our share (~$200) through our platform.
3. We pay the 503A compounding pharmacy (~$50).
4. Pharmacy drop-ships to patient (or clinic).
5. Everyone's margin: ~$30–50 net per script to us, after fees.

You cannot charge the patient directly and split revenue back to the doctor. That's a compliance violation. Doctor collects, then pays us.

Unit economics:

• 1 solid OBGYN / med spa clinic ≈ 1,000 scripts/month
• 1,000 scripts × $30–50 = **$30–50K/mo per good clinic**
• 50 solid clinics = **$1.5–2.5M/month** → that's the$1M/mo target, and then some

Regulatory Guardrails (Non-Negotiables)

DO

• 503A compounding pharmacies only. Raja's Vesalius Labs + 1–2 backups.
• Cash-pay only, no insurance. Eliminates 80% of typical medical sales friction.
• Integrate a certified e-prescribe tool (E-scripts, ~$500/mo) rather than getting our own certification ($10–35K, slow).
• North American suppliers. Chinese peptides are cheaper ($2–4 vs$50) and often higher quality, but the compliance + testing burden kills the model.
• Research the exact FDA/FTC marketing do's and don'ts for 503A products before we build marketing engine. This is a research todo, not something we wing.

DO NOT

• Do not touch research-grade peptides for this business. Jack was emphatic — it's a cash grab with a 6–9 month clock, and it could get shut off tomorrow. Don't mix it with the 503A play. Different LLC, different phone number, or just skip it.
• Do not promise insurance reimbursement — not how this product moves.
• Do not make clinical claims in marketing (e.g., "the best" / curative language). Figure out the compliant framing.

503A vs 503B

• 503A: Patient-specific prescriptions. This is our lane.
• 503B: Same drugs, but sold in bulk to doctors without a prescription. Better economics, but compliance is currently ambiguous. Road-map it; don't start there.

Supplier Strategy

Primary: Raja / Vesalius Labs. He's the anchor. Meeting tonight.

Backups: Aim for 2–3 total suppliers minimum. Raja has a network of compounding pharmacies he's building — lean on him for intros. Redundancy protects against a single supplier going down, getting overloaded, or jacking prices.

Commission to negotiate with Raja:

• Floor: 40% of total sale
• Good: 50%
• Aggressive/high-volume: 60%

Get the distribution agreement in writing. Send to Jack (quietly) to sanity check before signing.

⚠️ Sensitive: Keep Jack's Name Out of the Raja Conversation

Jack has a $10K/mo consulting contract with a direct competitor that's also pursuing Raja/Vesalius for supply. He's helping us as a friend, off the record. Do not mention Jack to Raja, and do not mention Raja's involvement back to Jack's client. Treat this like an NDA even though it isn't one. If Jack ever ends up working with us formally, that's a future conversation.

Go-to-Market

Ideal Customer Profile

Hard filter: 1–3 locations. Anything bigger has a board, takes months, not worth the cycle time for launch. Larger practices are future deals.

Priority order:

1. Med spas — highest intent, cash-pay native, already doing injectables
2. OBGYN / women's hormonal clinics — large script volume potential
3. Men's hormonal clinics — TRT adjacency, warm audience
4. Primary care — floodgate, biggest volume but more educational lift
5. Internal medicine
6. Sports medicine

Qualifying Questions (for Ed's outbound)

• Are you currently prescribing peptides? If yes, how many scripts/month?
• Who's your current supplier? What's the biggest pain point?
• How many locations / providers?
• Are you open to adding a marketing engine for patient acquisition?
• Decision maker — is it you or is there a partner/board?

The trap to avoid: prospects who will ask every question under the sun, make you jump through hoops, then order nothing. Qualify aggressively. Protect the team's time.

The "Out" (Sales Call Escape Hatch)

Ed isn't a clinician. When a doctor asks a clinical question, the answer is:

"That's a great clinical question — I'm not the right person to answer that. Let me set up a 15-minute call with our pharmacist who runs the 503A side. He can walk you through exactly how the product is made, the testing protocol, everything."

This is a Raja ask for tonight: will he (or someone on his team) be on-call as our clinical closer for stage 2/3 sales conversations? If not Raja, he'll know who.

Team Structure (SaaS SDR/AE model mapped to medical)

• Ed + cold callers → top of funnel, qualification, set the meeting
• Clinical partner (Raja or his rec) → stage 2, technical close
• Alton → stage 3, closer + relationship
• MLM layer → medical reps sign up other clinics + other reps, commissions flow up. This is how Jack's client is scaling. We want this baked in from day one.

Product Roadmap

MVP (ship by end of May)

• E-prescribe integration (E-scripts or equivalent)
• Transaction rail: doctor collects → pays platform → platform pays pharmacy
• Drop-ship order flow to 503A
• Basic clinic-facing dashboard
• Admin/ops view for us

Shortcut: Raja likely has an internal ordering system we can ride on for the first customers while ours is being built. Confirm tonight. Use his pipes to start generating revenue immediately.

V2 (next 90 days post-launch)

• Marketing engine — done-for-you compliant ads, lead gen, landing pages for clinics. This is a massive retention lever. Doctors won't churn if we're generating their patient pipeline.
• MLM referral tracking and commission payout

V3 / Roadmap

• EMR module — electronic medical records. Clinics will pay SaaS for this. Also tightens the moat.
• DTC telehealth funnel — hire medical directors, route consumers through our telehealth → prescriptions → our supply chain. This is the Kirkland play.

Capital Strategy

The Core Tension

Jack's position: don't raise. Cash is flowing fast in this space. Go sell, generate revenue, keep 100%.

Alton's position: raise anyway. We want the optionality, the engineering bullpen, and the ability to out-execute everyone.

The Resolution — Two LLCs (Jack's trick)

• LLC A — "Clinic OS / SoftwareCo" — the one we pitch to VCs. Software-focused, pre-revenue or early revenue, clean cap table, SF narrative. Raise $3–5M on a prototype and LOIs.
• LLC B — "Sales / DistributionCo" — gets its own distribution agreement with Raja, processes scripts, generates cash immediately. Not on LLC A's books.

Eventually merge them once A closes its round. Meanwhile, B funds operations and builds the proof points we use to get A funded.

Why this matters: If VCs see us doing $20K/mo while pitching a$30M valuation, they anchor low. Keep early revenue siloed until it's either (a) negligible compared to the vision or (b) big enough to flex.

Raise Target

• Seed: $3–5M on prototype + LOIs
• Series A: $50M when we're at$10M ARR run rate (achievable by end of year if we hit $1M/mo)

Pitch Angle

• "Shopify for 503A peptide clinics" — platform, pharmacy network, marketing engine
• Moat: supply relationships + marketing engine + EMR + MLM distribution
• Path to monopoly (Thiel framing — Alton's language): own the rail, then own the consumer

Competitive Intelligence

Jack's Other Client (the primary threat we know of)

• Former wound-care sales operation, pivoting to peptides
• Started building software in January; peptide workflows last 3 weeks
• Launching next week (mid-late April)
• Target: $50M revenue by year-end
• Team: 6 full-time cold callers, 5–6 reps
• MLM baked into the software
• Multiple suppliers including Chinese, research-grade, and potentially Vesalius
• Jack is on $10K/mo consulting, no equity

What they have that we don't (yet): reps, clinic relationships, live software, supplier contracts.

What we have that they don't: better engineering (vibe-code velocity is real — Opus 4.7, GPT-5.5), better design taste, SF funding networks, more ambitious vision (they're a distribution play; we're a platform play).

Speed matters. They're 3–4 weeks ahead on product, but we can close that gap fast and leapfrog on software quality + marketing engine.

Other Competition

• SF tech bros building generic DTC (Hims-likes) — not targeting the clinic layer
• Research-grade suppliers (Peptide Partners, Sky Peptides) — different lane, regulatory clock ticking
• Existing medical distributors — non-technical, won't ship elite software

Timeline & Milestones

Action Items

Alton — Tonight

• Meeting with Raja. Cover:
  • Distribution agreement terms (push for 50%+ commission)
  • Backup supplier intros (need 2–3 total)
  • Clinical support — will he or his team be the "phone-a-friend" for sales calls?
  • His existing ordering system — can we ride on it for the first month?
  • His compounding pharmacy network plans
  • Don't mention Jack or any competitor by name

Alton — This Week

• Set up the two-LLC structure (talk to a lawyer, NOT vibe-coded)
• Research 503A marketing compliance (FDA/FTC rules for compounded drug promotion)
• Spin up E-scripts integration spec
• Draft the Clinic OS product brief for engineering
• Start the VC warm-intro list (pharma/med-tech focused firms)
• Build industry brief covering terminology — so the team sounds fluent on sales calls

Ed — This Week

• Build qualifying script from the list above
• Source clinic lead lists (med spas, OBGYN, men's hormone, 1–3 locations)
• Debrief Alton on whatever Monica is working on (Alton asked for this on the call — don't let it slip)
• Map the sales cycle end-to-end: prospect → qualify → demo → clinical call → contract → onboard
• Start outbound as soon as distribution agreement is signed

Joint — Next 2 Weeks

• Decide final entity names and branding
• Build internal CRM / lead management database (lightweight — don't over-engineer)
• Design MLM commission structure (study Jack's client's model as reference)
• Draft design-partner LOI template
• Identify first 50 outbound targets

Research / Open Questions

• What are the exact marketing rules for 503A products? (Alton)
• What does a standard clinic distribution agreement look like? (Raja / lawyer)
• Which e-prescribe vendor has the best API? (E-scripts vs competitors)
• 503B ambiguity — what's the current regulatory posture? (research + legal)
• Medical director hiring: who, how much, what structure for DTC phase?
• What's Monica working on, and how does it fit? (Ed to debrief Alton)

Key Risks & Considerations

Regulatory

• RFK / FDA posture on 503A peptides is the biggest single variable. The bull case (what Raja is betting on) is that 503As get a clearer green light for mass compounding. The bear case is tighter enforcement. Either way, staying clean in the 503A lane is the only defensible position.
• Marketing claims: one viral-but-non-compliant ad could trigger FDA attention. Build compliance into the ad engine from day one.

Competitive

• Jack's client is 3–4 weeks ahead and already has sales muscle. They will pick off customers on price and speed.
• Supplier exclusivity — Raja can't be our only supplier, and he probably can't give us exclusive either.
• MLM saturation — if every peptide co is running MLM, rep attention becomes the scarce resource.

Execution

• Alton-on-everything risk. Hiring 2–3 engineers post-seed is critical; don't try to build this alone past June.
• Clinical-expert dependency. If we can't stand up a reliable clinical closer (Raja or otherwise), sales will stall in stage 2.
• Transaction compliance — the doctor-collects-then-pays-us rail is the one thing we absolutely cannot mess up. Legal review before first dollar moves.

Relationships

• Jack's situation is the most sensitive item in this whole plan. He's being generous with info because he's a friend. Protect him. Never let his name surface to his client or to Raja in connection with our work.
• Raja — tonight's conversation sets the tone for the next year. Treat him as a partner, not a vendor.

Loose Ends from the Call

• AI meeting tool: Granola. Jack's using it, you're using it. Standardize.
• Jack is in Chicago Monday (surgery recovery). Not available next week. Plan to see him in Scottsdale soon — he'll coordinate.
• Jack offered a follow-up call with deeper info on qualifying questions and sales conversation flow. Book it for the week of May 5.
• The phrase "racing for pinks." Keep this energy. We're not building to coexist; we're building to win the category.

Last updated: Apr 24, 2026. Living document — update after Raja meeting tonight.