Strategy

Where Metrognome is going. Multi-year direction at the company level — not the product roadmap. Read this before scoping any work that takes more than a quarter to ship.

The macro thesis

Metrognome is the largest provider of music rehearsal facilities in the Pacific Northwest, serving thousands of musicians with over 500 monthly and hourly rehearsal studios. Taking advantage of an underserved market nationally, Metrognome has embarked on a national expansion seeking to expand from 500 to 5,000 studios nationwide in key markets with high demand and little to no supply.

— CTO Job Description V0.3, March 2026

500 → 5,000 studios. That's the scale ambition. It implies:

~10× the current footprint
Multi-market expansion beyond Portland and Salem
Vertically-integrated operating model preserved at scale (one brand, one platform, three pillars)
Operating leverage from the Platform — shared services don't grow linearly with location count

Strategic moves in flight

1. Migration: leased → owned

The dominant near-term move. Convert Sparky Mack-held leased buildings into owned-RE SPEs.

Active example: 1720 NE 9th Ave Irvington acquisition.

Step 1: Close MG2 Ladd's Addition (M2M master lease). 23 members migrate.
Step 2: Close MG8 Buckman (M2M master lease). 29 members migrate.
Step 3: Acquire 1720 NE 9th outright. 68 planned studios. 78% pre-leased day one via the 52 migrating members. Remaining 16 stabilize from waitlist.
Entity: New SPE, MG Holdings as guarantor.

Why this matters: the financial leverage of "underwriting a migration, not a lease-up." Lenders price migration risk far below open-market lease-up risk. This is the playbook MG repeats.

Other Sparky Mack buildings (MG4 Reed, MG5 Tilikum, MG6 Slabtown) are subsequent migration targets in the same pattern. Sequencing depends on lease end-dates and acquisition pipeline. To be detailed by Pillar 01 Development.

2. New stabilized doors (organic growth)

MG11 Carriage Tower (Flanders / NW PDX) — opens May 2026, fully reserved day one. New SPE under 720 Flanders QOZB / QOZF structure. Day-one stabilized = effectively zero lease-up risk on a new building.

This compounds the rent base by ~70 doors (TBC) without consuming sales/marketing capacity, because demand is already there.

3. Geographic expansion

MG10 Cherry City (Salem) is the first non-Portland location, already open. Salem expansion was a deliberate test of the playbook outside the home market.

Forward direction (per CTO JD): "key markets with high demand and little to no supply" nationally. Specific cities to be confirmed in docs/general/log.md as committed.

4. Hourly product line (launched 2026)

A second product line on top of the same physical infrastructure. Hourly booking unlocks doors during otherwise-low-utilization hours (gaps between monthly tenant practice sessions don't exist within lockouts since they're exclusive — but hourly studios are separate inventory in some buildings).

Strategic question still being validated: does hourly graduate to monthly over 12+ months, or is it a separate market? Hypothesis: separate. See docs/marketing/icp.md "Hourly is a different game."

5. SESHN as the digital-first front door

SESHN extends the brand to musicians outside any market with a physical Metrognome presence. Operationally distinct (Mighty Networks platform, separate community model). Strategically: this is how we maintain top-of-funnel demand in markets where we haven't yet built.

When the company enters a new city, SESHN members in that city become a leading indicator of physical demand and the first wave of pre-leases.

6. AI integration

Listed in CTO JD V0.3 as an explicit responsibility:

Lead AI integration efforts, including but not limited to improvements to internal workflows, member experience, and asset acquisition & management.

Operating leverage is the hidden second axis of the 500 → 5,000 expansion. Headcount cannot grow linearly with location count. AI-augmented workflows are how Pillar 02 Studios scales without each city needing the same staffing depth.

Q2 2026 roadmap themes (current)

From the March 2026 product-roadmap meeting (Metrognome.com Product Roadmap — Meeting 1), four emerging themes:

Data ease of access. Get team off the catch-all Google Sheet. Cheat sheet of operational reference data. Onboard new community managers with proper SOPs.
In-person sales and payment friction. Specifically closing deal on-site after a tour. Get prospects on the waitlist with payment captured efficiently.
Legacy customer friction. Cost-increase confusion among legacy MG6 / MG4 members during platform transition. Ideally a short-term issue.
Communications. Email, SMS, in-app — currently transactional only; needs to start activating members. Tied to content collection.

Top 3 priorities ranked, in order:

P1: Data ease of access (highest impact, high urgency)
P2: In-person sales/payment friction for waitlist (high impact, high urgency)
P3: Payment flexibility (manual invoice for legacy, otherwise request-only)

Next roadmap meeting: 2026-04-30.

12-month roadmap

A full Q2 2026 → Q1 2027 roadmap exists as a Google Doc, shared with the team, with aligned Asana tasks. Refer to that doc for the canonical quarter-by-quarter view; this page captures only directional themes that don't change quarter-to-quarter.

Capital + financial state

2025 portfolio NOI: $555K — proof-of-cash-flow for the lender conversation (OnPoint, April 2026).
Refinance discipline: MG9 Mt. Tabor refinanced Q1 2026 via Standard Insurance, demonstrating the company can hold and refinance at the SPE level.
QOZF program: the company has live Qualified Opportunity Zone Funds in MG10 (676 Church) and MG11 (720 Flanders). Will be a recurring tool for qualifying acquisitions.
Equity capital state — owned by the CEO. Specifics on active raises, target sizes, and runway live with Paul and are not asserted here pending his review of this page.

Specifics on portfolio + entities in real-estate.md.

What's NOT strategy

These are sometimes asked-about and worth being explicit about:

Recording studios. Not in scope. Different product, different room treatment, different customer.
Music venues / shows. Not in scope. Upstream of the product (we serve the bands who eventually play venues).
Music schools / lesson studios. Not the product, though monthly members can teach in their lockouts.
Co-working / "WeWork for music." Wrong frame — the product is your own room, not shared space with strangers.
Recording-focused producers as primary monthly ICP. They want isolation/treatment we don't deliver. See docs/marketing/icp.md "Who is NOT our ICP."

When a partnership, expansion, or product idea drifts toward those, redirect.

How this strategy shapes day-to-day decisions

If you are deciding...	Strategy lens
Build vs. buy a new internal tool	Will it scale to 50 buildings? If yes, build. If specific to today's 9, buy.
Whether to invest in a marketing channel	Does it scale to new markets? Hyperlocal Salem-only spend is fine but discount it against playbooks that travel.
Whether to spend product capacity on hourly vs. monthly	Monthly is the cash engine. Hourly is the experiment. Don't starve monthly to feed hourly unless retention data justifies it.
How much complexity to add to the SPE structure	More entities = more compliance overhead, but more capital flexibility. Default toward the structure Pillar 01 Steward already uses.
Headcount in shared services	Question against operating leverage — does this hire scale with location count or member count? The latter is preferable, the former isn't.

Outstanding items

[ ] Specific target markets beyond Portland + Salem (Vancouver WA? Eugene? St. Louis is named in docs/marketing/icp.md — is that committed?)
[ ] 12-month studio count target (between 401 today and 5,000 long-run).
[ ] AI integration priorities for 2026 — which workflows first?
[ ] Capital posture (CEO-owned).
[ ] Sparky Mack migration sequencing — which building closes next after MG2 / MG8?