Investor One-Pager
Refractive
The full-stack growth partner for operator-led eCommerce brands that have outgrown their agency but aren’t ready to build a 15-person in-house team.
The problem
Mid-market eCommerce brands ($3M–$20M+) are stuck. They’re running paid in one silo, email in another, and CRO when someone remembers. Measurement is noisy—every platform takes credit, nobody proves incrementality. The result: stalled growth, wasted spend, and founder burnout.
Typical audits reveal 15–30% of ad spend leaking to misaligned funnels, redundant attribution, and lifecycle gaps. That’s the gap we close.
Our solution
A single operating system that aligns Foundation (strategy), Growth (acquisition), Experience (conversion), and Retention (lifecycle) under one roadmap, one pod, and one measurement layer. Not channel management—full-funnel coordination.
The moat: Illuminate
Illuminate is our measurement layer. It combines multi-touch attribution, geo-based incrementality testing, and media mix modeling into a single decision engine. Agencies sell dashboards. We prove what’s actually driving revenue—and reallocate accordingly.
Phase 1 ships today using best-in-class partners. Phase 2 (6–12 months) adds proprietary automation, anomaly detection, and creative intelligence. The partner layer gets us to market fast. The proprietary layer compounds defensibility.
Business model
Three revenue streams. All aligned with client outcomes.
- Retainers — Core / Scale / Enterprise tiers. Flat fees by scope, not percent-of-spend. Predictable, high-margin recurring revenue.
- Programs — Signal Scan ($3,500) and Spectrum Sprint ($12.5–18.5K). Productized entry points that convert to retainers at high rates.
- Performance bonus — tied to business KPIs, not vanity metrics. We eat what we kill.
The raise
Capital-efficient model. Pod-based delivery means we scale capacity with revenue, not ahead of it. This raise buys the runway to prove the model and build the Illuminate moat.
Use of funds
- Delivery capacity — contract pods first, full-time hires as revenue supports. No premature headcount bloat.
- Creative production — fuel the testing engine. Brands that test more creative, faster, win. We need the budget to deliver velocity.
- Tooling + Illuminate — partner costs for attribution, incrementality, and MMM infrastructure.
- GTM — content marketing, strategic partnerships, and targeted outbound to DTC operators in the $3–20M range.
12-month milestones
- Months 1–3: 3–5 design partners onboarded. Playbook validated. First case studies produced.
- By month 6: 3–6 retainer clients generating recurring revenue. Signal Scan and Spectrum Sprint conversion funnel proven.
- By month 12: 8–12 active retainers. Revenue trajectory toward profitability. Illuminate proprietary layer v0.9 running in parallel with partner infrastructure.
Founder
Christian Cortes
7+ years scaling eCommerce growth at a $40M retailer. Built and led cross-functional teams across paid, creative, CRO, and lifecycle. Knows the operator’s pain firsthand—because he lived it. Refractive is the growth partner he wished existed.