The boiler
A homeowner has repaired the same ageing boiler twice in eighteen months.
They have not searched for an installer.
They are asking:
“Is it worth repairing this thing again?”
Rivonia / Early SignalCustomer acquisition
You are paying the most for customers at the exact moment every competitor can see them.
By the time a customer searches for a supplier, compares companies or fills in a form, the buying decision has often been forming for days or weeks. Rivonia helps high-ticket service businesses enter those conversations earlier, with the right message, the right next step and a measurable path to profitable customers.
Request an Early Demand Review
Not ready to talk? Run the Early Demand Diagnostic For established high-ticket service businesses typically investing £8,000+ a month in customer acquisition.
01Visible demand
You probably do not need another agency promising you more leads.
You probably already have leads.
Google Ads.SEO.An agency.Maybe Meta.Maybe lead platforms.
And every month, somebody sends you a report.
Traffic is up.
Cost per click is down.
Cost per lead improved.
Most of the boxes are green.
Yet the questions that actually matter can remain surprisingly difficult to answer.
- What did we spend to acquire an actual customer?
- Which channel produced the profitable jobs?
- Why are so many leads not answering the phone?
- Why does acquiring each new customer seem to cost more every year?
Monthly performanceIllustrative view
- Traffic
- Increasing
- CTR
- Improving
- Cost per lead
- Decreasing
Acquisition Visibility Check
Looks better. Is the business better?
And if you gave your marketing team another £5,000 tomorrow:
Where should they put it?
If nobody can answer that confidently, you do not have a shortage of marketing activity.
You have an acquisition problem.
And one reason may be that everybody is fighting hardest for the customer at exactly the same point.
When the customer finally makes their demand obvious.
02Candour
Rivonia is new. We will not pretend otherwise.
We do not have a library of ChatGPT Ads case studies to show you. We will not manufacture one.
The channel is emerging. Rivonia is building its first body of evidence through a small number of founder-led engagements.
That is why the first test begins with a defined question, defined exposure, defined commercial hurdle and defined stop condition.
Inspect the work you receive03Question
Some of the most important buying decisions in your market happen earlier.
The roof
Another homeowner has two quotes on the kitchen table.
£8,400.
£13,200.
They do not necessarily want a third quote.
They want to know:
“Why are these two prices nearly £5,000 apart?”
The air-conditioning system
Somewhere else, the system still works.
For now.
Its owner has not requested a replacement quote.
They are wondering:
“Do I replace it now, or risk another summer?”
None may appear in your lead report.
None has filled in your form.
None has asked your salesperson to call.
But all three have already begun making a buying decision.
That is the opportunity.
04Intent
Search is where demand becomes obvious.It is not always where demand begins.
- Problem
- Question
The buying decision began here.
- Comparison
- SearchVisible demand
Traditional acquisition sees the customer here.
- Quote
- Sale
Once somebody searches for a supplier, everyone can see them.
So everyone can compete for them.
But expensive decisions usually begin earlier.
Those questions can be early commercial signals.
And increasingly, customers are taking questions like these into ChatGPT.
That creates a new acquisition surface.
05Decision forming
Rivonia is beginning with ChatGPT Ads.
People use ChatGPT to explore choices, compare alternatives and work through decisions.
Ads in ChatGPT can appear separately beneath a response as clearly labelled sponsored placements. The ads system can consider the context and intent of the current conversation alongside the advertiser's message, landing page and advertiser-provided context hints describing when the business may be useful. Context hints guide matching rather than acting like exact-match search keywords.
That matters because this:
“boiler replacement Kent”
is very different from this:
“My boiler is 15 years old, I've repaired it twice and it has broken again. Is it worth fixing?”
The first declares what the customer wants.
The second reveals the decision they are still trying to make.
Rivonia is built around understanding that second conversation.
An independent ChatGPT answer. A separate sponsored placement. A landing experience that helps the customer take the next sensible step. Rivonia connects that path to a commercial outcome.
Read the deeper caseWe are starting with ChatGPT Ads. We are not building the company around permanent dependence on one platform.
The enduring capability is finding commercially valuable buying conversations and building acquisition around them.
06The commercial hurdle
What would this have to produce to be worth doing?
Start with your own customer economics. Change the assumptions to see the hurdle the initial test must clear.
RIVONIA / COMMERCIAL HURDLEInitial 90 days
£13,000 initial investment. 11 whole customers required to recover it.
Illustrative starting values. Replace them with your own assumptions; these are not industry benchmarks.
- Gross profit per customer
- £1,225
- Professional fee
- £9,000
- Media
- £4,000
- Total initial investment
- £13,000
11
whole customers required to recover initial investment
| Customers | Gross profit | Contribution |
|---|---|---|
| 5 | £6,125 | (£6,875) |
| 10 | £12,250 | (£750) |
| 20 | £24,500 | £11,500 |
Illustrative unit economics only. Not a performance forecast. Excludes servicing, repeat work, referrals, fixed overhead and tax.
The point is not simply a lower acquisition cost.
It is being able to make the next operating decision with more confidence — whether that means adding another crew, entering a new territory, increasing acquisition spend or deciding not to.
Better visibility does not remove uncertainty. It makes fewer expensive decisions depend on guesswork.
07The firm
Why does Rivonia think about marketing this way?
Rivonia was founded by Tonderai Kachecha, CA(Z), whose career has included work across Deloitte, KPMG, Barclays, Deutsche Bank and Lloyds Banking Group, spanning audit, banking, treasury and finance.
That background shapes how we approach customer acquisition.
Start with the economics.
Separate what we know from what we assume.
Control exposure.
Measure the commercial result.
Put more capital behind what earns it.
The advertising channels may be new. The discipline is not.
08Founding Partner Programme
Four Founding Partners.
One partner. One category. One territory.
“I do this work personally.” Each engagement needs founder involvement in research, opportunity selection, offers, copy, acquisition design, measurement and commercial review.
The reduced founding rate supports our first body of evidence in this channel. In return, rights to document the engagement and use resulting evidence are agreed contractually. Public naming is not automatic.
90 daysRIVONIA
£3,000 per month × 3 months. £9,000 total professional fees.
Standard programme: £4,500/month × 3, £13,500 total professional fees. Both require a 90-day minimum. Media is separate, paid directly by the client. No media markup.
4 territories currently available
And we do not build the same acquisition system for two direct local competitors simultaneously.
If a territory is allocated to a heating partner, competing heating businesses in that agreed territory cannot join during the active engagement.
Four partners reflects the capacity to do the work personally.
View the Partner Programme09Next step
Start with an Early Demand Review.
Start with a conversation about your business, before committing to a programme.
First, we need to decide whether there appears to be something commercially credible to test.
The Early Demand Review is a 30-minute founder-led conversation.
We look at one core service, your existing acquisition, your customer economics and where valuable conversations may be happening before customers formally search for suppliers.
At the end, we want a straightforward answer:
Is there something here worth investigating further?
If there is, we will show you what we believe the first test needs to prove.
If there is not, we will say so.
No generic marketing audit.
No 47-point report designed to manufacture problems.
No obligation to proceed.
Customer acquisition begins before the quote.
Request an Early Demand ReviewFor established high-ticket service businesses typically investing £8,000+ a month in customer acquisition.
Prefer to work through it first? Get the Early Demand Diagnostic