Middle R&D

Research the leak. Develop the system.000
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For $1–5M ecom brands already running ads

We’ll find $25k leaking from your store. Or we pass.

One call. If we can’t point at the leak, we don’t take you. If we can, we install the system that plugs it in 21 days, done-for-you.

Middle Research and DevelopmentResearch the leak. Develop the system.Scroll↓

The leak

Why is your backend eating your ad budget?

Because ad spend goes up and nothing behind it does. Intake, ops, inventory, customer service, reporting — none of it scales with the budget. You buy growth, then pay for it twice.

  • 01

    Hours

    Orders climb, headcount climbs with them. Work a system should do is done by people, every day, at a wage.

  • 02

    Stack gaps

    Shopify, Klaviyo, a CRM, a helpdesk, a 3PL. Five tools, zero conversations. The gaps between them are where money goes quiet.

  • 03

    Tracking

    Spend is decided on numbers the ad platforms guess at. Bad signal in, bad budget out — and you never see the invoice for it.

  • 04

    Service

    Where’s-my-order tickets, refunds, returns. Handled by hand, answered late, quietly killing the second purchase.

Why the leak exists

Ad spend goes up. Why doesn’t anything else?

Your ads are the only part of the business built to scale on purpose.

Because five tools are having zero conversations.

Every order crosses the gap between them by hand, or not at all.

The leak is the gap. We’re the middle.

One system, wired between the tools you already pay for.

Your adsspend ↑
Your backendintake · ops · inventory · CS · reporting
Shopify·
Klaviyo·
CRM·
Helpdesk·
3PL·
$0leaking from a typical $2M store, per year

Your number

What is it actually costing you?

Eleven questions, one or two at a time. You get a dollar range, the leaks we can already see from your answers, and every assumption behind both. The diagnostic is where it becomes a fact.

The Gap Diagnostic

How do you actually find it?

Your leak isn’t an ads problem. It’s a gap problem — the space between tools that were never introduced to each other. Nobody finds it by looking at one tool. We look at the gaps.

  1. 012 minutes

    Apply

    We look at
    Five questions: revenue, spend, channels, what breaks, who approves.
    You get
    A yes or a no within two working days.
  2. 02Free · 45 min

    Call

    We look at
    Your stack, your spend, and what happens to an order after the ad works.
    You get
    A map of where the money crosses gaps by hand.
  3. 03$25k+ or pass

    Verdict

    We look at
    Each gap priced in hours, lost revenue, and misallocated spend.
    You get
    $25k or more, named — or we pass and tell you why.
  4. 0421 days

    Install

    We look at
    The plan you approved. Nothing else.
    You get
    A working system between the tools you already pay for.
Who’s in the room

An operator who has run the ads and lived in the backend, and a developer who builds what the research calls for. Two people. One lab.

Read the full method →

What gets installed

What do you actually get?

Every install is built from four modules. The diagnostic decides which, and in what order.

  1. Two matte-black blocks joined across the top by a single machined beam — a bridge between systems.
    Module 01 of 04

    Middleware between the tools you already run.

    The Stack Bridge→

    Orders, customers and tickets move between systems on their own. A refund in one place is a refund everywhere. Nobody exports a CSV again.

    Replaces

    Copy-paste between Shopify, Klaviyo, the CRM and the helpdesk.

  2. A matte-black precision dial with one hairline needle — an instrument reading the right signal.
    Module 02 of 04

    Server-side signal back to the ad platforms.

    The Tracking Repair→

    Real purchase, refund and margin events reach the platforms. The algorithm optimises for customers who stay, not clicks that bounce.

    Replaces

    Budget decisions made on numbers Meta and Google guess at.

  3. Two meshed matte-black gears at rest — a mechanism that turns without a hand on it.
    Module 03 of 04

    The manual hours, automated.

    The Ops Autopilot→

    Where’s-my-order, address changes, inventory alerts, reorder points. Handled by rules, escalated to a human only when a human is needed.

    Replaces

    The 20 hours a week someone spends being the integration.

  4. A single upright matte-black bar with one engraved line — one number to decide on.
    Module 04 of 04

    One number to decide spend on.

    The Reporting Line→

    Contribution margin by channel, after refunds and ops cost, in one place, every morning. Spend goes where the money actually comes back.

    Replaces

    Four dashboards that disagree.

An ops hire is $65k a year, before management.

This is $15k, once — and it doesn’t call in sick.

The deal

Why a third?

You pay a third of the 12-month leak we recover. If we can’t find $25k, you pay nothing, because we don’t take you.

You don’t hire an ops team. You don’t learn a new stack. You approve.

  • ⅓

    of the 12-month leak we recover

  • $0k

    minimum, so we only take real leaks

  • 0

    days to a working install

  • 0

    new hires. Zero logins to learn.

The hard questions

Why should you believe any of this?

You shouldn’t, yet. Here are the questions we’d ask in your seat.

All questions, answered in full →

  • Because a flat fee pays us whether the leak closes or not. A third of what we recover pays us only if it does. The $15k floor exists so we only take leaks worth closing — if the math can’t clear it, neither of us should be on the call.

  • Then we pass, on the call, and tell you where we looked. You keep the map. No proposal, no follow-up sequence. We’d rather say no in 45 minutes than spend 21 days proving a small leak.

  • No. The install is built between the tools you already pay for. Switching platforms mid-growth is its own leak; we don’t create one to fix one.

  • The two people on the call. An operator who scopes it and a developer who builds it. Nothing is handed to a junior team after you sign.

  • Because the modules already exist — the diagnostic decides which ones and how they’re wired to your stack. Custom research and bigger builds are a later conversation, after the first system is earning.

  • It runs. You own it. If you want us to keep it from rotting as the stack changes, that’s a separate conversation we only have after the first system has paid for itself.

Apply

Apply for a diagnostic.

If you can’t answer these, you’re not the buyer.

For

  • ●$1–5M ecom, ads already on
  • ●A founder who can approve a 21-day install
  • ●Shopify or similar, plus tools that don’t talk

Not for

  • ○“We might run ads later”
  • ○Agencies, pre-revenue stores, $50M+ brands
  • ○Anyone who wants a strategy deck
Middle R&D

Research the leak. Develop the system.

Middle Research and Development

norbert@middlernd.com

The method

  • The Gap Diagnostic
  • Leak estimate
  • Hard questions

What gets installed

  • The Stack Bridge
  • The Tracking Repair
  • The Ops Autopilot
  • The Reporting Line

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