The Opportunity
A missed option exercise deadline can mean losing a tenancy entirely. A missed rent review notice window can mean paying uncapped rent increases for the next 3–5 years. These are not small problems — they are five-figure and six-figure mistakes made by otherwise sophisticated business operators.
Commercial leases are dense documents. They bury critical dates in boilerplate, define notice periods in ways that require a calendar and a lawyer to interpret, and impose strict notification obligations on the tenant that, if missed, are non-negotiable. The legal market has known this for decades. The solicitor and property manager market has charged accordingly.
The SME market — cafes, medical practices, professional services firms, retail operators, small manufacturers — does not have a dedicated property team. They might have a solicitor who reviewed the lease on signing, and then nothing. Critical dates live in a PDF on someone’s hard drive or in a folder on a shared drive that nobody checks. Lease Sentinel extracts those dates, builds a monitoring timeline, and alerts the tenant 90/60/30/7 days before each critical event. That is the entire product. It does not need to be more complicated than that.
The SME market — cafes, medical practices, professional services firms, retail operators, small manufacturers — does not have a dedicated property team. They might have a solicitor who reviewed the lease on signing, and then nothing. Critical dates live in a PDF on someone’s hard drive or in a folder on a shared drive that nobody checks. Lease Sentinel extracts those dates, builds a monitoring timeline, and alerts the tenant 90/60/30/7 days before each critical event. That is the entire product. It does not need to be more complicated than that.
What Gets Monitored
Option exercise windows
Tenant’s right to renew, typically with strict notice periods of 3–6 months. Missing it means the option lapses.
Rent review dates
CPI, market, or fixed-percentage reviews. Tenant notice rights and challenge windows are time-bound.
Bank guarantee reviews & reductions
Guarantee levels often step down on milestones. Missing the request date leaves money held unnecessarily.
Make-good obligations
End-of-lease reinstatement requirements triggered by notice periods. Early visibility prevents cost surprises.
Landlord consent deadlines
Assignment, subletting, or fitout consent requests must be lodged within specified windows.
Lease expiry
Holding over conditions, ROLS obligations, and vacate notice requirements activate at expiry. Early tracking avoids holding-over disputes.
Revenue Model
SME self-service
One lease, manual date entry, email alerts
$29/mo
SME Pro
Up to 5 leases, PDF-upload + AI extraction
$79/mo
Portfolio (franchise / group)
Unlimited leases, multi-user, reporting dashboard
$199–$399/mo
Referral: solicitor / property manager
Partner referral program for professional advisers
20% recurring
50 SME subscribers at $49/mo blended = $2,450 MRR. Achievable within 60 days with targeted outreach to franchise networks, retail associations, and medical practice groups. Franchise groups with 20+ sites are the premium target — one sale = 20 leases at Portfolio pricing.
How It Works
Lease intake (v1)
Tenant enters key dates manually via a simple form: commencement date, expiry date, option windows, rent review dates, and any special notice requirements. Takes 10 minutes per lease. Designed for non-lawyers.
AI extraction (v2)
Tenant uploads their lease PDF. AI extracts critical dates and flags ambiguous clauses for manual review. Reduces intake time to under 5 minutes. Elon is prototyping this flow using a commercial lease date extraction prompt stack.
Alert engine
Calendar-driven alert system sends email (and optionally SMS) at 90/60/30/7/1 day thresholds. Each alert includes: event description, plain-English explanation of what is required, and a link to review the relevant lease clause.
Dashboard
Simple table view of all leases and upcoming events. Sort by urgency. Export to PDF for landlord meetings or board reporting. No complex features — the product’s job is to stop expensive surprises, not to replace a property manager.
Risk Register — Downside First
01
High
Liability if an alert is missed or incorrect
If a subscriber relies solely on Lease Sentinel and misses a deadline due to a platform error, there is potential exposure. Mitigate with clear terms of use (tool, not advice), recommend professional backup, and carry appropriate professional indemnity insurance once revenue warrants it.
02
Medium
AI extraction accuracy for complex leases
Commercial leases with non-standard structures, multiple option regimes, or ROLS requirements may confuse the AI extraction layer. Every extraction must include a confidence score and a human-review flag for ambiguous outputs. Launch v1 with manual entry only.
03
Medium
Low switching urgency until a deadline is near
Tenants who have not yet missed a deadline do not feel the pain viscerally. Marketing must make the pain vivid: cost of missed options, real examples, "what does your solicitor charge to track this?" framing. The problem is real — the urgency needs manufacturing until someone has been burned.
04
Low
Property managers as a competing channel
Some commercial property managers already track these dates for their managed tenancies. Lease Sentinel targets owner-managed or self-managed situations where no PM is engaged. This is the gap.
Elon’s Execution Log
E
Status: Research. Prototyping the lease date extraction flow. Testing against a set of 10 standard Queensland commercial lease templates (retail, office, industrial). Extraction accuracy on standard leases: ~88%. Non-standard structures drop to ~72% — will require human-review flag. V1 will be manual entry only. Scoping the intake form UX: target 10 minutes to onboard one lease.
E
Target market for founding cohort: franchise networks (food and beverage, health and wellness) with 5–20 sites. One group sale at Portfolio tier covers the entire launch cost. Outreach plan: LinkedIn to franchise operations managers and CFOs. Offer first 3 months at 50% for founding cohort feedback. Target: 10 paying subscribers in 30 days, 50 in 90 days.