For Employers
49 jobs.
Up to 25,000 customers.
The jobs you pledge decide how far your brand travels among that town’s pledgers — quantity and quality both count, and better-paid roles cost you less. The job pledge is charged only if you are selected; the distribution it buys is billed after the raise closes, in arrears, the way any ad platform bills you.
Captive talent pool
Every resident lives, works, and spends within one square mile. Zero commuter churn.
Max 49 jobs
The ACA employer mandate threshold. The ledger rejects a 50th at input — there is no approval route.
Chosen before you open
Pledgers pick you in the app. Every steward who did is a customer walking in the door on day one.
Better jobs, lower fee
The fee per job falls as the salary band rises. Pay people well and you pay less to pledge them.
160 sqft per job
The commercial footprint you can occupy follows your pledged headcount — 7,840 sqft at the cap.
Annual re-competition
High-performing employers earn automatic renewal. Underperformers go to the December ballot.
The schedule
The better the jobs you bring, the less it costs to bring them.
Your budget is priced off your state's median household income, not a rate we set. Take the prior year's median, multiply by 5%, then adjust for how the salary compares to that median. Higher-paying roles cost less because they put more into the town; lower-paying roles cost more because they still take commercial footprint a steward could have had otherwise. No negotiation, no discretion, the same schedule for everyone — and because raises run monthly, you set it again every raise you want to be in.
Worked at a state median of $80,000 — a $4,000 base
| Band | Salary vs median | Multiplier | Cost per job |
|---|---|---|---|
| σ+3 | ≥ 250% of median | 0.50× | $2,000 |
| σ+2 | 175–250% | 0.65× | $2,600 |
| σ+1 | 125–175% | 0.80× | $3,200 |
| σ0 | 85–125% · baseline | 1.00× | $4,000 |
| σ−1 | 60–85% | 1.35× | $5,400 |
| σ−2 | 40–60% | 1.75× | $7,000 |
| σ−3 | < 40% | 2.25× | $9,000 |
A hard cap of $12,000 per job applies whatever the band says — it starts to bite above a state median of about $106,667, where the lowest band would otherwise pass it. The 49-job ceiling is absolute: the ledger rejects a 50th job at input, and there is no approval mechanism to ask for one.
What you owe, and when
Three charges. They never merge.
1 · The job pledge
Authorised each raise. Charged only if you are selected.
Set it by the jobs you pledge, and it runs as distribution across the month — your rewards, roles and brand in front of that town's pledgers, driving the tags and rankings that decide who gets a lease. It also buys tiered aggregate data on the pledger pool. Aggregate only: URBAL never shows a business individual-level pledger data.
Nothing is charged until you sign a lease. Selection comes first, then a background check on who owns you; clear it and sign, and the job pledge is charged and lands in the town's Civic Anchor Account, split equally across every dwelling unit. Not selected — or selected and unable to clear that check — and it is never charged at all. You keep the reach you got, and your money. None of it is URBAL's revenue either way: URBAL takes 5% of a successful raise and nothing here.
2 · The fulfilment fee
Only if you win, and only if you don't deliver.
This binds only on businesses that won a lease. If you were not selected, your pledge was advertising and you owe nothing. If you were, it activates after move-in when headcount falls below what you pledged, or any role drops below its pledged salary band. The rate is 5% of the pledge delta, per non-compliant role, per month. No cap, no grace period, no discharge — it runs until you fix it.
It clears automatically, but only when headcount and salary bands are both right at the same time. Let either slip again and it restarts immediately.
What "the delta" means
It depends on how you missed. A role you never filled carries 5% of its whole pledge cost — nothing was delivered for it. A role you filled below its band carries 5% of the gap between the band you delivered and the band you pledged. Fill a role late and underpaid and you are in both, until you are in neither.
3 · The distribution fee
$1.00 per square foot, per raise — and it is the only thing you pay without winning.
Charged on the commercial footprint your pledge entitles you to — 160 sqft a job — and billed after the raise closes, the way Meta and Pinterest bill you. You never pre-load a budget. You are billed whether or not you are selected, and whether or not the raise closes funded, because the distribution ran either way. It goes to that town’s Civic Anchor, not to URBAL: the platform’s revenue is its 5% on a funded raise, so it has nothing to gain from your distribution spend.
5 jobs · 800 sqft
$800 / raise
$9,600 a year
12 jobs · 1,920 sqft
$1,920 / raise
$23,040 a year
25 jobs · 4,000 sqft
$4,000 / raise
$48,000 a year
49 jobs · 7,840 sqft
$7,840 / raise
$94,080 a year
A dollar a square foot is what a resident of that town pays for everything — it is the same rate as the total monthly commitment on the fee schedule. Measured against what a business of this size already spends on paid social, typically $850 to $2,000 a month, a twelve-job pledge lands at the top of that band — for an audience that asked for you by name.
What it actually costs to miss
Four ways this goes wrong, priced.
A small miss is survivable. A large one, held for a year, is not — and because it accrues monthly, how long you leave it matters as much as how far off you are. All four run at a $80,000 state median.
Headcount shortfall
A coffee roaster pledges 15 jobs at σ0 and staffs only 10.
Five roles sit unfilled. Nothing was delivered for them, so each one carries 5% of its whole pledge cost.
- 5 unfilled × 5% of $4,000
- $1,000/mo
- Held for 6 months
- $1,000/mo
- Total fulfilment fee
- $6,000
The month the fifth hire starts at the pledged band, it stops.
One salary quietly cut
A tech studio pledges a senior developer at σ+1 ($100K) and pays $50K.
That is a σ−1 role. The fee is 5% of the gap between what a σ−1 pledge would have cost and what they actually paid for a σ+1 one.
- $5,400 − $3,200 = $2,200, at 5%
- $110/mo
- Held for 18 months
- $110/mo
- Total fulfilment fee
- $1,980
Small alone. This is the per-role rate — scale it.
An anchor employer does it at scale
A law firm pledges all 49 jobs at σ+1 ($125K), then restructures everyone down to σ−1 ($65K).
The same $110 per role as the case above, 49 times over, every month it stands.
- 49 × $110
- $5,390/mo
- Held for 24 months
- $5,390/mo
- Total fulfilment fee
- $129,360
Their pledge fee was $156,800. Two years of non-compliance costs almost as much again — and it does not stop on its own.
Both at once
A restaurant group pledges 49 — 30 at σ0, 19 at σ−1 — then staffs 35 and pays all of them at σ−2.
Fourteen roles unfilled and thirty-five underpaid, so both halves run at the same time.
- 10 σ0 + 4 σ−1 unfilled
- $3,080/mo
- 20 σ0 and 15 σ−1 cut to σ−2
- $4,200/mo
- Held for 12 months
- $7,280/mo
- Total fulfilment fee
- $87,360
On top of a $222,600 pledge fee, twelve months of this puts the cost of not delivering at $309,960.
None of this is a penalty for having a hard year. It is what makes the pledge worth something to the stewards who ranked you — every one of them chose you over someone else on the strength of what you said you would pay.
Three tiers
How many jobs you pledge decides what you can see.
Starter
5 jobs
Rewards eligibility for that town’s pledgers, plus the basic aggregate data feed on the pledger pool.
Growth
15 jobs
Enhanced data and the pledger demand signal dashboard — and URBAL starts engaging you directly, which it never does before you pledge.
Anchor
49 · the cap jobs
Full anchor employer status, priority placement, and the complete data suite.
How it works for you
Two sides of the outer wall. One re-competition per year.
Purpose-built employer space, sized to the jobs you pledged, and an annual steward vote on whether you stay.
160 sqft per pledged job
Your commercial footprint follows your headcount — 7,840 sqft at the 49-job cap, and no more.
A customer before day one
Pledge before raise close and every steward who selected you is recorded on the immutable ledger as a committed customer — before you have hired a single employee.
Sign the lease, or never pay it
Clear the pre-lease check and sign, and the job pledge is charged and lands in that town's Civic Anchor Account, split equally across every dwelling unit. Not selected, or selected and unable to clear that check, and it is never charged at all. URBAL takes neither — its revenue is 5% of a successful raise.
Every mechanic, in full.
You cannot apply. You get asked for.
How you actually get in
Sign up, verify your EIN, attest to franchise status, configure your rewards, set your job pledge, and you are in the selection pool for that raise. Each town's pledgers decide what ownership structures they will accept, as part of what they curate during the raise — every type is accepted unless a majority declines it — and if they decline yours, you are not selected and your budget comes back in full. Ownership is proven later — after selection and before the lease, with the legal documents and tax filings that show who owns you, checked by the Council and stewards against what their town asked for. Fail that check and the lease moves automatically to the next business on the waitlist — competing against your own category, not the whole town, so an office employer is never scored against a clothing retailer. There is no endorsement threshold to wait out and no application to be approved — entry is deliberately open, because a business nobody wants simply does not get ranked and gets its budget back. URBAL never approaches a business that has not pledged; once you have pledged 15 jobs or more, that changes and we engage you directly.
Zone is assigned, not bid for
What kind of business you are decides where you go. Spice Tray takes restaurants, cafés, pubs and bars, retail, music venues, arts and galleries. Vine Garden takes larger retail, logistics, hospitality and businesses serving the county catchment. Orchard Garden is corporate office and professional services only. Tulip URBs are institutional and are not reachable through a standard job pledge.
Where inside the zone
Placement follows the spatial centroid of the pledgers who ranked you — you land among the people who asked for you. There is nothing to bid on. Every unit in an URBAL town, commercial or residential, is charged the same way: a service fee indexed to square footage, already set before you arrive. A better corner does not cost more, and no amount of money moves you to one.
Outer wall locations
2 dedicated sides per URB. The URB outer wall has 4 sides — 2 employer, 2 retail. Employer sides are purpose-built for office, production, and light-industrial configurations, with direct access to the car-free town interior. Freight never enters the town: deliveries are sorted in the Commons logistics quadrant and run in on autonomous freight rail, so there is no loading dock, no service yard, and no conflict with the pedestrian street network.
Zone by business type
Spice Tray
Restaurants, cafés, pubs and bars, retail, music venues, arts and galleries
Vine Garden
Larger retail, logistics, hospitality, and businesses serving the county catchment
Orchard Garden
Corporate office and professional services only — no healthcare, which sits on the Blue Tulip corner
Tulip URB
Institutional only — not reachable through a standard job pledge
Start the process