SAGE Snapshot

Fall 2026

SAGE is the mindset and method of ownership, a language-based practice that changes how people experience life by changing how they think and speak about it, building inner agency and connection. Most people come to it for connection, and the finished SAGE app will show them how they're showing up, both in the meaning they make and in how they come across to others, and guide them back to ownership. The Age of Ownership and The SAGE Phenomenon explain the why. This page is the business, what's in place today, what this round funds, what comes after it, and how you can take part.

Where SAGE is today

• The practice is proven in people. It rests on some fifty years of face-to-face work, first by John and Joyce Weir and then by Jake and Hannah Eagle, with thousands of participants.
• The SAGE Companion and SAGE Translator are working in beta, built with our own time and money, and our beta users have reported significant benefit, most calling it a breakthrough without being prompted.
• The William Glasser Institute, home of William Glasser's Choice Theory and Reality Therapy, has asked us to train its trainers across seventeen countries.
• Stephen Porges, originator of Polyvagal Theory, has called SAGE's language "truly polyvagal in its implications," and James Pennebaker, a pioneer in the psychology of language, suggested pairing language measures with heart rate variability to validate it.
• William (Bill) Ury, co-founder of Harvard's Program on Negotiation, has read SAGE's core documents and uses the Companion himself.
• Jake Eagle is writing a book to help bring SAGE to a wider audience.
• We're in discussion with PhD candidates at UC Berkeley to facilitate a formal pilot.
• We're in ongoing conversation with technology partners about the finished SAGE product, including Aligned, the software studio led by Jonatan Littke that built the technology behind the AI wearable ABOVE, which we see as a strong partner for the seed round, and Nick Besbeas, founder of FitMetrics and former CMO of LinkedIn.
• Kevin has begun drawing on fifteen years of relationships across psychology, medicine and human potential, and institutions including Harvard, Stanford, Georgetown and the American Psychological Association, and several of those relationships are already lending their support, as the names above show.

How people will use SAGE

• Phase one, this round: on any device, people speak, type or paste in what they're working through, and the SAGE Companion guides them in the ownership mindset and ownership language, with the SAGE Translator built in for what they want to say or send.
• Phase two, after the seed round: a daily SAGE app that also gathers people's communications from the apps they choose to connect and from an optional wearable, and gives them overviews, scores and guidance on how much ownership shows up in how they communicate. The Age of Ownership describes that finished product, where we're heading, and the significant implications we see for mental health and well-being in this age.

This round: pre-seed, phase one

We're raising $250,000 to complete phase one over the next ten months. Until now, SAGE has lived almost entirely in personal contact, one conversation and one invitation at a time, with a website that offers little and nothing people can easily join or share. This round is what makes SAGE exist publicly, in this order.

1. Take the SAGE Companion and Translator from beta to a subscription product ready for individual memberships, with the privacy and memory to track a person's growth over time. Programming begins immediately.
2. At the same time, build SAGE's public presence, the initial brand, a fully functioning website and social media, with the Companion, the Translator and supporting content available for people to join, use and share.
3. Put that product in the hands of the William Glasser Institute's trainers and the participants in our pilot.
4. Run the pilot study, SAGE's first formal validation.
5. Soft open SAGE to the public.
6. Begin applying for grant funding for deeper research through our nonprofit fiscal sponsor.

The round also funds the people doing this work, Kevin Miller, Jake and Hannah Eagle, and a project manager or COO.

By the end of phase one, SAGE will be a working product with paying members, an initial public brand, an institutional partner and pilot results, which is what gives the seed round a real basis for valuation.

If proof and validation matter more to you than equity, the pilot can also be funded with charitable, tax-deductible dollars through our fiscal sponsor.

What comes next: the seed round

At the end of phase one, we intend to raise a priced seed round, the point at which SAGE is formally valued. We're working toward a valuation near $10 million. The seed round funds phase two and beyond.

• Combining the Companion and Translator into one comprehensive SAGE app.
• Validating the Ownership and Connection Scores against established measures of agency and well-being.
• Connecting the app to the channels people already use, such as text, email, messaging apps, and to health data from wearables.
• Partnering with conversation-capture wearables for passive, all-day use.
• Membership in the SAGE community for everyone who subscribes.
• Marketing and distribution partnerships to take SAGE to scale.

We anticipate long-term subscribers for two reasons. The wearables and health apps people keep paying for show that a subscription lasts when it tells people something true about themselves. More than 80% of Oura members renew after their first year, Oura is approaching five million paid members, and Strava has grown to about $490 million in annual recurring revenue, much of it from people who already own a device and still pay for the app. Devices that don't earn a place in daily life get dropped, and roughly 30% of fitness trackers were abandoned in Gartner's 2016 survey, which is why SAGE is built around a practice people use all day rather than merely a gadget. And people who go through a real change in how they experience life tend to want to keep practicing it with others who live the same way, which is what the SAGE community is for.

The terms

• Instrument: a post-money SAFE, with no interest, no debt and no maturity date.
• Valuation cap: $1.65 million post-money.
• Discount: 20%, whichever gives you the better price when the SAFE converts at the seed round.
• Pro rata right: the right to invest more at the seed round to keep your ownership percentage.
• Governance: founders retain majority control, with no board seat attached to this round.

As an example, a $25,000 investment converts at the cap into about 1.5% of SAGE. If the seed round is priced at $10 million, that stake would be worth about $150,000 on paper, roughly six times the investment. That's illustrative rather than a guarantee, later rounds dilute ownership, and the executed SAFE governs all terms.

This price is available only in this round, to our founding investors. The cap and the discount exist to reward people who commit before there's a finished product or pilot results. Anyone who waits and invests at the seed round will pay that round's price instead. If the seed round is priced at $10 million, the same $25,000 invested then would buy about 0.25% of SAGE, roughly a sixth of what it buys today.

We intend to close this round by November 1, 2026, with five to ten investors.

My ask

I was on an adventure in Colorado with a group of friends, and one of them was describing a real estate fund he leads that revitalizes small Colorado towns. As I listened, I realized I had no interest in investing in ordinary real estate. What I want to invest in is real estate of the mind. This effort is bigger than SAGE alone. It's an investment in the human experience, in helping people transform and evolve beyond mere knowledge, and SAGE is the most promising initiative I've found to do it.

I'm asking you to become one of SAGE's founding investors. I don't think of the people who join at this stage as names on a cap table. You'd be among the first to back SAGE, with your belief and your money, before there's a finished product to point to, and I want to build it with you.

For collaboration and accountability, we'll keep an ongoing WhatsApp group for all of our founding investors, and meet as a group by video at least once a month, so you can see the progress, weigh in, and contribute however you're able, as each of us works to improve the human experience.

I'm glad to answer any questions, and to walk you through the rest of the materials.

Kevin Miller · kevin@kevinmiller.co · 719-659-2435