Transparency · the real version
No annual report yet — we have not made enough money to need one. What we do have: a complete log of pre-revenue costs (what was spent before a single euro came in), the revenue split when it does, the public VirusTotal scan registry for every release, and a small remix-on-demand service that helps fund the rest. Updated whenever a number changes.
01 What was spent before any revenue
Every euro listed below was paid out of Sören's personal pocket between roughly mid-2025 and now (April 2026). None of it was reimbursed, none of it counted as company expense, and none of it was offset by sales. This is the pre-launch investment a one-person operation actually needed.
What we deliberately did NOT spend
No agency fees, no marketing budget, no Stripe, no AWS / GCP / Azure, no third-party email service for transactional mail (we self-host via Gmail SMTP for outbound unlock-codes), no analytics platform (we have none), no ad spend. Every avoided line was a deliberate choice — the goal is a structurally light operation that survives without a runway.
02 When the money does come in
Be honest about the order, because that's where most "we donate to good causes" claims fall apart: science / nature / community funding is the second step, not the first. It only happens when there is enough cashflow to keep the operation running and to keep Sören alive on Biniru-income alone. Without that base, no creator, no tools, no biniôpinies, no papers, no defensive publications — nothing.
So the rule we lock in before revenue arrives, in this priority:
Operations & livable income (first)
- Sören's own income — currently zero. This must be covered first or the whole thing stops
- The infrastructure that runs Biniru: hardware refresh, domains, AI subscriptions, electricity, internet
- Legal + accountancy once revenue triggers VAT registration
- Unforeseen — emergencies that would otherwise force a shutdown
Why this is "first" and not apologetic about it: a one-person project where the founder is broke produces nothing. Funding the founder is a precondition for everything below.
Science · nature · community (second, conditional)
- OSA infrastructure — servers, indexing, search backend (free forever depends on this)
- Defensive publications — publish prior-art so it cannot be patent-captured
- Small grants to local Antwerp academia
- Free-tier compute for suite tools that need it
- Nature / community projects when the cashflow allows it
Conditional on the first half being covered. When months are thin, this allocation flexes down. When months are good, it can flex up. Reported honestly here when it does.
No investors. Donations welcome. Public grants only if we have to.
Biniru is not raising. No VC, no angel rounds, no equity for sale. The whole point of the operating structure on this page is to make external investors unnecessary — bootstrap on tool-revenue, keep the company small enough to survive on its own income.
What we do accept: donations (the tip-jar at biniruprojects.ai/tip, the Wall of Patrons inside PTK, voluntary contributions from people who use the tools and want to help). And, if real cashflow trouble hits and the project would otherwise stop: applying for a public innovation grant (VLAIO in Flanders, possibly EU-level Horizon Europe small-actor instruments) is on the table — but only as a last-resort to keep the lights on, never to scale faster than honest revenue allows.
Why this distinction matters: investors require equity + return-on-investment timelines that force scale-or-die behavior. Grants and donations don't. Biniru is built to be slow, EU-resident, and survivable — a structure investors typically wouldn't fund anyway.
Why no Stripe, no US payment processor
All paid Biniru tools use SEPA + Revolut. EU-resident money, EU-resident processing, no US-jurisdiction in the payment path. This costs us conversion (we lose impulse-buyers used to Stripe one-click) but it keeps the company's financial pipe inside EU consumer-protection scope and out of Patriot-Act-style compulsory disclosure reach. That trade-off is part of the brand promise.
03 VirusTotal scan registry
Every Biniru release (APK / .exe) is uploaded to VirusTotal before publication. The scan link below shows the SHA-256 hash and the verdict from 70+ AV engines. If you downloaded a build from us and want to verify it matches the public registry: hash your local file and compare.
Why this matters: the dominant pattern in indie-software distribution is "trust me, I'm not malicious." We disagree with that pattern. A public VirusTotal hash + anti-tamper means the binary you ran is provably the same one we published. If a future supply-chain incident replaces a build behind our backs, the hash mismatch is detectable.
04 Remix-on-demand · /.MitD style
Sören's Suno subscription pulls double duty — it pays for the OSA soundtrack work, and for a small side-service: remixing songs you made (real recordings or AI-generated tracks from any tool) into Sören's signature /.MitD style. Reverse-vocal, cinematic, slowed/pitched, sample-collage — adapted to your source material.
How it works
Send the source file (any common audio format), name the vibe you want, get back a /.MitD-style remix. Includes one round of revisions. Output files are yours to share, post, release — Biniru claims no rights on the derivative.
Why so low? Because the marginal cost is one hour of Sören's time and the Suno subscription is already paid. The pricing is intentionally below the threshold where it competes with serious producers — this is for people who couldn't afford a real remix anyway.
Request a remix →05 Open-source we build on
Biniru tools rest on a stack of open-source software. Listed here so the credit is on the public record. If any of these maintainers ever need a hand from us, they can call it in.