Goonhotel is a venture concept at the proposal stage. The first funded phase exists to answer three questions honestly, before any residency opens.
Can she be built?
A human-fidelity companion: movement, voice, expression, and ordinary interaction at a standard a resident accepts as a person. A prototype to evaluate, not a promise to believe.
Can the property work?
Identify a suitable love-hotel acquisition, design its conversion, and model the residency economics against real costs, real regulation, and real demand.
Can the model hold?
The continuity experience end to end: OSusume, the app, and the rewards economy, tested with a bounded pilot before any scale claim is made.
The capital plan
Evidence before buildings.
The research is done to a first pass: a staged plan that buys proof in the cheapest order. Every figure is a working estimate with exclusions, derived from public sources in the full brief. These are not supplier-validated quotes, and this is not a fundraising-ready plan.
Stage 0A · Raise first
Face and conversation screening
Build the Omotena-she protocol core on a tabletop companion unit and screen expression and conversation before committing to a full-body room trial. Roughly two months after delivery; the proposed vendor builds to order and publishes no lead time. A stationary prototype is a recommended limited experiment, not the full experience.
Stage 0B · Only on pass
End-to-end room prototype
Released only if the 0A checkpoint clears. A full-body unit in a dressed rented room, two rounds of participant testing against gates set in advance. Roughly four months after delivery. Not a robotics R&D budget: if no purchased platform meets the standard, bespoke development is a different, uncosted program.
Stage 1 · Only on go
Acquisition and pilot
Acquire a suitable closed love hotel (current listing evidence ¥29M-130M), convert three proof suites, open to paying guests, and measure the pilot for twelve months. Stage 0 hardware and software are credited, not re-bought. Excludes transaction fees, financing, legal application costs, and any second property.
Combined program
All stages, platform path only
Nothing here is all-in: the unpriced fallback hardware paths, import duties, marketing, and company formation sit outside these totals. Japan's 2025 seed norm was ¥30M-150M per round - market context, not a claim about this venture's terms.
≈¥96M-307M
estimates, not quotes
The honest line. The standard - convincingly human movement, voice, expression, and ordinary interaction - is not established by any platform reviewed. The stationary screening prototype does not test movement; that requirement stays unresolved and uncosted. This plan buys evidence, not certainty.
Every yen is gated
The 0A checkpoint releases the full-body order or stops the program. Proposed test gates, set with advisors before any session runs: a predefined share of participants (proposal: at least 70% of 30+) rates the in-room interaction convincingly human; willingness to pay is measured separately; conversation latency under 1.5 seconds in 90% of exchanges; zero unresolved safety or distress incidents. If the fidelity bar is not met after two iterations, the program stops - capital at risk is limited to Stage 0.
Proposed starting platform, with conditions
Realbotix Series 1 ($11,950 tabletop / $59,950 full-body, published prices) is the proposed primary because it is the only reviewed candidate with a public price and order flow - procurement transparency, not demonstrated fit. Purchase is conditional on confirming Japan delivery, API/SDK access, commercial-use terms, safety documentation, and support. Fallbacks: an Ameca rental (expression benchmark, unpriced) and EX Robots (skin realism, terms unverified), neither priced into the totals.
Months 0-2
Tabletop unit delivered, protocol iteration one running, Stage 0A checkpoint reviewed. Conditional on the procurement gates clearing and on delivery.
Months 3-6
Full-body unit delivered, iteration two complete, two rounds of closed testing against the Stage 0B gates.
Month 7
Go/no-go decision. On go, the property search opens with written suitability criteria.
Months 8-16
Acquisition, licensing, conversion. Three proof suites open to paying guests.
Months 16-24
The pilot is measured: occupancy and rate premium against conventional rooms, repeat rate, companion uptime, against thresholds set before opening.
What exists today: the concept, two documented protocols, the property thesis, the staged funding research, and this site. Everything else is what the first phase is for. Every line item, derivation, and source: What the first funding buys →