Three potential directions for the long-term Product Strategy in Pillar 3, with the value each could create, the watch-outs we need to be aware of, and the decision we need to make next.
This document is the output of the strategy work I've been running since the workshop with you and Joe in late April.
The question I've been working through is simple: once we deliver Brilliant Basics as Pillar 1 and the AI-native rebuild as Pillar 2, what does Pillar 3 become? What is the long-term Product Strategy for Duel?
Before going further, a framing point worth being explicit about: the Product Strategy sits above the Operating Model. The Operating Model is how Product and Engineering execute: the cadences, the rituals, the decision rights. The Product Strategy is what we're executing toward. The Operating Model cannot do its job properly until we've decided where we're pointing it.
The reason I think this matters now is because the long-term product strategy cannot sit separately from the work we are doing today. It needs to guide the decisions we make now, particularly as we move into the platform rebuild. Engineering need to understand what we are ultimately building towards so the foundations we put in place now are the right ones. If we only optimise for Brilliant Basics and the rebuild in isolation, we risk making short-term decisions that have to be undone later.
For Product, the long-term strategy gives the team a clear direction of travel. It helps us understand which problems matter most, which capabilities we should prioritise, and how the work we are delivering now compounds into something bigger over time. It also gives me the ability to lead the team with more clarity, so we are not just delivering features in sequence, but making deliberate choices that build towards a future version of Duel.
It also gives us a stronger, clearer story externally. Not because Series B should define the strategy, but because a strong product direction helps show where Duel is going, why that direction matters, and how the platform can compound in value over time.
To answer this properly, I've worked through every major input we have: the board mandate, the runway, the operating model, the company strategy, the philosophical anchors you've set, the decisions already locked in, and the signals coming from the team.
I then developed a wider set of long-term strategic options and stress-tested each one in detail, using Claude as a strategic sparring partner across dozens of iterations. The goal was not to create something that simply sounded compelling, but to pressure-test the logic, challenge my own bias, and get to options that hold up under scrutiny.
What follows is the distilled version: three potential options for Pillar 3, which I'd love to workshop with you. These are not decided recommendations at this stage. They are options designed to help guide the conversation around what could become our long-term Product Strategy, what we want Duel to become, and what strategic direction gives us the strongest foundation for the future.
I've included the value, impact, opportunity, risks and trade-offs for each option, along with my current recommendation at the end. I've deliberately preserved the trade-offs so we can challenge the thinking properly, rather than just rubber-stamp a direction.
It's worth reading this once from start to finish. Then we can work through it together and align on the bet we want to make.
Not in catastrophic ways. In small, consistent ways across almost every account.
Reported numbers differ between brand accounts. Finance can't reconcile because the underlying data has discrepancies.
Reporting drifts. Reconciliation needed in parallel.
AI moderation, nurture. The work landed, the value did not.
Brands feel tracking issues before we do. Back foot.
Affecting every brand. Priority logic does not promote them.
Every ticket reaches us as noise. We cannot focus.
Death by a thousand cuts.
The cumulative effect on brand trust, and on our team's ability to lead, is massive.
Today we sit below the expected line. We are in the red. By Black Friday 2026 we want to be firmly at Expected or above. Brilliant Basics is the bridge.
Three pillars are how we close the gap between today's platform and the long-term strategy. Each one solves a specific problem we face today; together they sequence the build to the future Duel needs to become.
Pillar 1 fixes what's broken now and brings us back to the expected experience. Pillar 2 re-architects the platform in parallel so we accelerate without waiting. Pillar 3 is the long-term product strategy this document is here to decide, built on the foundation Pillars 1 and 2 lay. Click any pillar below for the detail.
The foundational delivery phase. Close the gap between today's experience and what every paying brand should expect. Wrap up the in-flight work, ship the fixes the platform needs to be reliable, and clear the runway for Pillar 2 to build on top of stable ground.
A parallel re-architecture phase that rebuilds the platform to be AI-native, stable, and fixable. Designed to run alongside Pillar 1 rather than after it, so the runway window isn't wasted.
The Pillar 3 question is what the platform becomes beyond the rebuild. The shape is what this document is here to decide. Pillar 3 builds on Pillar 1's reliability and Pillar 2's AI-native re-architecture, but the strategic direction (Option 1, 2 or 3) is what determines its long-term form.
Before I put the three options in front of you, I wanted to give some context on the work behind them.
This is not a brainstorm or a set of loose ideas. It is the distilled output of the strategy work I've been running over the past few weeks, following the workshop with you and Joe in late April.
I've worked through the major inputs that should shape our long-term Product Strategy: the runway, the board mandate, the company strategy, the operating model, the decisions already locked in, the philosophical anchors you've set, and the signals coming from the team.
From there, I developed a wider set of potential strategic directions and stress-tested each one against where Duel is now, where we need to get to, and what we need the platform to become over time.
The audit trail below shows how I got to the three options, and why two were ruled out.
A full data analysis of where the business sits today, and every constraint a future strategy has to honour.
Click for detailThese became the boundary conditions any future strategy has to honour.
Five distinct strategic options for what Duel becomes by 2030.
Click for detailFrom the boundary conditions captured in Step 1, I developed five distinct strategic options. Each one is a different category, a different business model, and a different 2030 picture for the platform.
The goal was to generate breadth before narrowing, so the final shortlist earned its place rather than being defaulted to. Options ranged from the conservative (compound expansion) to the most ambitious (full category creation and beyond) so the trade-offs would be visible.
Each option was stress-tested against the constraints captured in Step 1.
Click for detailAnywhere an option failed a test, the failure was flagged and the option re-scored. Where it survived, the option earned its place on the shortlist.
Two product strategy options were ruled out. Three remain.
Click for detailOf the five product strategy options generated in Step 2, two were ruled out because they could not honour the commitments, the runway, or the company strategy. They are not presented here.
The three product strategy options that remain are: BAOS (the compound platform), ARM (the category-creation play), and the Combined three-layer model. Each one passed every stress test, each one is investable, and each one is buildable from the foundation Pillars 1 and 2 lay. They are presented in detail next.
Three different shapes for the product strategy, on top of the same Brilliant Basics foundation and the same AI-native rebuild. Each delivers different value, faces a different watch-out, and earns a different Series B narrative.
The compound platform brands compose into their advocacy programme. The Rippling playbook, applied to brand advocacy.
One platform replaces 4 to 7 vendors. One renewal, one team, one set of metrics. The Rippling pattern: one admin, one login, one source of truth.
Data isn't stitched across vendor boundaries. CFOs get one defensible number across the programme, the same way finance teams trust Rippling for headcount and spend.
Every signal feeds the Advocate Identity Graph. Advocates receive experiences matched to what they actually care about, not generic brand campaigns. Recognition, rewards, and content all fit the individual.
Channel-agnostic by design. Whatever surface an advocate uses (any app, any channel, any AI agent), the relationship with the brand feels continuous, not fragmented across seven different programmes.
Every additional module is an expansion event at near-zero CAC. Rippling's playbook applied to advocacy: cross-sell into the same customer, unlock new pricing tiers.
Each new brand strengthens the Advocate Identity Graph. Each new module deepens the cross-brand intelligence layer. The platform can't be replicated module-by-module from the outside.
On the compound platform by 2030, growing from today's 36 Tier 1 customers.
Closing the 62-point gap from today's 58% through structural module expansion.
Per-brand benchmark drawn from Charlotte Tilbury's Magic Stars Academy nurture programme.
The valuation multiple compound startups command, with Rippling, Stripe, and Snowflake as the reference set for Series B framing.
Brands compose modules into their own apps, dashboards, marketing stack. Each module makes the others more valuable. SDK-first, headless.
Click any module to see what it does, why it matters, and the key capabilities.
Discovery uses social listening to find people who are already posting about the brand on social networks but are not yet part of the advocacy programme. These organic brand lovers are surfaced in real time, pre-validated, and invited into the programme directly through the channels they already use.
Most advocacy programmes recruit from existing customer lists. Discovery taps into the much larger pool of people who are already advocating for the brand without being asked. They are pre-warmed: they love the brand already. Pre-validation lets us separate the high-value advocates from those with potential to be nurtured into high-value status, so brands invest attention where it will compound.
Social listening across networks, real-time brand mention tracking, pre-validation scoring to identify high-value advocates, identification of nurture-track potential advocates, automated invitation flows through the advocate's own channels.
Creates spaces where advocates engage with the brand and with each other. Themed cohorts, peer-to-peer messaging, recognition feeds, brand-moderated discussion.
Advocates become more loyal, more active, and more valuable when they connect with other advocates. Community turns one-to-one relationships into network effects.
Themed cohort creation, peer messaging, brand-moderated discussions, recognition feeds, network telemetry, role-based participation.
Habit is the gamification layer of the platform. Streaks, missions, levels, achievements, leaderboards, and progression mechanics turn engagement from a one-off action into habitual behaviour. Advocates come back because the platform itself is satisfying to use, not because there is a reward waiting at the end.
Reward-driven engagement runs out the moment the reward stops. Habit builds intrinsic motivation that sustains itself: the gamified loops keep advocates active across the platform even when no immediate payout is on offer. Habitual users are the most valuable users, and they are the cheapest to retain.
Streak mechanics, mission and challenge systems, progression and levelling, achievements and unlock states, social leaderboards, behaviour-shaping reinforcement loops tuned by AIDA, notification and surface cadence that supports the habit without nagging.
Wallet is the platform's points and credits ledger. It tracks every unit of value an advocate earns and spends: points, credits, redemption tokens, exclusive access, perks, store credit. Every issuance and redemption is recorded in one trustable system.
Without a clean ledger, reward becomes a Finance nightmare and a UX problem for the advocate. Wallet gives the platform one source of truth: every point issued, every credit redeemed, every perk unlocked, reconcilable across brand accounts. The ledger is what makes reward programmable rather than ad hoc.
Points and credits issuance, redemption tracking, multi-unit handling (points, credits, tokens, store credit), treasury controls, balance and statement views for advocates, reconcilable reporting integrated with the brand's finance stack.
Tracks each advocate's contribution to the brand, ranks them, surfaces who matters most, and gives advocates a visible status arc to climb.
People work harder when their contribution is recognised. Loyalty makes the relationship status visible, motivating, and ownable.
Contribution scoring, tier definition, milestone unlocks, advocate profile pages, status surfacing across surfaces.
Firewall protects the platform and the brand on two fronts. First, it filters out fake advocates, AI-generated profiles, and platform abusers, so rewards only flow to real humans. Second, it analyses every piece of content for NSFW material and brand-safety alignment, so only advocates who complete challenges properly and produce content as per the brief get rewarded.
One fake advocate or AI-generated submission undermines the integrity of the whole programme and pays out budget that should have gone to real contributors. One off-brand piece of content can cost the brand more than the programme has paid out all year. Firewall makes both threats addressable in real time, so the brand is protected and platform abusers do not get rewarded.
Bot and AI-profile detection, fake-advocate filtering, NSFW content analysis, brand-safety content classification, brief-compliance checking, conduct policy enforcement, escalation workflows, full audit trail.
Captures advocate-generated content, structures it, clears rights, and licenses it back for the brand to use across owned, paid, and partner channels.
UGC is the highest-converting, lowest-cost creative brands can use. Content turns advocate output into a usable, rights-cleared asset library that compounds over time.
Capture flows across surfaces, rights clearance, content organisation and tagging, licensing controls, distribution to brand channels and ad platforms.
Habit shows 67% daily-active advocates. Wallet cleared $2.1M in October. Content generates millions of usable UGC. The CFO attends the advocacy review because the numbers are load-bearing.
A new category, owned by Duel. The HubSpot playbook: name a category, define its primitives, and become the platform every retail brand runs on.
ARM replaces the CRM line item, not the advocacy line item. CMOs and CEOs buy it as a system of record for retail customer relationships, not as a marketing tool.
CRM was designed for leads, deals, and pipeline. ARM is designed for advocates, contributions, and reputation. Brands stop measuring customers in dollars-per-deal and start measuring them in value created together.
ARM treats advocates as humans with contributions, reputation, and intrinsic motivation, not as records in a sales pipeline. The relationship is bidirectional and built to last.
Channel-agnostic by design. Advocates engage on the surfaces they already use (any app, channel, or AI agent), and receive experiences tuned to their actual interests, not generic brand campaigns.
First-mover in a new category. Investors pattern-match against HubSpot's arc: name "inbound marketing," own it, expand outward. ARM earns the same shape of multiple.
Duel names, defines, and owns the category. Every analyst report uses Duel's language, the same way every inbound conversation cites HubSpot.
Average ARM contract vs current ACV. Multi-year, platform-level, displaces the CRM line item.
Fewer, deeper customers. Each is a public reference for the new category.
Duel names, defines, and owns ARM as the new system of record for retail brands. First-mover advantage in a new category.
Category creation commands the premium multiple. HubSpot's peak reference is the anchor for Series B framing.
Same humans, different orientation, different system of record.
HubSpot's playbook applied to retail: name the category, own the language, become the platform every analyst report reaches for. ARM has a definition, an owner, and a category-creation arc that compounds for a decade.
Combine Options 1 and 2 with an infrastructure rails layer beneath. Rails work like Stripe for payments: Duel's core primitives (identity, AI orchestration, money data) exposed as APIs that other platforms plug into and pay us as they use. One product, three ways to monetise.
Three entry points: the full ARM platform at the top, individual compound modules in the middle, or just the API rails at the bottom. Brands pick the layer they're ready for and grow into the others.
Smaller brands and partner platforms can start with the rails alone. Enterprise brands can buy the full ARM stack. The same platform serves both ends of the market without forcing one to fit the other.
Because Duel powers more of the advocacy industry, an advocate's Identity Graph compounds across the brands they support. Personalisation gets richer as more brands plug in.
Channel-agnostic across every layer. Whatever surface or partner platform an advocate uses, the experience is tuned to their intrinsic interests, not generic.
Three customer types served at once: ARM brands, module brands, partner platforms. The full advocacy industry monetised at every level, on one shared foundation.
Investors pattern-match against HubSpot (category creation), Rippling (compound), and Stripe (infrastructure rails) simultaneously, on one investment thesis.
ARM contracts, module subscriptions, API and rails fees. Three shapes off one product.
vs Option 1. Three sales motions, three buyer personas, three product surfaces.
Three patterns layered: category-creation, compound-startup, and infrastructure-rails multiples stacked in one investment thesis. The theoretical premium of the three options.
Duel monetises every level of the advocacy stack: ARM at the top, modules in the middle, rails at the bottom. The only platform serving the entire industry.
One product, stacked three ways. Customers self-select into the layer that fits.
Duel monetises at every level of the advocacy industry. Three distinct customer journeys, one Duel. The platform is the industry.
Hover any row to highlight it across columns. Use the toggles below to hide an option for a direct head-to-head comparison.
Build the compound platform exactly as Option 1 describes, using the Rippling-style playbook applied to brand advocacy. Position it externally as ARM replaces CRM, using HubSpot's category-creation arc as the reference. Take both stories to the Series B narrative. Park Option 3 as 2027-onward optionality.
Foundation + 7 modules. Sold to enterprise retail via the existing referral motion.
The Series B narrative, the AI-native keynote framing, and the HubSpot-style category-creation arc.
Modular execution today. Category language for tomorrow.
One session matters most: Lock the Bet, with Paul and Joe. Everything else flows from there.
Working session with Paul, Joe, and Blake to decide the strategic direction for Pillar 3.
One of three outcomes lands. All three keep the work moving forward.
The hybrid recommendation (Option 1 execution + Option 2 positioning) is locked as the direction. Move straight into Session 6.
Paul reframes specific elements. Recommendation rewritten with his input. Underlying analysis stays valid; smaller rework than it sounds.
Paul lands on a different option (pure Option 2 or pure Option 3). Recommendation flips. Document supports either alternative.
Take the aligned strategy and pressure-test it against every commitment we've made: the 5.8-month runway, the board mandate, the operating model, and our customer promises. The goal is to find where it strains and decide together what to defend, what to refine, and what to acknowledge as an honest watch-out. Output: a sharpened, more resilient version of the strategy.
Define the precise language for the parts of the story that need to be air-tight when an investor, customer, or analyst hears them: the defensibility thesis, how the compound mechanics work, the AI-native specifics, the advocate-first framing, and the Series B investment story. Output: a written narrative the team can use consistently across every audience.
Take the finished narrative outside this room. Run it past a lighthouse customer to check it lands commercially, a friendly investor to validate the Series B angle, the wider exec team to confirm internal alignment, and a board dry-run to rehearse the formal ask. Output: confidence the story holds, or named gaps to close before it goes live.