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.
Duel becomes the compound platform for brand advocacy, built around one anchor object: the Advocate.
At the foundation sits the core infrastructure every brand needs: the Advocate Identity Graph, AIDA orchestration, brand safe guardrails, Insights, trusted money data, and Agent Engine Optimisation. On top of that, brands can compose seven connected modules that all share the same data, admin layer and login.
That matters because every new module makes the others more valuable. The more a brand uses Duel, the richer the advocate profile becomes, the smarter the orchestration gets, and the more powerful the platform is across every channel.
This is SDK first, headless and channel agnostic. Duel does not need to pull brands or advocates into a single destination. It can live wherever the advocate or brand already is.
The strategic bet is simple: take the same compounding platform logic Rippling used to turn HR into a category defining system, and apply it 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 does not sit fragmented across disconnected vendors. Duel gives brands one trusted view of programme performance, commercial impact and value creation.
For the CFO, that means one defensible number they can stand behind. Not a stitched together estimate from multiple tools, spreadsheets and attribution models, but a clear source of truth for how advocacy is performing and what it is worth.
Every interaction strengthens the Advocate Identity Graph.
Duel turns each signal into a richer understanding of who an advocate is, what they care about, how they engage, and what motivates them to take action.
That means advocates are not pushed through generic programmes. They receive experiences that feel relevant to them as individuals. Recognition, rewards, content and opportunities are shaped around their interests, behaviours and value to the brand.
Duel allows the advocate relationship to move across any surface, whether that is an app, a social channel, a community, a commerce experience or an AI agent, without the experience feeling fragmented.
For the advocate, the relationship with the brand feels continuous. They are not being pushed between disconnected programmes, repeated logins or different journeys that do not recognise who they are.
Every additional module becomes an expansion event.
Once a brand is on Duel, each new module creates a natural path to grow the relationship without needing to reacquire the customer. The same advocate data, admin layer and programme infrastructure can be extended into new use cases, new teams and new budgets.
That is the commercial power of the model. Duel is not just selling more features. It is creating more surface area for value, which opens up cross sell, stronger retention and higher pricing tiers over time.
It is the Rippling playbook applied to advocacy: land with a clear wedge, expand through connected modules, and compound value inside the same customer account.
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.
Each brand pays for more as modules attach. The compound platform expands revenue-per-account 4x as adoption deepens.
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.
Duel creates spaces where advocates can engage with the brand, but also with each other.
This moves advocacy beyond one way campaign participation and into a more connected community experience. Brands can build themed cohorts, enable peer to peer messaging, surface recognition feeds, and support brand moderated discussion in a controlled, trusted environment.
The value is not just more engagement. It is deeper connection. Advocates feel part of something bigger than a task list, while brands gain a richer understanding of the relationships, motivations and behaviours that drive advocacy over time.
Advocates become more loyal, more active and more valuable when they are connected to each other.
Community changes the shape of advocacy. It moves the relationship from a one to one interaction between brand and advocate into a network of people who recognise, support and influence each other.
That is where the compounding value starts. Each advocate does not just create value through their own actions. They strengthen the experience for others, increase participation, and make the programme harder to replicate.
Community turns advocacy from a managed programme into a network effect.
Duel gives brands the tools to build real advocate communities, not just campaign audiences.
Brands can create themed cohorts, enable peer messaging, run moderated discussions, surface recognition feeds, and understand how advocates are connecting through network telemetry.
It also supports role based participation, so different advocates can play different roles within the community, from contributors and creators to mentors, specialists and high value brand champions.
The result is a more structured, more measurable community layer that helps brands build deeper relationships and turn advocate participation into a compounding network.
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.
Each advocate's contribution to the brand is tracked, recognised and translated into visible progress. The more they engage, create, refer, share, support or influence, the more their status grows.
This gives brands a clear view of who their most valuable advocates are, while giving advocates a reason to keep building their relationship with the brand.
It is a loyalty system built around contribution, recognition and progression, helping brands retain their best advocates and giving advocates a clear status arc to climb.
People are more likely to stay engaged when their contribution is recognised.
Loyalty makes that relationship visible. It gives advocates a clear sense of status, progress and belonging inside the brand ecosystem.
Their contribution is no longer invisible or transactional. It becomes something they can see, build and own over time.
That is what makes loyalty powerful. It turns advocacy from occasional participation into a recognised relationship that advocates are motivated to keep growing.
Score each advocate's contribution, define loyalty tiers, unlock milestones, and create advocate profile pages that make progress and status visible.
That status can then surface across every experience, from community spaces and campaign journeys to brand apps, websites, commerce flows and AI agents.
The result is a loyalty layer that does more than reward activity. It gives advocates a visible identity with the brand, and gives brands a clear system for recognising, motivating and retaining the people who matter most.
Firewall is the brand safety and trust layer of the Duel platform.
It protects the brand, the programme and the value exchange by making sure the right people are allowed in, the right behaviours are rewarded, and the right content is approved for use.
That starts with advocate integrity. Firewall helps identify fake advocates, suspicious activity, AI generated profiles, duplicate accounts, fraud patterns and platform abuse, so rewards flow to real people who are genuinely creating value.
It also protects content quality and brand suitability. Every submission can be assessed against the brief, brand guidelines, usage rights, moderation rules, platform policies and safety requirements before it is approved, rewarded or distributed.
Over time, this becomes broader than moderation. It becomes an adaptive trust system for advocacy, covering identity, behaviour, content, compliance, rights, reputation and risk.
The outcome is simple: brands can scale advocacy with confidence, knowing the platform is built to protect both commercial value and brand reputation.
One fake advocate can damage the integrity of the whole programme.
If rewards flow to bots, duplicate accounts, AI generated profiles or bad actors, budget is pulled away from the real people creating value for the brand. The programme becomes harder to trust, harder to measure and easier to exploit.
The same is true for content. One unsafe, off brand or non compliant piece of content can create more risk than the programme has paid out all year.
Firewall makes those risks addressable in real time. It helps brands detect suspicious behaviour, block abuse, assess content quality, enforce brand safety standards and protect the value exchange before damage is done.
The outcome is a safer, more trusted advocacy platform where real contributors are rewarded, bad actors are stopped, and brands can scale with confidence.
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.
Content turns advocate generated content into a structured, usable brand asset.
It captures content from advocates, organises it around the right metadata, clears usage rights, and makes it available for the brand to license back across owned, paid and partner channels.
That means content is not trapped inside a programme flow or sitting unmanaged across social platforms. It becomes a searchable, rights cleared content library that the brand can activate with confidence.
The value is simple: brands get a scalable pipeline of authentic content they can use across channels, while advocates are properly recognised and rewarded for the value they create.
UGC is one of the most valuable creative assets a brand can access.
It is authentic, scalable and often more effective than traditional brand led creative because it comes from real people with real influence.
Duel turns that advocate output into a usable content engine. Every piece of content can be captured, structured, rights cleared and made available for the brand to activate across owned, paid and partner channels.
That means content does not disappear after a programme ends. It compounds into a growing asset library the brand can keep using, learning from and optimising over time.
Content can be captured across surfaces, cleared for rights, organised and tagged with the right metadata, then controlled through licensing rules that define where and how it can be used.
From there, brands can distribute approved content into their own channels, partner ecosystems and ad platforms without relying on manual chasing, spreadsheets or fragmented workflows.
The result is a structured content pipeline that makes advocate generated creative easier to collect, easier to trust and easier to activate commercially.
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.
Duel is not just building advocacy software. We are defining a new category: Advocate Relationship Management.
CRM was built for the transactional era. It manages leads, deals, opportunities and pipeline. ARM is built for the relational era. It manages advocates, contributions, reputation, trust and value created.
It is not a different audience. It is the same people viewed through a different lens. CRM asks, "How do we convert this person?" ARM asks, "How do we build, recognise and grow the value of this relationship over time?"
That is the category shift.
The HubSpot parallel matters. HubSpot did not beat Salesforce by trying to be a better CRM. It named and owned a new category through inbound marketing, then expanded outward from there.
ARM follows the same playbook. It gives Duel the opportunity to own the system of record for advocacy before the market fully knows what to call it.
The trade off is that this is the hardest option to build. A true system of record requires new data primitives, new workflows, new admin surfaces and a longer category creation journey before the revenue fully catches up.
But if we get it right, Duel does not just become another tool in the advocacy stack. It becomes the platform brands use to understand, manage and grow their most valuable relationships.
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 programmes.
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.
And ARM should mean Duel.
This is the HubSpot playbook applied to retail advocacy: name the category, own the language, and become the platform the market uses to understand the shift.
HubSpot made inbound marketing the frame. The software then became the natural answer to that frame. Duel can do the same with Advocate Relationship Management.
ARM gives the category a definition, a language and an owner. It gives analysts, brands, investors and partners a way to describe what is changing in customer relationships.
The opportunity is not just to build a stronger product. It is to shape the market around a category Duel can own for the next decade.
Combine Options 1 and 2, but put an infrastructure rails layer underneath them. This turns Duel into more than a destination platform. It becomes the underlying infrastructure other platforms can build on top of. That gives Duel one product with three ways to monetise: a brand facing platform, a category defining ARM system, and an infrastructure layer that powers advocacy wherever it happens.
Do not choose between the options. Stack them.
Duel can become a layered platform with three connected levels.
At the top sits ARM, the category defining system of record for brands ready to manage advocacy as a strategic customer relationship layer.
In the middle sit the compound modules, giving brands a practical way to adopt Duel through connected capabilities that share the same data, admin and advocate foundation.
At the bottom sit the Foundation rails, exposing Duel's core primitives through APIs for partners, agencies, complementary tools and smaller platforms to build on.
That creates three commercial paths from one strategic architecture.
Brands ready for the full stack buy ARM. Brands not yet ready for the full system adopt through compound modules. Partner platforms plug into Duel's Foundation rails and pay as they use.
The advantage is that Duel does not have to force one buying motion on the market. We can meet the market where it is, while still compounding towards the same long term platform vision.
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.
Use the toggles below to hide an option for a direct head-to-head comparison.
Build the compound platform exactly as described in Option 1.
Use the Rippling style playbook as the operating model: one anchor object, shared infrastructure, connected modules and compounding value across the same customer account.
Externally, position the strategy through the ARM narrative. CRM was built for transactional relationships. ARM is built for the relational era, where advocacy, contribution, reputation and value created become the new system of record.
That gives us both sides of the story.
Option 3 should stay alive, but not be the main strategic bet now. Park the infrastructure rails opportunity as 2027 onward optionality once the core platform, category narrative and customer demand are strong enough to support it.
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 properly.
We need to test it against the commitments already in motion: the 5.8 month runway, the board mandate, the operating model, and the promises we have made to customers.
The goal is not to pull the strategy apart for the sake of it. It is to find where it stretches, where it creates risk, and where we need to be sharper about the trade offs.
From there, we can decide what to defend, what to refine, and what we need to call out clearly as an honest watch out.
The output should be a stronger version of the strategy. One that is still ambitious, but more resilient, more credible, and easier for the business to align around.
Define the language that needs to be airtight.
If an investor, customer or analyst hears this story, the key parts need to land clearly and consistently: why Duel is defensible, how the compound mechanics work, what we actually mean by AI native, why advocate first changes the category, and how this all ladders into the Series B investment narrative.
The goal is not to create more messaging. It is to sharpen the story so the team can tell it with confidence, without drifting into different versions depending on the audience.
The output should be a clear written narrative that becomes the source of truth for how we explain the strategy and story across investors, customers, analysts, partners and the wider business.
Take the finished narrative outside this room and test whether it actually holds up.
We should run it through four lenses: 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.
The goal is to move beyond internal conviction and get real signal from the audiences that matter.
If the story holds, we move forward with confidence. If it does not, we identify the exact gaps we need to close before it goes live.
The output should be clear: either the narrative is strong enough to scale, or we have a named list of issues to resolve before taking it wider.