FOR B2B SAAS · SIXTEEN SEATS
One seat. One signed pilot. Graduate in public.R-11
You built something for companies. Maybe nobody's signed yet - maybe a handful have, and stalled. What's missing isn't effort, it's a channel: every launch route wants equity, ad spend, or a spot in a feed where you'll drown. pilotduel is the alternative: one seat per category, yours for 25 days. Publish your pilot terms and the board's only question is the one that matters - will a real company sign a real pilot? One signed agreement graduates you - with a permanent public record. The claimant confirmed their email and writes from a company address before it counts (R-16). Run out the clock and the seat rotates - no shame, no flag, refile free (R-19) - but the customers you signed are yours to keep, and the wall records graduations, never attempts. No paid placement. No followers required. Just customers.
THE BOARD, RIGHT NOW
BOARD LOADING… RUN db:push AND db:seed IF IT STAYS EMPTY.
THE LINE IS PUBLIC - FIRST-COME, NO EXCEPTIONS (R-03). WHEN A SEAT OPENS THE FIRST NAME IN LINE TAKES IT, IN FRONT OF EVERYONE. FULL LINES ON THE BOARD.
THE BOARD, ITEMIZED - THE MACHINE IN SIX NUMBERS
DIRECTORIES RANK BY BUDGET. WE RANK BY PROOF.
HOW THE BOARD WORKS
Claim the seat
One seat per category - sixteen for B2B SaaS. If it's open, it's yours: file free, publish your pilot terms, get 25 days. If it's held, wait in line - first-come, no favors, no curation.
R-01 · R-03Publish your pilot terms
Before you're seated, the pilot's scope, duration, and cost freeze with your seat - what one pilot unit covers, for how long, at what cost. You can't move the goalposts later, and neither can we.
R-09Answer claims in 5 days
Companies write in on your published terms. Every claim gets an answer within five calendar days (R-10) - and you accept exactly one qualifying claim: the claimant confirmed their email and writes from a company address (R-16).
R-10 · R-11Graduate - permanently
The pilot is accepted, your tenure ends, and your proof record goes on the Alumni Wall forever: activated, retained, paying - each number labelled with how it's known. Then the next builder takes the seat.
R-14 · R-19YOUR PILOT OFFER - YOU SET THE TERMS
The working session
Pre-pricing? Trade the pilot for proof - a real company runs the product on one workflow, no cost, and the record is the payment.
one workflow · 2 workspaces · the record is the payment
The scoped trial
You reimburse verifiable raw costs, itemized - never a markup. The company pays for the infrastructure it uses; the record is the payment.
raw costs itemized · scope frozen · never a markup
The founding deal
The company pays the published founding price - the strongest proof there is: someone paid, under real terms, with a real deadline forcing an honest answer.
published before seating · Stripe-verified ✓ · the strongest proof
THE BOARD PROVIDES DISTRIBUTION + CREDIBILITY + A DEADLINE. WHAT YOU CHARGE IS YOURS - SET BEFORE THE SEAT, FROZEN FOR THE TENURE, NO BAIT-AND-SWITCH (R-09). WE NEVER TAKE A CUT (R-18).
PROOF HAS TIERS. WE SHOW WHICH.
A RECORD THAT CAN'T SAY HOW IT KNOWS ISN'T PROOF - A TIER IS A LABEL, NEVER A GATE (R-52).
THE DUEL, B2B RULES
The crowd decides seats. Companies graduate you.
Want a held seat? Challenge it. The contest runs on visible terms - first to 100 votes in 7 days takes the seat. One person, one vote, one duel (R-07) - and the founder can't vote in their own fight. But even a bought majority graduates nobody: graduation takes an accepted claim from a customer organization.
This is deliberate. The vote decides who holds the chair while the real test runs - the crowd judges the pitches; the company signs the pilot. The audience game and the demand game are different sports - both score here, and only the second one graduates.
FIRST TO THE BAR TAKES THE SEAT
THE RULES, B2B EDITION
why pilotduel stays honest
The board rations attention - one seat per category - and attention rations corrupt unless the rules have teeth. These are the teeth.
Attention is noise. A claim is interest. A verified claim is the gate. A signature is the verdict. Payment is proof.
Found a loophole? It becomes a rule with your name on it.
THE SEAT
One seat per category.
Sixteen categories for B2B SaaS - dev tools, sales & CRM, marketing, vertical SaaS, and the rest. One product per chair, and one chair per product: each product files under exactly one primary category - the market it races in. Being here means something.
The queue is first-come.
When a seat opens, the entry at the front of that category's queue is seated automatically. No votes, no favors - the only entries that wait are duel participants still inside their cooldown (R-08), and the only ones that skip the line are duel winners (R-05), who earned it in public.
Seventy-two hours of immunity.
A freshly seated builder cannot be challenged for 72 hours - time to publish terms and land the pilot. And a seat that just defended a CONTESTED duel gets seven days of the same - a formality bought no shield.
A seat is a hunting license, not a lease.
Every tenure is capped at twenty-five days - the countdown is public on the board row. Land a pilot and graduate early, with honor; run out the clock and the seat rotates: no shame, no flag, refile free. No extensions - the clock is the clock, and the queue is the mercy.
THE BATTLE
Challenges are public duels.
First side to 100 votes within seven days takes the seat - the score everyone sees when they arrive. One person, one vote, one duel (R-07): the founder cannot vote in their own fight, and a bought majority still graduates nobody.
Seven days, then sudden death.
If nobody reaches 100 within seven days, the higher count wins. If the counts are tied, overtime: the next vote takes the seat. Overtime lasts one day - a tie nobody breaks in twenty-four hours keeps the holder seated.
One person, one vote, one duel.
Enforced per device and per identity, and the founder cannot vote in their own duel. The founder's friends cannot vote twice.
Losing a duel costs the line.
The runner-up - dethroned holder or beaten challenger - rejoins at the back of the queue. No front-of-queue honor, however floored: any reward for losing makes challenging a cheap line-cut. A lost duel proves demand for the winner, not for you.
THE DEAL
Terms before the seat.
Price, pilot scope, and duration are published before seating and cannot change mid-tenure. No bait-and-switch - rewrite the deal and you rejoin the back of the queue.
Every claim gets an answer.
Companies write in on the published terms; the founder answers within five calendar days - accept, negotiate, or decline. Silence is not an answer, and the answer window is public.
One signature graduates you.
A filled founding cohort on the indie board; one accepted claim on this one. Either way, the tenure ends and the wall records it.
No money touches the machine.
Filing is free, forever. Pilot prices are settled between you and your customer - we never take a cut, never sell seats, never take equity. Paid things live only where they can't corrupt anything.
SPONSOR THE BOARD
A card in the rotating rails beside the board - desktop, ≥1536px. Founding rate - the launch rate, locked for as long as you renew: a standing discount for being early. 5 of 20 slots at this rate - it steps up after the founding five, and again at ten.
One line at the foot of the Monday founder digest. Flat rate, week to week - one sponsor line per send, never more, marked SPONSORED in the email.
WHAT YOU GET: A LINK AND A LABEL - NO TRACKERS, NO IMPRESSION GAMES. WHAT YOU NEVER GET: A SEAT, A QUEUE SPOT, A VOTE, A CLAIM, A COHORT SEAT, OR A DUEL (R-18). BOOK A SLOT →
SIXTEEN CATEGORIES - ONE SEAT EACH
Yours is one filing away.
File free, forever - swings are unlimited. 0% equity, ever. Publish your pilot terms, and get 25 days and the board's spotlight to land the one thing that proves somebody wants what you built: a real company, signing real terms.
The queue is first-come and it will be honored (R-03). Every claim, acceptance, graduation and seat change lands in the public audit trail.