AirOps is a work business trying to become a software business. We grew by promising the work — implementation, strategy, managed content — but we are priced as if we have a platform people love and can't live without. The board deck tells the growth story. This document tells the harder story: which parts of the business are real, which are fragile, and where the next twelve months of runway should be spent.
Insights surface opportunities → Agents execute plays → Impact is measured → Learning feeds back into better insights → Cycle repeats.
Each standalone layer has credible substitutes. The loop does not. Every strategic choice in this document should be evaluated against one question: does it make the closed loop tighter, faster, and more valuable?
The business is ~60% services-driven, ~40% product-driven. Enterprise is 100% logo retention; SMB churns averaged 5 months. The product aspiration and the revenue reality are not yet aligned.
Before debating scenarios and levers, commit to the moves that are positive in every scenario. These are the decisions we should not bike-shed. They require no strategic debate — only execution discipline.
These twelve moves are the floor. Everything below is about what we do above the floor — which bets to make with the resources that remain.
Before any layer-by-layer analysis, name the single highest-priority initiative. This is the thing the product engineering team has to nail in the next 30 days. It outranks everything else on this page.
"Spending a dollar of Claude compute inside the AirOps harness leads to 3-5x the business impact vs. raw Claude."
Right now, the sales team cannot make this claim with evidence. In real sales calls, we are running into the fire with Claude — we avoided that pain before because workflows were complicated enough to feel differentiated. Playbooks are not complicated; they feel naked. Without proof, every power user with a Claude Code script is a churn risk.
The merchandising gap is specific and fixable. Old workflows gave people a visual sense of complexity happening — "oh, you guys are doing a lot." Playbooks hide that complexity behind natural language. The fix is not more features; it is surfacing what the harness is doing so people feel the magic.
Their new homepage tagline: "Marketing agents to win in." Primary positioning: "the full stack marketing platform for the marketer of the future." They have launched pre-built agents for every marketing function — Brand Agent, Content Agent, Demand Gen Agent, AEO Agent, PR Agent — with a free trial as a wedge into enterprise.
$96M Series C at $1B valuation (Feb 2026). $155M total raised. 700+ enterprise customers including 10%+ of the Fortune 500. Zero Click 2026 conference running SF/NY. They are not just owning AEO anymore — they are attempting to own the agent category too.
| Capability | AirOps | Profound | Gap Assessment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Answer engines tracked | ~5 | 10+ | Fixable in 90 days |
| Real prompt data (Prompt Volumes / Conversation Explorer) | None — generated prompts | 400M+ anonymized real prompts | Perceived as existential |
| Agent analytics (log files) | Not shipped | Live (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, Applebot) | Fixable in 60 days |
| Citation tracking | Yes | Yes | Parity |
| Share-of-voice analytics | Yes | Yes | Parity |
| Sentiment analysis | Yes | Yes | Parity |
| Shopping / e-commerce visibility | Basic | Specialized feature | Gap |
| CDN integrations for log tracking | None | Shopify, Webflow, Azure, AWS | Gap |
| Traffic attribution | Partial (Page360) | Weak | We are better |
| Agent runtime (general-purpose) | AirOps Next — live May 13. Playbooks, HITL, multiplayer, MCP-first. General-purpose runtime. | Profound Agents — pre-built function agents (Brand, Content, Demand, AEO, PR). Narrow, single-player, function-bundled. | Our live head start — about to be bigger |
| Brand context / Brand Graph | Deepest in market — the moat under the head start | None comparable | We are significantly better |
| Offsite placement strategy | $1M ARR, live | None | We are significantly better |
| Closed-loop (insights → action → impact → learning) | Partial, getting tighter | Measurement + narrow agents, no loop story | We are significantly better |
| End-to-end strategic services / Pod model | Solutions Architects, pods forming at $40K/mo | None | We are significantly better |
The honest read: We have five feature gaps — three fixable in 30-90 days of focused engineering. We have five meaningful advantages. In pure product terms, we are at parity. The leading story for sales is not Brand Context — it's the action head start: a general-purpose agent runtime that's been shipping with real customers, about to get significantly bigger with AirOps Next. Brand Context, Offsite, and Services are the moat under the head start.
Even after we close the feature gaps, we will still be behind on perception. This is the harder problem.
"If I was a somewhat uneducated buyer, what Profound showed looks at least comparable to AirOps." — AirOps team, #g-competitor-intel
This is the mechanism by which the gap compounds. When a VP of Growth asks for budget for "AI visibility" or "AEO," the CFO's first question is: what's the market-leading tool? If the answer is Profound, that budget gets approved — and AirOps has to beg its way in as a secondary consideration. If the answer is fragmented, every deal is a battle from scratch.
Profound is deliberately building this dynamic with their brand. We are deliberately not building the equivalent for AirOps.
The fourth strategic dimension is the category we say we are in. This is as consequential as any product decision, because the category determines the buyer, the competitive set, the pricing envelope, and the five-year vision. Profound's success is forcing the decision.
"AirOps is the AI Visibility Platform. We help you see, understand, and improve how your brand shows up across ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI."
Competitive set: Profound, Peec AI, Evertune, Scrunch, Goodie AI, Semrush AI Visibility
Buyer: Director or VP of SEO / Growth looking for an analytics tool
Pricing envelope: $20K–$150K/year, commodity pressure from new entrants
Implied 5-year vision: The measurement layer for AI search
Honest read: We are entering a category Profound already owns. We become "the other one." Our brand context and agents get invisible relative to the measurement story.
"AirOps is the Agent-Driven Growth platform. Your team sets the strategy. AirOps runs the agents that execute it — from prioritization to action to impact tracking."
Competitive set: Claude-based vendors, Jasper, Writer, custom-built agents, Profound Agents
Buyer: VP Growth / CDO / CMO looking for transformation, not a tool
Pricing envelope: $100K–$1M+/year, outcome-justified
Implied 5-year vision: The department that replaces (or augments) half the marketing org
Honest read: This is our natural home and matches the board deck framing. The risk is that "agent" is about to become the most overused word in enterprise software.
"AirOps is the brand intelligence system of record — the deepest, most governed source of truth about how your brand shows up across every AI surface."
Competitive set: Few direct — maybe Flint long-term. Harder to position against Profound.
Buyer: CMO / Brand lead / enterprise chief of staff
Pricing envelope: $150K–$2M+/year, infrastructure-bet pricing
Implied 5-year vision: Every major brand's Brand Graph lives in AirOps
Honest read: Genuinely differentiated. Hard to sell because "brand" feels soft to CFOs. But if we can make it real, nobody else is building this.
"AirOps is the Content Engineering platform. The platform that makes content engineers the most leveraged people in marketing."
Buyer: IC content engineer, Director of Content
Pricing envelope: $30K–$200K/year
Honest read: IC-first positioning closes 32% less effectively than Director-level. The board deck explicitly says we are outgrowing this.
Lead with B (Agent-Driven Growth Platform) as the primary category. Layer C (Brand Intelligence) as the moat story that justifies the premium and the lock-in. Use A (AI Visibility) as a tactical entry point — the wedge feature that gets us in the door with SEO/growth buyers budgeting for AEO. Retire D from top-line messaging.
This creates a coherent hierarchy:
The worst outcome is picking A alone. It puts us in a category Profound owns, priced at a fraction of what B or C commands, with no obvious reason to buy us over them.
Visibility tracking covering AI search (ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, Google AI), traditional search (GSC, GA4), and competitive intelligence. Page360, Prompt Universe, citation tracking, 2B+ AI search responses in ClickHouse.
Reality: 6/10. Perception: 3-4/10. The detailed feature and brand gap analysis is in the Profound Problem section above.
This is binary and cannot be deferred to the $25M gate. Decide in two weeks.
| Scenario | What It Takes | Timeline | Risk |
|---|---|---|---|
| Maintain | Incremental features. No competitive response. | Ongoing | Permanent second-tier. Profound owns the budget. |
| Play to Play | Log files, answer panel, website overhaul, model coverage. Company-wide commitment. | 90 days | Parity. Not leadership. |
| Play to Win | All of Play to Play + proprietary data, dedicated leader, standalone positioning. | 6-12 months | Capital intensive with ~12mo runway. |
The deepest brand context layer in the market. 23 brand kits with meaningful depth. Utilization at 82%. Freshness score at 4%. Vision evolved from "Brand Kits" (business card) to "Brand Graph" (living knowledge layer).
No competitor has an equivalent. Custom GPTs are flat file dumps. Notion AI and Claude Projects are general-purpose. Flint is emerging. Profound has no brand context layer at all.
Previous drafts treated Brand Context as a passive moat. The pod model reveals a more active role: Brand Context is the quality control system for the services pod.
When AirOps pods deliver content end-to-end, slop on a customer's site is existential. Brand alignment scores, content quality scores, and freshness signals are what let us scale services without scaling human reviewers linearly. The layer's value shifts from "nice lock-in" to "the thing that makes the pod business defensible at margin."
Mid-transition. The existing workflow product (grids, JSON, Liquid) has been commoditized. Claude Code + MCP has killed the workflow.
Status: 34 beta customers on Playbooks. Target: 175 by May 13. Public launch: May 13.
| Player | Approach | Threat |
|---|---|---|
| Claude Code + MCP | General-purpose agent. Single-player. | EXISTENTIAL |
| Profound Agents | 500+ daily users. Built on data layer. | HIGH |
| Notion AI | Horizontal workspace. | MODERATE |
| Lovable / Replit | Vibe-code anything. | MODERATE |
The moat is NOT the runtime — it's what runs inside it: brand context, proprietary data, impact measurement, multiplayer collaboration, enterprise governance. The runtime is the vehicle. The fuel is everything else.
The most significant structural change. The current model is bottlenecked by the customer's review chokepoint. The pod model flips this.
| Role | Responsibility | Existing Equivalent |
|---|---|---|
| Strategist | Strategy, planning, competitive intel, customer relationship | Current SA, evolving |
| Executor | Playbook building, platform operation, workflow orchestration | Technical SA |
| Editor | Last-mile editing, quality control, industry expertise | Net new — specialist writer network |
Capacity: 4-5 customers per pod at steady state. Priority verticals: FinTech, SaaS, Healthcare, DevTools.
| Tier | Price | What's Included |
|---|---|---|
| Platform + Tech Pod | $20K/mo ($240K/yr) | Strategy playbook, executor, platform. Customer handles last-mile editing. |
| End-to-End Pod | $40K/mo ($480K/yr) | Strategist + executor + editor. AirOps owns outcomes. |
The $40K tier replaces what customers pay today across AirOps + agency like Graphite (~$60K/month combined). We capture agency budget.
What we do: Take a portion of customer's content surface area (top 200 organic-driving pages). AirOps maintains and refreshes on rolling cadence. Own decay detection, refresh scheduling, CMS pushes, quality scoring.
What customer does: Approves initial surface area scope + brand guidelines. Reviews monthly reports. No per-piece approvals.
Unit economics: $20K–$30K/month for 200-500 pages. One pod handles 4-5 customers → $1M+ ARR per pod annually.
Why it works: Free growth lever. Most enterprise content portfolios have 60-80% decayed pages. Refresh is undersold because it's unsexy. AirOps is uniquely positioned — Page360 + Brand Kits automate decay detection + brand-consistent rewrites.
What we do: Produce expert-written content for competitive head terms where quality matters more than volume. Industry-specialized writers. We handle topic selection, briefing, drafting, editing, CMS push.
What customer does: Reviews monthly editorial calendar. Approves brand voice. Occasional SME interviews with our writers.
Unit economics: $15K–$25K/month for 8-12 pieces/month. Requires one specialist editor per vertical.
Why it works: Most enterprise content teams have abandoned head terms because they're expensive to do well. The gap between AI-generated and what-actually-ranks is expert voice, not word count.
Status: $1M ARR in 5 months. Targeting $4M for 2026. Marketplace forming.
What we do: Place brand content across third-party publishers, Reddit, YouTube, review sites, and community surfaces to drive AI citations and visibility.
Why it works: 85% of AI visibility is influenced by what others say about you. No review chokepoint — customers hand us the objective, we handle end-to-end.
Unit economics: $5K–$20K/month per placement program. Mature customers expand into multiple concurrent programs.
What we do: Manage product, category, FAQ pages at scale for marketplaces, e-commerce, and SaaS catalogs. Programmatic SEO with AI-quality control. CMS push automation.
Unit economics: $30K–$100K+/month for enterprises with 10K+ pages. Enterprise-only. Long sales cycle.
Why it works: Big, neglected, natural fit for agents (structured content at volume with per-template brand rules).
Pod pilot should close three accounts in Q2. Prime candidates:
Each becomes a case study. Each validates a specific service. Each lifts NDR meaningfully.
The single biggest risk with the pod model is it being perceived as an agency. Agencies get fired when numbers don't hit — they're the throat to choke. Marcel-like branding kills the software thesis.
| Tier | Logo Retention | NDR | ACV | Buyer | Signal |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PLG/SMB | ~60% | Terrible | ~$46K | IC | 14 Q1 churns, avg 5 months. |
| Mid-Market | ~74% | ~65% | ~$81K | Director | 32% higher close rate at Director level. |
| Enterprise | 100% | 94% (→125%+) | ~$120K | VP/CDO | 100% PoC conversion. Sticky, expanding. |
PLG is terrible. Mid-market is fragile. Enterprise is where we win. Q2 hiring plan already reflects this: +5 Sales (vs. -7 Eng, -3 Product/Design). The pod model is what makes each enterprise deal bigger and stickier.
Rather than pre-packaged A/B/C/D scenarios, the strategic choices live along four levers. Each lever has multiple positions. Different combinations create different stress points, hiring plans, revenue profiles, and category narratives. Use the interactive levers tool to explore combinations.
Are we playing to win or playing to play against Profound?
Maintain · Play to Play · Play to Win
Do we remove the review chokepoint and replace the customer's agency?
Current Model · Pod Pilot · Full Pod Rollout
Do customers use the product themselves, or do we use it for them?
Service-Led · Power User + Services · Maximum Self-Serve
What category are we selling into? What do we say we are?
AI Visibility Platform · Agent-Driven Growth Platform · Brand Intelligence System of Record · Content Engineering Platform
Above the no-regrets floor, these principles apply regardless of lever positions:
We are a company with genuine strengths — 2B+ AI search data points, the deepest brand context layer in market, a services motion that enterprises love, and a new product (AirOps Next) that could reset the narrative. We have a leadership team that's now complete. 48% QoQ growth. $18.8M in ARR.
We are also a company where:
The next 4 days determine the category lock (by Monday April 20 for Lisbon). The next 30 days determine whether Proof Narrative + AirOps Next land. The next 60 days determine whether pods work. The next 90 days determine whether we have a credible Insights response. The next 180 days determine whether AirOps is a software business, a services business, or a genuinely novel hybrid built on a closed-loop system.
Lisbon · April 20