The team is travelling to the region in October. Everything we do at this stage should help Race The World move closer to a Host Nation signature and acquiring major commercial partners.

That work needs to start now, not once we’re on the ground.

The immediate priority is making sure the team walks into those conversations with something credible and tangible, not just a concept deck. Once funding is secured, the priority shifts to building the digital foundations properly. This is how we’d sequence these two goals:

September — Moving Closer to the Signature

Host Nation stakeholders and prospective commercial partners are, in practice, evaluating the same thing from different angles: execution risk. A government deciding whether to attach its name to RTW, and a partner deciding whether to commit budget, are both asking whether this team can actually deliver. A gap between an ambitious pitch and a rough or absent digital presence is one of the most common, and most avoidable, reasons those conversations stall. Polish at this stage reads as evidence of execution, not vanity, and closing that gap is exactly what September is for.

Knowing what to build here matters as much as building it. The goal is not a preview of the full platform — it is a small, tightly scoped package that answers the two questions every stakeholder forms an opinion on in the first thirty seconds: what is this, and is it real.

A Simple, Credible Brand

Not the full RTW brand and style guide — that is a larger, separate piece of work worth doing properly once funding is confirmed. This is just enough: a clean logo lockup, colour and type, so every touchpoint — the website, a deck, a business card — feels considered rather than thrown together.

A Landing Page That Does Its Job

One well-designed page that explains the concept, the format and the route — built to be shown in the room or forwarded afterward, and to reinforce that this is real and already being built properly, not just described in a deck.

Kept Deliberately Tight

This is scoped narrowly on purpose. No unnecessary features, no scope creep, nothing that anticipates the full platform build before there is funding to support it. A fast, focused package that does exactly one job well — helping move RTW closer to the Host Nation and its commercial partners — and nothing more, so September budget and time are not spent on work the October build will do properly regardless.

Beyond the Build

We don’t see our contribution as limited to the website and brand. Our broader experience — across elite sport, government, NGOs and sustainability-focused organisations, and being based in APAC — may also be useful to the Host Nation and commercial-partner conversations themselves. Happy to discuss where else we can add value, without overstating that before we’ve talked it through properly.

Timing & Terms

Both pieces are designed to move fast, without cutting corners — Grade understands the level of polish required to help RTW achieve real outcomes. We want to be flexible on how this is structured commercially, and have a few options worth discussing. We understand there is no budget available until the Host Nation signature is secured and funds land, and are glad to proceed on a nominal cash basis now, supported by a short, non-binding MoU or letter of intent. We’ll confirm the detail once we’re fully aligned on scope and division of responsibilities, following this week’s chat with Simon and Dan.

October Onwards — Once Funding Is Secured

From here, the work shifts from investor-ready basics to a real digital foundation. Rather than waiting on a fully scoped, fully priced build agreement before anything starts, we would suggest bringing Grade on as a standing fractional team from the moment funding lands — then scaling into the fuller platform build as that scope is finalised.

A Fractional Product Team

A working allocation of senior Grade time each month — strategy, design and technical direction, blended and reprioritised together at the start of each month — rather than a one-off project fee.

• Senior product, strategy and design time on tap every month, without a procurement cycle for each new piece of work
• Flexibility to redirect that time as priorities shift — a content model one month, a stakeholder-ready prototype the next, technical due diligence the month after
• A simple monthly retainer, reviewed and renewed month to month, with no long lock-in
• Scales up cleanly into the fuller platform build once RTW is ready to commit to that larger scope — nothing here is wasted, it all feeds forward

How We’d Work Together

Race The World does not need another agency relationship, with a new brief written and a new team assembled every time something changes. What it needs is a product team that can plug in now, move fast, and stay with the project as it evolves.

• A senior, stable team. The same people who scope the work deliver it, so nothing gets lost between conversations and nothing needs re-explaining.
• Ready to start now, with no lengthy onboarding. We can be genuinely useful within the first few weeks.
• Capacity that flexes with the project, scaling up through build phases and pre-race crunch and back during quieter periods, without the overhead of hiring or the risk of losing momentum.
• One team across strategy, design and technology, so decisions made in a workshop reach a developer intact, without the handoffs and miscommunication that come from stitching together multiple vendors.
• Continuity across a multi-year programme. The same team that builds the foundation is still there for the live event and beyond, carrying context and decisions forward.
• Broader experience beyond digital platforms, including live events and sustainability-focused organisations, which gives us a wider lens on the operational and reputational pressures RTW will face as it scales — not just a narrow build-and-deliver view.

Being based in APAC also matters for the long term, not just for time-zone overlap with the region’s stages. As RTW builds out a genuinely global team over time, having a senior digital partner already embedded in the region — understanding local partners, sponsors and audiences first-hand — is a real advantage. We would see our role evolving from a build partner into a core part of that global team, not remaining a supplier at arm’s length.

A Partnership, in Stages

Race The World does not need everything built at once, and should not try to. We would propose working the way the event itself unfolds: building the foundations first, then layering in fan-facing and live-event capability as funding, partners and the race date firm up.

Commencement — Foundation & Story

• A public RTW website and brand platform, built to explain the race format, the route, and the athletes as they are signed
• An interactive explainer for the cumulative-timing format, the most complex idea in the concept to communicate and the thing that will make sponsors and hosts say, “now I get it!”
• A content and data model designed to be reused later, in the fan app, in esports, in broadcast graphics, so nothing gets built twice

Through Pre-Production — Audience & Content

• A publishing engine for the 18 months of athlete, location and sponsor storytelling promised to partners
• Analytics and CRM in place early, so audience growth is demonstrable, not projected, by the time of the next funding conversation

Toward Race Day — Fan Engagement

• A live companion experience showing real-time cumulative standings, built to make the format’s sense of jeopardy land for a global audience
• Prediction and leaderboard features to help convert reach into genuine engagement
• A second-screen product suitable for co-development with a broadcast partner

Beyond — Data, Esports & What Comes Next

• A presentation layer for athlete biometrics and telemetry, working alongside a specialist data and broadcast partner for the feed itself
• Platform support for the esports and game layer as a studio partner comes on board
• Ongoing optimisation as the race becomes a bi-annual, evolving property

Data, Security & the Sensible Use of AI

Every phase of RTW generates data: athlete performance and biometrics, fan engagement and content behaviour, race telemetry, sponsor and partner reporting. Built well from the start, that data is not just an operational by-product — it becomes one of RTW’s most valuable long-term assets.

• Fan and content engagement data, instrumented from day one, turns audience growth from a promise in a pitch deck into evidence for the next raise, the next host-nation conversation, and the next sponsor renewal
• Race telemetry captured live has direct value beyond the broadcast, as training data for the esports and game layer and as the foundation for formats RTW has not yet conceived
• Privacy and security designed in from the architecture stage, particularly for biometric and athlete health data, which carries a higher duty of care than typical fan or marketing data
• Clear data ownership and governance between RTW, host nations, athletes and technology partners, agreed before the data starts flowing
• AI used where it genuinely improves outcomes — assisting reporting and insight generation across a large, fast-moving dataset — always with human judgement in the loop, especially around athlete health data

As a B Corp™, Grade is accountable for how we handle data as much as what we build with it. We would bring that same standard to RTW’s data and security architecture from the very first phase.

Next Step

We’d suggest starting the brand and landing page work now, so it’s ready well ahead of early October — and lining up the fractional engagement to begin as soon as funding is confirmed.