PodiumBase Pilot RD Onboarding Kit
Welcome to PodiumBase. You're one of a small handful of race directors helping us turn a working product into a real business. This kit is everything you need to run your first pilot event with us — from sign-up through reconciliation — in roughly the order you'll need it.
If you only read one thing today, read the Welcome. Then come back here when you're ready to schedule your first event.
The kit at a glance
| When you need it | Document | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Before signing up | Welcome | What PodiumBase is, what you get as a pilot, what we ask in return, how to reach us |
| 2-4 weeks before your event | Pre-event checklist | Account, org, brand kit, photographer invites, pricing tier, test transaction |
| 1 week before your event | Athlete communication templates | Copy-ready athlete emails, selfie-match prompts, race-morning reminders, expectation-setting |
| Race morning | Day-of-event runbook | What to monitor, when to escalate, who to call, common issues |
| Within 7 days after | Post-event reconciliation | Sales totals, photographer payouts, refunds, disputes, data export |
| Anytime something breaks | Support matrix | Issue type → who to contact → response time |
| Anytime you have a question | FAQ | Pricing, refunds, photographers, data, tax, integrations |
Quick contact card
- Support email:
support@podiumbase.io - Founder mobile (P0 / race day only): shared on the kit-onboarding call so it stays a real escalation lane (not published here)
- Status / outages: check email — we'll reach out proactively if something is broken on our side during your event
See the support matrix for which channel to use when.
The honest framing
This is a pilot. The product works end-to-end — we've shipped checkout, photographer payouts, AI-assisted bib matching, watermarked previews, refund handling, and a buyer-facing gallery. We've test-driven the whole flow in staging and production with real Stripe money.
What we don't have yet: a deep bench of references, polished marketing pages, multi-region redundancy, or a 24/7 support team. You're not buying the version with all the seams hidden. You're buying a working system and a founder who will pick up the phone.
If that trade reads as exciting rather than scary, you're in the right place. If you want a no-iteration, take-it-or-leave-it experience — we're not the right partner for your 2026 calendar yet. Tell us, and we'll keep you posted as we scale.
Related operator references
The docs above are for you. We also keep operational runbooks for our side of the relationship that you don't need to read, but which exist so you know we're not winging it:
- Stripe payout reconciliation runbook (internal)
- Sentry alert routing for buyer-flow incidents (internal)
- Module-level runbooks for galleries, payouts, refunds, and admin (internal)
If you ever want to see one of these, just ask.
Next step: read the welcome packet and reply to the email this kit came in to schedule a 20-minute kick-off call.
Welcome
What PodiumBase is, what you get as a pilot RD, what we ask in return, and how to reach us.
Read →Pre-event checklist
Account, org, brand kit, photographer invites, pricing tier, and your pre-race test transaction — all the setup you need 2-4 weeks before race day.
Read →Athlete communication templates
Copy-ready athlete emails, selfie-match prompts, race-morning reminders, and expectation-setting language for the week before your event.
Read →Day-of-event runbook
What to monitor on race morning, when to escalate, who to call, and the most common issues we see on race day.
Read →Post-event reconciliation
Sales totals, photographer payouts, refunds, disputes, and your data export — the things that close out the books on a pilot event.
Read →Promote your photos
Add a "Find your race photos" link from your own race site — the two-minute step that helps runners find their photos and lifts your gallery in search. Copy-paste snippets included.
Read →Support matrix
Issue type → who to contact → response time. Bookmark this for race day so the question "who do I call?" already has an answer.
Read →FAQ
Pricing, refunds, photographers, data, tax, integrations — answers to the questions pilot RDs actually ask us.
Read →