statement
After the Startup Matchmaking platform was considered a success, funders and startups asked for more options to control deal flow.
MY
ROLE
My role for this project was to lead the entire design process, including user research, user interviews, personas creation and validation, interface design and prototyping and user testing, leading and mentoring junior designers during the entire process.
Also, I coordinated all the design deliveries with PMs and the development team during the implementation and worked hands-on with PMs with metric analysis and KPI definitions.
Based on the metrics and the successful KPIs we decided to increase the scope of the product, offering new features and a completely new set of internal tools for our team of advisors. This allowed the company to move faster and laser-focused, creating even more funding opportunities for companies.
We also introduced a new business model, based on monthly subscription plans.
What
we learned
Our AI did an excellent job providing companies and funders with warm intros, but human action was needed to provide an even more accurate experience.
After a massive round of interviews, with both startups and funders, we decided to create a whole new experience, connecting the users with the advisory team.
The entire communication between the parts was happening using emails, this was a big hassle and provided much room for mistakes and lost deadlines.
So we came up with 3 new features:
1. A completely new homepage for startups, with a deal status view and task management, and a full messaging application to remove emails from the equation;
2. A search interface so the users could browse for funders based on their own criteria, the AI was still there and we used it for sorting the results based on the compatibility score. This search was also offering the users the chance to view a full profile for each funder.
3. The Advisor Deal Management application, an internal tool for our team to be more productive in conducting the deals, assigning tasks and sending messages to the users.
FUNDERS
became
users
With the implementation of the new business model, funders also became users.
This way, we had to design their side of the system too.
THE
RESULTS
After 3 months the numbers proved us right once more.
We increased considerably the number of users that were now also paying customers.
2,000+
STARTUPS
250+
FUNDERS
4,000+
CONNECTIONS
MILLIONS
IN FUNDING