Cannabis marketplace
I co-founded an online marketplace in the booming legal cannabis industry in California.
asterisk* marketplace was designed to be a centralized online platform where verified licensed businesses could securely trade tested cannabis products at online auctions.
At the time the emerging cannabis industry was highly fragmented and without any transactional standards.
There were high risks for buyers and sellers due to trading with unverified “grey market” businesses and middlemen, the process of getting product to market was highly inefficient.
There was also lack of quality assurance and abundance of fake lab test certificates flooding the market and affecting consistency of product prices.
Along with my technical co-founder we saw a huge opportunity in this "Wild American West" that would eventually spread across the world.
We began with secondary market research and conducted dozens of contextual interviews with individual cannabis cultivators and members of cooperatives, producers of cannabis concentrates and edible products, wholesale distributors and storefront retailers.
Research revealed that all of them shared similar pain points, namely having complicated access to market, abundance of manipulated lab test certificates, questionable business practices of unverified sellers, lack of clarity about sources of product, and many other problems that needed urgent solutions.
With these insights on hand we proceeded with analyzing existing and potential competitors, and prepared a competition matrix as well as a SWOT analysis to help us find most promising opportunities in the market.
By creating a licensed platform for legal wholesale cannabis auctions we would be able to bridge huge gaps and solve many pain points in the new industry. It also seemed to have great potential for growth.
Compared to traditional marketplaces online cannabis auctions would be able to provide an efficient price discovery mechanism where sellers would get fair market value for their products and buyers would always be able to find good deals. A true win-win scenario for all participants in the industry!
To help us stay true to our course over time we drafted this mission statement:
“Our mission is to provide fair opportunities for businesses in the cannabis industry. Our online cannabis auctions platform is a transparent centralized marketplace where qualified businesses can connect with one another for trading tested cannabis products."
Having a longer term vision in place we continued with developing product strategy and a near term roadmap. These helped us clearly set the timelines and gather requirements for MVP.
After synthesizing research findings and having product strategy in place, we moved on with developing personas for every market segment, mapped main user journeys and use cases to work through.
I sketched individual screens for each flow, designed low fidelity wireframes and created simple prototypes for early testing with potential users.
We captured feedback from the prototype testing sessions and quickly iterated based on these new insights.
Shortly after we had a design system with fonts, colors and simple user interface elements that could be used for responsive web application and scale to be used across platforms in the future.
While working closely with our front- and backend engineers on a daily basis we continued business development going door-to-door and establishing relations with potential platform users.
When MVP was ready for field testing a tight group of select cannabis cultivators and retailers was introduced to the marketplace. I encouraged first users to test every platform feature and identify any gaps in the flows.
These businesses provided valuable feedback that helped us quickly introduce a few small changes to product filtering, as well as demonstrated the team a successful “proof of concept” ahead of beta release.
We launched a beta version of our online marketplace connecting small batch organic cultivators in the Trinity and Mendocino counties with retailers in the San Francisco Bay Area.
In the next few months we used our first-to-market advantage and quickly expanded to the lucrative San Jose market.
Continuous feedback from our users helped make changes and add missing features in the shortest possible time.
With our userbase and GMV exponentially growing month-to-month, several investors expressed their interest in participating in the seed round.
While we were in the process of finalizing due diligence and deal terms, California state regulations changed requiring software companies like ours to become licensed cannabis distributors responsible for storage and testing of all product sold through the marketplace.
That was automatically flagging the platform as "high risk" to our investors due to the fact that we would have to be "touching the product" rather than providing a software-only solution, and unfortunately our deals fell through.
We had a few brainstorming sessions and discussed possible pivots in the legal cannabis and other industries, but none of the options aligned with the long term plans of the founders and the team.
As a CEO of the company, after many months of hard work from all of us, I had to make a tough decision to dissolve the company.
I strongly believe that every startup failure is a great opportunity for learning crucial hands-on skills that eventually open new doors.
My experience launching and running a startup of my own opened up multiple opportunities to share my knowledge and help other early stage startups, as well as became a springboard to my product / service designer career.
Dating app
As a designer-founder myself, I helped a number of early stage startups in the Silicon Valley with product vision and growth strategy.
RedRabbit (*working-title at the time I was hired) is a thematic dating app that offers unique curated experiences with the partnering local venues.
This early stage startup was founded by eccentric personalities with bold ideas and energy to change the world of dating once and for all.
Founders had a strong concept in mind and were looking for someone to help them define what the end product would look like and strategize how to find their place in the busy dating app market.
My priority was to help them think through and develop the concept into a scalable system that could be monetized, as well as get them ready for their angel investment round.
During our intial working session we determined the timeline for the project, defined what success would look like and outlined a clear plan of attack to get us there in the shortest time.
We then identified key target audience and developed personas for each segment, mapped main user journeys and defined requirements for a prototype for early testing with real customers.
During multiple further working sessions we worked through categories of different experiences, defined user "traits and roles" and wrote backstories for each segment. We also developed the backbone for RedRabbit's unique matching process and continuity of the storylines throughout the experiences.
For this project I used InVision Studio. It proved to be a great tool to quickly put together basic wireframes and layout key flows for rapid prototyping sessions.
To capture real feedback early in the process we conducted free-form interviews and used low fidelity prototypes with friends and family.
During our brainstorming sessions we often discussed RedRabbit's identity and app "look and feel". Inspired by our conversations I sketched different versions of the logo mark and then explored it further in Adobe Illustrator.
After reviewing several options we arrived at this concept of a logo mark as one that better communicated mystique nature of the experiences offered through the app. "Going down the rabbit hole" was one of the main concepts behind the app.
As for design language founders drew inspiration from star constellations, images of lonely planets in the eternity of space and horoscope signs. So while we were capturing user feedback I started working on the design system for MVP.
After synthesizing data gathered from the first prototype testing sessions we made a few adjustments to the flows and prepared another one in higher fidelity for further testing with narrower audience segments.
New research sessions revealed that the concept generated great interest and excitement from potential app users and local business owners expressing interest in participating in beta-testing.
Then I helped the founders develop go-to-market strategy and supported them in designing their first investor deck for fundraising.
At this point I accomplished my tasks and wrapped up my work with RedRabbit ✅
In just a few weeks of working with me they were armed with a well thought-through product concept, interactive prototype in high definition backed by real feedback from target audience, a pitch deck with defined product strategy and a clear path forward.
Social network
Moves.me is an app for people who love to share new dance moves with their friends and the rest of the world.
Two talented startup founders developed great technology and were looking for ways to quickly test it with as many users as possible. There were multiple ways to apply the software and they needed help with product vision and growth strategy.
At the core of the technology is a neural network that analyzes human movements and is able to identify similarities between the moves.
My goal was to help them envision how this technology could be applied in the context of a social network for exponential growth, and prepare assets for developing a minimum viable product that could be used to capture early feedback from real users.
We started with a working session to define big picture vision for the product and identified key steps that would help founders achieve their long term goals with this app.
As a result we arrived at a high level roadmap for the app. First step would be content creation at scale ➡️ then assembly of a large database of moves followed by ➡️ continuous training of a neural network for higher precision and ➡️ application of analyzed data and technology in other verticals.
Then I conducted a workshop where we explored many different industries and ways this technology could be used. But for maximum output in the shortest time only one of them seemed to check all the boxes - entertainment industry.
We identified Gen Z as the key target audience - enthusiastic people willing to create and share large volumes of content as their means of expression.
At the time sharing dance moves on YouTube was just becoming a trend (*TikTok was not huge in the USA yet and if I remember correctly Musical.ly was still a thing...🤭)
Thus we agreed that Moves.me would be an app where users could discover trending dance moves, upload their own moves and participate in challenges with their friends.
To get early feedback from our target audience I designed a few teaser screens and a questionnaire that we took to the streets for first interviews.
Concept seemed to resonate pretty well with the people we talked to. They also were willing to share their ideas and suggested features they would expect to be built-in at launch.
I used this information to sketch out a few key screens, elements of user interface and interactions, mapped main user flows and journeys.
Then I translated these sketches into basic wireframes and using the journeys put together a quick interactive prototype that we took back to the streets for further testing with potential app users.
After the research session we analyzed all comments and as a result introduced changes to the navigation. Also, based on the feedback we decided to include clear instructions for first-time users.
Next version of the prototype also included updated flows for recording and playing back videos.
We also simplified ability to tag moves and leave comments directly on the content feed.
At this point I wrapped everything up and handed off the mockups to engineers ✅
In just a couple of weeks I helped this early stage startup develop product vision backed by feedback from potential users, and provided founders with everything they needed for an MVP.
