Startup founders needed help to engage and convert potential investors effectively during the crowdfunding round. The founders had access to a CSV of contact details for these potential investors. However, they weren't engaging, which decreased the overall fundraising amount possible.
Creating a dashboard to illustrate the current amount raised and step-by-step actions to engage with potential investors saw increased engagement with the dashboard and with out reach.
Seedrs is an equity crowdfunding company, intending to democratise early-stage investing for everyone.
In simple terms, giving everyone (not just the folk that know or are in the right circles), the potential to make a bit of cash from giving small companies some money.
Seedrs was acquired by US firm Republic in 2022 for $100m.
A fundraising campaign needs promotion to inform customers they can invest in the business. This is typically done through various channels like videos, emails, social posts, and events, focusing on why investing is exciting.
Seedrs reviews all promotional content to ensure FCA compliance. Statements, such as “We turned over £5m last year”, require evidence, which can be in various formats (images, webpages, spreadsheets, PDFs) and shared through different channels. This information was previously collated in spreadsheets for each campaign.
If the FCA requested evidence, this could take up to 10 hours due to collate the information as nothing was able to be searched correctly.
There was an opportunity to create an app that could:
Rather than building our own app, I looked into commercial off-the-shelf tools. I estimated that it would be cheaper and implementation would be straightforward.
I booked four companies to do demos for myself, the compliance lead, the product manager and the engineering manager.
There were many reasons that an off-the-shelf tool wouldn’t have worked for this initiative:
Working with the PM, engineering manager and compliance lead, we pulled our thoughts and concerns together in a quick workshop that helped bring us all onto the same page.
Understanding that an off-the-shelf tool wasn’t the correct route for us, I documented the previous ways in which information moves between different apps and how it should then do it, while involving the engineering team.
The apps involved in the process and what the process could look like.
While getting feedback from engineering around data flows, I started sketching out concepts and how Seedrs staff would do their daily tasks.
Initial sketches and thoughts on information architecture. Also, how colour could help staff understand the status of statements within material provided by the founder.
A quick demo of the founder's campaign screen and the dashboard, complete with an info panel and where to find the investor contact details, based on their proposed investment amount.
Even though there was hope for using an off-the-shelf tool, that turned out not to be possible. However, the compliance team, the team working with the founders and the founders themselves saw an improvement. These are as follows:
7 hours saved - 1 hour to get a report ready for the FCA.
Created an app to remove the need for spreadsheets and speed up Founders and Staff ways off working.
One source of truth - All statements and evidence living in one place.
A scalable app - More parts of the campaign journey can be added in along the way depending on the needs of the business.
Not long after releasing this app, chatGPT started to become more mainstream. I demoed this to the PM who hadn’t heard of it, this was soon introduced into the app, but this was after I had left.
When starting from a spreadsheet, the aim is not to solve everything in the first release. Prioritising the high-value outcomes to go after and ensuring stakeholders were on board was vital.
Getting the stakeholders together to discuss concepts was tricky, but doing this async with Loom and documenting decisions helped ensure everyone saw the same ideas and could communicate their thoughts.