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How We Got Here on Marketplace

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How We Got Here on Marketplace

Some challenges but still confident we can make something special

Ced Funches

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7/8/2023, 7:00 AM

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Terms

Surface: The area or product we are designing for (ex. Issuers, Investor Exp, Marketplace...)

What I was hired to do

I was hired to lead all the product and brand design teams at Alto and be in charge of setting the design vision, strategy, workflow, and team structure to achieve world-class design status for the business. Unify a disjointed experience and help younger designers grow.

The Beginning

I started 12/12 of last year. I had to complete training so most of December was lost. But I assumed Brad and Chris had it covered as they confidently said as much in every meeting and 1-1. After a month of no-progress in Jan on the Marketplace I sounded the alarms about Brad and feeling like there wasn’t a firm understanding of the goal or how to build products. Chris let me know he was under pressure from Andrea and Eric to fire Brad but told them he wouldn’t. If they wanted Brad gone, they would have to do it themselves. Shocking.

Writing the Marketplace PRD

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I wrote the PRD⁠

at that time as I saw no one on Product team understood how important it was. Shared it with Chris and Brad but there was still no action being taken.

Creating a new path

End of January I was asked to give my vision of the Marketplace. (tap on presentation) and present it as a part of a board meeting.

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Load content from www.beautiful.ai? Loading external content may reveal information to 3rd parties. Learn more Allow⁠

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I think this was the meeting Danny was intro’d in as well.

My Goal: throw a grenade and stop product and engineering from continuing set course and

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Brand Direction for Marketplace

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Screen Shot 2023-04-08 at 11.02.31 AM.png

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Find your Passion and Invest in it was the central theme I came up with for the Marketplace.

Find = Smart AI Filters that learn who users are

Passion = Alternatives that give real returns

Invest in it = Turnkey add investments (Amazon checkout)

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Screen Shot 2023-04-08 at 11.03.05 AM.png

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Blockers:

Brad, Hollie (inherited designer) and the engineering team were dug in on the design so it took a lot to redirect the team into the direction above. Both are gone now so we should see no resistance.

Chris Mewees was nice, but he was checked out by the time I started.

Danny was brought in as I assumed Eric, fed up with the inaction needed to do something drastic

Engineering has been a challenge. Finger pointing and lack of roadmapping. All things of the past hopefully

Oliver was MIA and against a design vision

Not quite sure what Product is doing. PRDs are bloated and timelines are not realistic.

With Jacob Sung on board I believe we have someone with the experience to bring this to life

Feb, 1 2023 Original Prototype of Marketplace

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`https://xd.adobe.com/view/d128b3a5-6ca1-46ab-a79e-1f100ee0ed41-847b/`⁠
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This was my original design direction given to Chris. Not sure if it was championed. We can adapt to match Danny’s vision as I do see the immediate translation

A couple of more weeks passed...during that time I shifted focus to Investor and Issuer Surfaces, Learn Center, hiring planning, website fixing and getting answers to ongoing billing from Rule 29

User Personas, Journeys

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It also became clear that the team didn’t understand the user they were going after so I created the presentation above to start getting agreeable team members aligned.

→
`Click me to See Customer Journey`⁠
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I shared my plans and resources with Zoe and Tanner after a call we had where she relayed concern over no one taking ownership of PM’ing the Marketplace.

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Screen Shot 2023-04-08 at 11.11.13 AM.png

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What is Marketplace to Ced?

As a product, I understand it to be 3 separate bodies of work. Investor experience, Marketplace (Amazon Prime..), Issuer Experience. I presented this at the board meeting and Eric really likes the idea of being radically different.

In my opinion

“We are Kickstarter for Alternative Securities” — Ced

Investor Experience → Marketplace ←Issuer HQ

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Investor Experience:

Consumer Facing management and investing HQ...Vanguard, Mercury Bank is the preferred design direction. CTA in top navigation: Invest / Marketplace / Portfolio

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Marketplace:

Storefront exposing consumers to offerings and allowing private deals to be distributed to subscription focused investors.

Netflix, Amazon Prime

easy sort and find

checkout experience should be fast like retail

Show private funds in a new way, not like generic looking deal cards

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Screen Shot 2023-04-08 at 12.03.48 PM.png

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Issuer Experience:

Create and publish offerings that fill up Marketplace. Eventually a CMS driven platform that tracks reach, marketing and provides analytics and projections to institutional investors to make map potential offerings to identified Think Kickstarter admin. This tool will ultimately give vendors the ability to create and publish offers, monitor the success of deal, track key metrics and eventually make SEO enhancements for public deals.

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But in the absence of a presented plan, we went down the path you currently see.

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Top Needs

Design Tools that will scale Alto: Webflow

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I need to use

Webflow⁠

to easily create websites and prototypes. Eric has wanted the brand and product to be lifted for a long time and I am anxious to get it done. We don’t need enterprise level to build things as it doesn’t connect to any personal data from Alto. Eric seems like he just wants real progress.

I need 2 Sr. Designers who will eventually partner with PMs to build the product and scale my efforts. Can I start hiring?

My efforts to uplift Alto have been blocked by engineering and PMs. It’s been quite defeating to be ignored, patronized and left out of strategy meetings only to have everyone come to me because they need my expertise to execute. It has been very insulting working here so far. Can you help remove any blockers?

Finally, I need my title and compensation to match the level of output, strategy, and management I am doing. Chris and I agreed on that my title would change to VP of Design to reflect my true workload. I’m a team player but the staff is pretty confused at my role and openly challenge my ability to give them any direction.

Here’s some support for why we should move immediately to Webflow. Instantly frees up any I’ve noticed that Paul is quite novice on Wordpress so it may not be a good idea to keep using Engineering resources on Wordpress. It’s kind of a headache.

An engineer’s perspective on Webflow: How no-code helps engineering teams | Webflow Blog We chatted with a few engineers to see why people who spend much of their time coding enjoy working with Webflow’s no-code platform. webflow.com⁠

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Platform Direction - Tech that Alto is going to build on. Ledger and Data plans. Designers need to know how to approach their work and I’ll need to get an idea on what is possible in pulling data to the surfaces

🔥 — React? PHP? Cardboard? It really matters and everyone is acting like it doesn’t. Almost the most important decision that everyone on the project needs to know. Can we set up a channel on this topic so the company can see the discussion and decision?

Design System Management team

I need to pair the product designers I hire with a front-end engineer to create components that help us build and iterate quickly and consistently. Figma → React with one repository for devs to pull from to build. I’ve started conversations with Dre. They need to see a vision and we keep allowing PMs to run the show. They are not designers. They are effectively knee capping the projects with their limited experience and scope of solutions. Not sure how to fix that if we cannot get a clean PRD.

⁠
`ink.carta.com`⁠
is the North Star for an online DSM

Product Management Tools

IMMEDIATE NEEDS - Notion or Coda or Asana → Design Team + across company.

Confluence is Engineering focused and all about delivery, it will not allow for creative exchange and ultimately will leave Alto in the same rut it has been in.

I suggest ProductBoard → Engineering + Product team and my teams can then integrate Notion to the rest of the company to give Eric FULL TRANSPARENCY. To me, that’s the most important thing I learned with previous leadership. No real plan and they were playing shell games with timelines and resources. I suggested we just level with Eric and tell him what can and cannot be accomplished.

This doc is built in Coda + Coda is Okta approved but there seems to a logjam to get any software approved

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How We Got Here on Marketplace

What I was hired to do

The Beginning

Writing the Marketplace PRD

Creating a new path

Blockers:

Feb, 1 2023 Original Prototype of Marketplace

⁠https://xd.adobe.com/view/d128b3a5-6ca1-46ab-a79e-1f100ee0ed41-847b/⁠⁠

User Personas, Journeys

→ Click me to See Customer Journey⁠⁠

What is Marketplace to Ced?

Investor Experience → Marketplace ←Issuer HQ

Investor Experience:

Marketplace:

Issuer Experience:

Top Needs

Design Tools that will scale Alto: Webflow

Platform Direction - Tech that Alto is going to build on. Ledger and Data plans. Designers need to know how to approach their work and I’ll need to get an idea on what is possible in pulling data to the surfaces

Design System Management team

⁠ink.carta.com⁠ is the North Star for an online DSM

Product Management Tools

⁠
`https://xd.adobe.com/view/d128b3a5-6ca1-46ab-a79e-1f100ee0ed41-847b/`⁠
⁠

→
`Click me to See Customer Journey`⁠
⁠

⁠
`ink.carta.com`⁠
is the North Star for an online DSM