A Case Study: IN Conscious

ABSTRACT

Designing a discovery tool for #conscioustech startups.

PROBLEM INSPIRATION

Only 2% of MENA startups were funded in 2017.
There is a copycat & risk-aversive investment landscape.
As in emerging markets everywhere, it's difficult for startups to get access to global resources and investment.

I started working on this project end of 2016 when it was just a very far off idea on a phone call. My role since has been to take these problems and turn it into a prototype. Besides the final UI, my role was to be this projects MOTHER.

RESEARCH

50% of the process

Interviews

At the discovery phase of my project, I conducted user interviews with early stage startup founders, venture capitalists (VCs) and angel investors in order to get to a better understanding of the problems.

Thematic analysis - competitive analysis - pitch deck analysis - Surveys - Personas

Highlights

We were looking to understand our users better to be able to elicit a few personas out of our initial interviews. We wanted to find out "How to reduce the time it takes for startups to get funding". And "How investors find startups and if they invest in startups abroad?".
Startups are spending 30-40 hours a week customizing pitch decks. And that Investors in Egypt were spending up to four-weeks on due diligence. And in a country like Egypt due diligence is a bureaucratic mess.
20 research participants.

Problem for startups:

They spend too much time trying to get the attention of investors by sending cold emails, looking for referrals and customizing pitch decks. Too much time wasted at events.

Problem for investors:

They can’t find the startups they are actually looking for because there's a lack of awareness of who’s out there. And the startups they do find are not ready ( e.g. unprepared with documentation).

“What about a startup management tool? I want to know which startup I contacted and where we left off.”

— Investor

IDEATION

Wireframe ideas of chatbot idea and subsequent startup timeline to tell a story of their roadmap.

GetVested version 3: A startup discovery platform using a traction score to get investors then most relevant startups.

TEST - ITERATE - REPEAT

How might we encourage startups to register to another platform?

Registration for startups on can be a long and painful form-filling nightmare. Many founders mentioned the dread of having to fill-in their information one-more-time on a networking site.

To inspire startups to tell us there story we used an interview type chatbot experience to (similar to Pitchbot.vc to start their registration in a painless way. e.g. chatbot

How might we instigate communication by investors to startups?

Offer rewards to investors for communicating, mentoring and following startups. The more information the investor has about a startup the more likely they are to invest. Communication breeds transparency which allows for trust.

PIVOT

IMPLEMENTATION

After the most recent round of testing with investors, there was a major shift in perspective. A problem we needed to address.

The primary investors are usually NOT the ones doing the initial filtration:

it's MILLENNIAL ANALYSTS.

At this point we had to redesign the platform with a newly added target group. So we went back to the drawing board and ultimately changing the name and the main device. This lead to a platform highlighting video content in a social network format. Fast, digestible and millennial-friendly

Iterations and feedback with the best UI designer Piotr Wilk

The discovery platform for conscious tech startups.

B(*_*)k me