Mainvest
The Small Business Investment Marketplace . Explore the site here.
The Problem
Small businesses have limited access to capital, and any funds they can raise will be high at a high cost of capital and require personal guarantees.
Apart from purchasing the good or service, local stakeholders have no way to support Small Businesses they care about.
The Solution
A two-sided marketplace where businesses fundraise and offer competitive ROIs and investors can contribute to their local economy directly and earn interest while doing so.
Lead a cross-functional team to develop, design, and market an Investment Preferences feature that would notify users when a business matched their location or industry preferences.
Researched both internally (users & data) and externally (competition in Reg CF and marketplace platforms) to develop a new design for the main discovery page on Mainvest.
Managed the entire product release process for a 0-1 creation of investor wallets, a key goal on our product roadmap. We created custodial bank accounts for every existing user to keep the investment returns on the platform, and later gave investors the option to re-invest their returns directly.
Independently supervised the entire repayment process for over 300 businesses on the platform. I would organize and assist these businesses and ensure payments were made on time. As I write this, I have overseen 60k+ transactions totalling over $2MM in capital flowing back into investor wallets.
July 2019 - Joined as an intern after graduating college and theorizing a similar business (discovered Mainvest during my own market research).
Sept 2019 - Moved into a full time Operations role focusing on growth strategy on the supply (smb) side of the marketplace. Onboarding hundreds of Small Businesses, streamlining the processes, and working on the ground to pitch and assist the entrepreneurs.
February 2021 - Using my knowledge of the supply side of the business, I transitioned to Product Manager to be the much needed liaison between Ops and Tech. Mixing data analysis and qualitative user research to inform changes to 90% of the user-facing platform. Dabbling in UI design, copywriting, and coding, I was often referred to as the pinch-hitter of the small, 20 person team.