Intrepid Marketplace
Intrepid was a B2B marketplace for SMEs to list, discover, and purchase professional technology and creative services from around the world.
My roles.
Lead Product Owner and Product Designer.
Worked closely with the CEO to identify the users and problems, define and prioritise features.
Led user research and design process.
Researched and built the MVP using no-code tools like Webflow, Memberstack, Stripe, Zapier, Airtable.
Knowing the context.
In late 2018, our team set out on a mission to change the way businesses connect, work, and grow. We wanted to do for small technology service providers what Alibaba did for goods manufacturers looking to reach global buyers.
We thought: “How can we use technology to make it easy for people to do – or build a – business from anywhere, while connecting them to opportunity and enabling them to live a more meaningful life?” So, we decided to create a community-marketplace for technology businesses. A community where startup founders, SMB’s, designers, developers, and technology leaders could buy and sell technology services.
“I started my own business 3 years ago after more than a decade working for big IT outsourcing companies. Our goal was to create an outstanding Digital Product Agency on a very competitive market and to be able to benchmark with the top global firms, that’s why we decided to work with Intrepid.”
— Olena | Cofounder of thegradient
Understanding the users and their problems.
I worked closely with Intrepid’s founding team, who had spent years selling services to companies all over the world. The team also had significant experience in buying services, which provided them with a strong understanding of the users’ problems.
We had multiple conversations with service vendors and buyers across geographies to validate our hypothesis (and confirming that our ideal customer profiles face similar issues all over the world).
Being a marketplace, we identified the following user problems:
For sellers:
Finding digital marketing and cross-cultural communication skills is difficult.
Operating with limited trade and financial services restricts flexibility.
Acquiring international customers is expensive and inefficient.
Building reputation and trust, as well as getting paid, is hard.
Engaging intermediaries drives down the price.
For buyers:
Using inconsistent service standards leads to complications and below-par deliverables.
Discovering quality service providers is costly, time-consuming, and filled with pitfalls.
Finding transparent service pricing and packaging is challenging.
Settling for inadequate payment options limits flexibility.
Engaging intermediaries increases costs.
Aiming for the goal.
To build the first proof of concept MVP that can onboard 50 service providers (sellers) and power 100 transactions.
Working on the solutions.
Helping buyers discover the services they require was the backbone of our platform. We needed to help sellers maximise the exposure of their services and buyers increase their chances of discovering the service(s) they need (in the shortest amount of time). To do that, we included these solutions:
Buyers can search for services based on their needs.
Services were listed and categorised by industry and location on the marketplace homepage.
Algorithms recommend services to buyers based on their profile, business needs, and budget.
Best-performing sellers and services were featured, and new sellers could promote their services.
Building trust through a sellers’ vetting system via onboarding flow
Trust was the key factor defining our business. Convincing buyers to purchase services from remote providers can be challenging. Based on our research, it can take up to four weeks for clients to source, vet, and make decisions on working with a new vendor.
We strived to solve this problem by building a trustworthy brand, allowing buyers to confidently procure services on Intrepid through their trust in our platform.
To achieve that, we built a multi-step onboarding flow where we vetted businesses, examined their track records, and verified client references.
The visual identity and user interface collaborate to deliver the sense of a premium, trustworthy brand.
Productising services
Our studies indicated that the majority of service providers charge their clients based on man-hours or by tailoring the price to the client's brief. However, we also found that most clients lacked a detailed idea of what they want, and the process of discussing the brief and finalising the cost could take up to three-to-four weeks.
Armed with these insights, we decided to help our partners productise their services and sell them in packages. Productisation does not only provide additional value to buyers, but also helps service-providing teams to position themselves and grow.
Facilitating transparency through blockchain-enabled review systems
We strived to make sure that all the reviews on our platform were true and creditable. Integrating blockchain technology into the review systems would make sure that all the reviews were true and coming from actual, verified clients. This was a feature we aimed to implement in the future.
