A teacher-turned-entrepreneur built a revenue-generating prototype marketplace. He won startup competitions, went through two accelerators and then hired me.
The original website was launched January 2015, then iterated to experiment on new audiences. Then iterated for additional audiences, twice more. Added some some features requested by users. Then again, and again – eventually becoming a nuclear testing ground for experimentation. This was PartyRVA, a concept intended to be franchised (or white-labeled) to other cities.
Feedback upon graduating the first business accelerator in Fall 2015, "rebuild for scale under a unified brand." Single-founder Nate coordinated a friends and family raise over six figures, coupled with the prize money from three startup competitions, he enlisted me to help rebuild in March 2016.
He had selected a new name and been working with a designer to concept the brand, logomark and new mocks. We paused there.
PartyRVA had a lot it was trying to accomplish. It seemed too many features for a prototype that had yet to find its market fit. But I couldn't judge without talking to some customers.
I led customer discovery on two cohorts – current users and prospective users. We learned about their behaviors, their pain points and how they may interact with the existing site. We went a couple rounds on paper prototypes and InVision, introducing new concepts for limited and streamlined functionality.
I also learned more about the businesses being listed – because as a two-sided marketplace you have more than one customer – which helped shift the business model, pricing structure and reduce much friction from the customer journey.
Then we went to work across the entire site. The new brand featured a strengthened marketplace of ideas with a simplified interface. We were able to remove whole steps from the previous user path. We further removed friction from sharing ideas by removing accounts, in favor of a longterm cookie-based cart caching system – borrowing from a Doodle- or Craigslist-like system. Finally, we upgraded the architecture to accommodate areas/cities, established vendor accounts and business listings with ability to float between cities.
Post marketplace launch, we introduced new functionality for vendors. They can now access real-time performance analytics, edit business listings and update billing options.
The site staffs only three full-time staff, a salesperson, a developer and Nate. OccasionGenius is roughly 30 days into a 90-day funding raise, currently with over $250k commitments in new funding with no cap.
