Venture Build
The African Impact Initiative is a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting early innovators passionate about contributing to Africa's development and the African community in Canada.
I spearheaded the end-to-end design process of Venture Build, defining the MVP's scope, core user stories, and key user flows. Serving as the main UX/UI designer of the team, I was responsible for product branding, design system management, and the creation and iteration of all Figma prototypes.
The project is currently in its development stage, and the MVP is set to launch by year-end. More details about the design process and impact of Venture Build will be shared thereafter.
An operating system for venture building
Why Venture Build?
Early identification of opportunity areas in product design is crucial as it helps focus efforts, resources, and creativity on addressing specific user needs and market gaps.
To better understand these opportunities and to gain deeper insights into Venture Build's positioning and the driving forces behind this project, I initiated discussions with the product owner and some lead users of existing venture building platforms.
These discussions allowed me to center my design objectives around the following opportunities:
Streamline venture building
Streamline the venture building process, fostering fundraising and informed decision-making for successful startup development.
Centralize resources & features
Serve as a central hub of features and resources, replacing the need for external tools such as Google classroom.
Build and grow a community
Cultivate and expand a vibrant community, fostering connections, knowledge sharing, and collaborative growth among African entrepreneurs.
Scale impact
Evaluate and enhance impact by systematically scaling ventures' growth and achieved outcomes.
Retain founders in the community
Sustain founder participation and engagement in the community, ensuring lasting connections and ongoing growth.
Foster a cluster effect
Catalyze cluster growth by attracting additional founders, funders, and funding opportunities, driving increased impact.
Identifying opportunity areas not only guides design decisions but also inspires the team by aligning their efforts with a clear purpose.
This wasn't a typical application design challenge for me
Unfamiliar industry
While I was no stranger to web application design, this was like entering uncharted territory as I had limited prior knowledge on the venture building process.
Large scale application
The application's scope is relatively extensive, encompassing a diverse array of features that span multiple stages of nurturing a startup company, and therefore, various use cases.
A tight deadline
While the public release is scheduled for the year-end, our internal launch is set for early May, which poses challenges in defining the scope of the first product release.
Ambiguous MVP
Determining what to prioritize for the initial release and its rationale posed significant challenges, mostly due to the large scale nature of the application.
Determine what to include in the initial product release that delivers most value and forms the foundation of user experience.
A glimpse into our journey
The project journey unfolded through four distinct phases. Initially, my focus was on discerning the project's overarching goals, identifying target user segments, and pinpointing opportunity areas. This groundwork laid the foundation for defining the project scope and the features to deliver in the initial product release.
Once high-level user stories and low-level user flows were defined, I delved into crafting and validating the application's information architecture. This was followed by the creation and iteration of mid-fidelity prototypes. I then took the lead in branding the platform, creating all high-fidelity prototypes.
The design is currently in the evaluation stage, with a portion of them already in the hands of the development team. Our aim is to have the MVP go live by mid-May.
So... what should we prioritize and deliver first?
Identify the common themes: I started with a competitive analysis
Given my limited familiarity with venture building at the start of the project, my focus during the competitive analysis was on dissecting various prominent venture building platforms (e.g., TechStars & 500 Startups). This involved a comprehensive exploration of their key features, strengths, and weaknesses, which collectively illuminated the broader landscape of the industry.
Through this examination, I pinpointed 6 common denominators in successful platforms, discerning the essential elements that resonate with users. These insights have been pivotal in shaping our MVP, as we distill and incorporate the most impactful features to provide a robust foundation for our venture building platform.
Define product positioning and target user profile through stakeholder interviews
To ensure a clear project scope and a focused design process, a kick-off meeting was initiated involving both internal stakeholders (such as the product owner and program manager) and external stakeholders (including former program members). This allowed for the effective consolidation of the unique product positioning and target user profile, thereby facilitating the selection of inclusion and exclusion criteria.
Eliminate the unwanted: defining exclusion criteria
Given the unique product positioning and user profile, two exclusion criteria—alignment and relevance—were selected. These criteria focus on evaluating how well a feature aligns with the product positioning and user profile, as well as its relevance to the needs that emerge during the early venture building stages of target users.
Steer structured decision-making: defining the prioritization criteria
I then employed 3 evaluation criteria to establish priority benchmarks for features in the initial product release.
User impact
Prioritize features that directly address the core needs and pain points of our target users. The MVP should deliver tangible value and solve real problems.
Viability
Select features that contribute to the overall viability of the product. Consider how well the MVP can stand alone and provide value, even if it has fewer features than the complete version.
Feasibility & dependencies
Prioritize features that are more feasible and have fewer tech and resource dependencies, while deprioritizing those that are more suitable for a later product release when the platform has gained traction.
Identify the "losers" and "winners"
After evaluating the candidate features against key user needs revealed by our primary research and the above-mentioned exclusion and prioritization criteria, we identified 4 themes that would form the core of our MVP, crystallizing our direction for the first release.
There are no one-size-fits-all criteria for evaluating the priorities of deliverables. The choice of criteria depends on the unique context of each situation.
Final design preview
More details about the design process will be shared shortly. Here's a brief preview of some high-fidelity prototypes I've created:
Empowering financial excellence through fundraising and CRM oversight
Venture Build empowers startups to oversee their financial trajectory. Through am integration of real-time data analytics, startups can closely monitor their progress towards their fundraising goals, fostering an environment of proactive financial management.
Furthermore, the fundraising CRM system offers a range of functionalities for startups to cultivate and nurture crucial investor relationships, driving enduring partnerships and fostering a thriving network of financial support.
Beyond the pitch deck: customized public profiles elevating startup narratives
Venture Build also empowers startups to create a public profile that extends beyond the confines of a traditional pitch deck, particularly beneficial for early-stage startups lacking a website or any public touchpoint. By integrating key elements of their business journey into a concise yet comprehensive narrative, entrepreneurs can effectively communicate their mission, values, and potential to a broader audience, fostering a deeper understanding and resonance within the entrepreneurial community. This lays the foundation for meaningful connections and potential collaborations.
Tailored support: personalized resource recommendations for startup success
Embedded within the platform is a resource recommendation system that is tailored to meet the specific needs of each venture. During the onboarding process, startups are presented with a series of questions designed to assess their needs, challenges, and current stage. This information enables the platform to suggest resources that directly address their individual requirements. To ensure ongoing relevance, startups are invited to participate in a monthly needs assessment survey, further refining the recommendations and ensuring continued alignment with their evolving demands.
An in-house course system for a more integrated and tailored learning experience
The decision to develop an in-house course system was rooted in the idea of centralizing educational resources such as courses, workshops, and seminars into one place. This allows for greater customization to tailor the platform specifically to the needs and requirements of African-based early-stage startups. The course system, in conjunction with the resource recommendation system, forms a more integrated startup training experience.
An administrator panel for efficient program operations
Another motivating factor behind the project is the increasing costs associated with operations and management in running the A.I.C program. The design of Venture Build addressed this pain point by involving program managers in the design process. This led to the introduction of an administrator panel that enables the operations team to more efficiently run and monitor program activities.
The importance of criteria in MVP definition
The design process of Venture Build has been nothing short of a learning experience. In addition to acquiring tangible skills such as improving hand-off procedures and managing the design system, one of the most important lessons I've learned from this journey is the importance of exclusion and prioritization criteria in shaping the definition of the MVP.
For an area full of opportunities, it's all too easy for designers, or the product team at large, to be carried away by the allure of potential value that a new product promises. This can lead to an unrealistic assessment of the resources and capacities required to seize every opportunity, resulting in chaos and scope creep throughout the design and development journey. It is therefore imperative that the scope of the MVP be defined early on and supported by clear exclusion and prioritization criteria, rather than relying on mere conjecture. Even experienced assumptions can carry potential risks, particularly in designing within an initially unfamiliar landscape.
The project is now in its evaluation and development stage. The MVP is set to launch internally by Summer 2024, and more details about my design thinking process and the impact of Venture Build will be shared thereafter.
Key takeaways
Exclusion metrics are as important as inclusion metrics
The selection of ideas, features, or themes involves both inclusion and exclusion processes. Therefore, metrics for exclusion are also important, as determining what not to deliver is essential for defining a clear project scope and maintaining a focused design process.
Understand the motivations behind each project
The motivational factors or rationale driving a project deserve significant attention, as they often highlight gaps and opportunities to leverage. They serve as an effective alignment tool to facilitate clear product positioning and scoping, and should be thoroughly discussed in the kick-off stage.
Define the MVP in a cross-discipline setting
The definition of the MVP greatly benefits from cross-disciplinary perspectives, as they often highlight aspects that could otherwise be overlooked by designers, such as business priorities, tech dependencies, and available resources, ensuring a robust and well-rounded MVP definition.
Involve the dev team in design critique sessions
Internal design critique sessions are often conducted within the design team. Involving developers in these sessions could aid in evaluating the technical feasibility and requirements of features. This inclusion diminishes the likelihood of designers assuming elements as a matter of course.
