A Marketplace for Entrepreneur Advice — Anvil

Background

I was hired to design an app for Anvil, an advice platform. We were testing whether up-and-coming entrepreneurs were willing to pay for advice from established entrepreneurs (advisors).

The team was small: a product owner, a product manager, an engineer, and me as design lead. We ran workshops and feedback sessions with potential customers, with the goal of a concise MVP we could use to test the market.

Sticky-note needs exercise — A needs exercise we ran with a small group of potential customers.

Personas

Working with a panel of users, we created a few highly engaging personas. Nailing these down let us move on to iteration and testing.

Persona board — The team developed the personas collaboratively, based on user interviews.

Version 1

We assumed entrepreneurs wanted events and videos as a companion to advisor content. When we showed the designs to potential users, discovery was poor for both.

First version of the app focused on discovery — The first version focused on content discovery.

Testers who fit our personas were far less interested in discovering content than we expected. We heard the same thing again and again:

“I’m not sure I would use this service for videos, I mainly go to YouTube for that. For events I look at Instagram.”
— Steve, 23

We did see real interest in seeking out advisors, and realized that was where our MVP should start.

Version 2

Version 2 put advisors up front. It used the mental model that customers look for their industry first, because they want a specialist in that industry.

Revised flow emphasizing advisors — More emphasis on connecting users to advisors.

High-fidelity designs

With the MVP confirmed, I worked with another designer to create high-fidelity designs for the new workflows.

High-fidelity flow for finding an advisor — Flow 1: A user explores advisors, finds one that meets their needs, and requests a session.

High-fidelity flow for a session — Flow 2: The advisor accepts, the session convenes, and the user rates the advisor.

Onboarding & launch

I built a working prototype, and we explored how to combine what we learned in our persona work with content snippets to help convert new users.

I also put together an animated prototype to get a feel for watching short consult videos, with a clear path to take action and become a user.

Results

Metrics six months after launch:

$250KGross revenue

2,500Paid users

Anvil eventually evolved into a video and advice platform called Embark.