A collaborative ecosystem & a CRM tool

allowing thousands of startups, investors

& accelerators to connect, share
information and do fundraising based on
matchmaking & build long-term
relationships.
By Aishwarya | 2020 - 2021 | Project from: Sweden

What is Sircular?
It is a platform where members of the network can seamlessly share data,
get recommendations on who to match with, and get analytics on their
relations with others. Sircular democratises fundraising and makes it
inclusive, efficient and rewarding!

Visit website Figma - All designs

The challenges

Accelerators, startups, and investors to

collaborate, track and share information in
a smarter and faster way
Today, entrepreneurship is more important than ever. Based on research
in Sweden’s marketplace we see, investors like angel, accelarators, VCs
are hard to find the right startup to invest in a smart way. They are putting
lot of time and effort to grow the network and fund raising. For Daniel Isac
(Founder of Sircular) a x-banker and a great socialist, this was the
motivation that made him take the decision to start Sircular. So he left his
job to reach some powerful Investors like Vendi, Microsoft to make an
impact in sweden and so on.

The aim

1
Collaborate and engage with stakeholders
2
Analyze and track performance
3
Get fundraised faster
4 Make meaningful investments

My role

Starting from very early stage

I started working remotely on Sircular in March to Dec, 2020. My position
inside the team (2 people at the beginning) was led the design of Sircular
for Website, Web App version.

Customer Insights & Ideation:

I had the pleasure to work directly with founders, together we analyzed

insights and translated concepts into features that address customer
behaviors and motivations.

Design Execution & Validation

I designed across 2 platforms and collaborated with developers to

translate product features. I executed journeys, wireframes, prototypes
and design specs.

After the product was finished, I collaborated with testers to improve the
visual and quality of the front-end.

Working with founders

Working directly with founders was a

beautiful experience for me. Their sence of
humor, the knowledge, clarity, planning
and involvment was 100%. Learning all the
aspects of the company like Business
goals, how to raise fund, how to engage
Daniel Isac
Alexis Beaussant

users, how to help users to achieve goals, Founder of Sircular CEO of Sircular
and how to be a good colleague.

Discovery

Research, the key for a solid product…

In the 1st stage, We did a market analysis to collect the challenges,
difficulties and needs from investors and startups as there were not
much direct competitors in the market. That give me a lot of customer
insight and a guidance on where to focus the product and which
features focus on. We decided to do babies steps. So, first, focus our
product in Sweden and when the product is solid “Make it grow”.

The market

We did a market analysis and we found that the market was bigger than
the expected. So Daniel and Alexis took this approach: We don’t need to
be everywhere, we are where our audience is. Test it and scale it.

Competition

It is important to look into other players on the market. We analized on

each one: User and products goals, and User Interface & User
experience on differents flow (Onboarding, sign up, match making
process, deal flow etc)

Audience

We created our tentative user Personas. We analyzed: Quantitative

information, behaviors, expectations, paint-points.

Product

Based in the previous infomation we defined: product goals, product

vision, “must to have” features, “out the box” features.

Information architecture (IA)

Marketing website wireframe / Homepage

... and this is not the final wireframe ofcourse. We keep on adding values
and make the root strong to build minimal viable product 1st.

Figma - All designs

UI Design

When you think you’re done….

you’re not.
The design that you see below isn’t the final design. Working with data
collected during the research phase, I was able to set up user flows
which we reviewed with the team. After that, It was time to give shape to
our product. Until here, we had around 6 months of work (including
research phase).

My steps were:

low-fidelity wireframes

Create low-fidelity wireframes (on paper) the main objective was to

create the product’s structure and define features. So that it will e easy to
quickly plan and validate the value of the design.

Style guide

Create a style guide to keep the UI consistent (colors, fonts, structure,

basic components, etc)

High-fidelity Design

Create high-fidelity designing in this step I defined how a product will

look at project completion.

Prototyping

Create the prototype, before to move on with the development process i

decided to make a quick prototype to validate the usability and overall
value of solution design.

The Result (User interface design)

Homepage

Discovery

The main page allows the user to

explore the website.

If the user is logged in, we show

recommended options based on their
preferences whether they are investor

or startups.

Figma - All designs

Register

Login/ Register

User can select the type to get

onboarded to Sircular. For startup upto
certain level it’s free but for investor it’s
completly free.
Login

Teaser form

Teaser(Profile) building

To build a best impression company,

has to fill up the teaser to get noticed by
top level VCs and Angel investors.

Company teaser details

Teaser page for Startup

After filling the form, Investors can view

the market standard of the company,
like pre money valuation, target,
industries, team, products, business
model, updates etc like this.

Deal flow

CRM - Dashboard home page

Sircular admin can track and investigate
all the startups and investors
relationships.

Dealroom

CRM - Dealroom
This feature is to help admin to verify
and validate the company background
to provide best possile suggestions for
Investors to deal. Admin can control
over all the company cards by simply
drag and drop to columns as per the
need, create new board, can accept or
reject, schedule a meeting with
companies and many more.

Profile analytics (For free user)

Profile analytics

User (Startup) can view and track

investors like who views their profile how
many times, Which part of the teaser
attracts them, from which system they
opened, did they download the pitch
deck or not and may more.

Profile analytics (For premium user)

Profile analytics

The premium User can have a option to

create ‘Public and Private link’ for their
compani. Multiple private links can be
created for respective investors to track
and share certain amount of data.

Message

Message
The premium User can directly send and
share data with the investor to build a
relation.

The tools

How i designed
I made the designs and manage the requirment using diffent tools. But I
would like to highlight Figma (Clap! Clap!).

Some designes were initialy made in XD when client came up with this
project. So i was continuing with XD. Then i realised there are a lot to do
which would be great and faster using Figma. The main benefits is that is
a live collaboration tool. It keeps teams on task and encourages
discipline. Anyody can add comments, export styles, and is very easy to
make quick prototypes with it. For developers it’s very supportive. I just
love Figma!.

Other tools that help me to make this project live are: Illustrator (to edit
illustartions), Jira (tasks manager), Miro(Collaboration Platform), and
Google Hangouts Meet (for team communication).

Retrospective
Launching is only the beginning
The real learning and changes are only just
beginning. We created the minimal viable product.
What now? After a year of design, testing with
users and development, we launched.

We’re humans, and part of the products are based

on assumptions, some of them created based on
the research, competence analysis, and others,
based on the personas and the user we want to
reach.

When we launch the product it was time to

validate (or not) all these assumtions. I mean:

If these assumptions were correct.

If we pushed in the right direction?

Which part of the project we need to improve or

what attracts user more etc..

You can see the learning we get in the project

“Sircular! We got learnings”

Thank you!