Case Study
Homey
Product Co-founder
Overview
Homey is a property and legal technology startup from London. It came together with the vision of solving the intense problems experienced in the process of buying and selling a home — also known as conveyancing.
From the moment a seller puts their property up for sale with an estate agent to the moment they get the keys to their home (and beyond), I designed Homey to be the platform where all of it happens.
Contributions
In a founding team of 3, I owned the entire product stack.
This included: idea conception, mapping of user flows, user research, redefining and modernising the conveyancing process and customer journeys, product design, product management, customer relationship management, recruiting, (some) frontend development, defining the culture and values for the company… And much, much more.
We raised £500,000+ in pre-seed funding, acquired our first customers, and achieved £500,000+ ARR.
A bunch of stakeholders…
In the process of buying and selling a home, there are many stakeholders involved. At a minimum, there will be an estate agent, a buyer, a seller, a buyer's solicitor, and a seller's solicitor. But you may also have a mortgage broker, a lender, a lender's solicitor, a surveyor, and more.
Estate agent
Seller
Buyer
Seller's lawyer
Buyer's lawyer
and more…
Each of these stakeholders battle with their own problems everyday. They also have their own needs, motivations, incentives, and mindset coming into the transaction. And these may change depending on the circumstances they find themselves in.
Understanding the process
From these conversations and deep legal research, I quickly built myself up to become knowledgeable in the subject matter. My immediate response to this flood of information was to build up a database of insights, from which I could synthesise the various problems, as well as to map out the entire journey that the stakeholders have to go through from start to end.
Click and drag around 👇
Go-to-market
The market was flooded was many products, each claiming to solve a particular step of the conveyancing process. And because of this, a major player, was a product that linked all of these various solutions together. Clearly, neither of these approaches were it.
So it was decided that this product (and by extension the company) we were to build had to integrate all of these solutions into a single package: a compound startup. And, all of these stakeholders had to be present in this single solution, each transacting, communicating, collaborating with one another: a market network.
Starting point and design principles
Click and drag along 👇
Then, design principles were set to help us navigate the design and development of the platform.
Panel management system
In under 3 months, we built and shipped a panel management system for our first customers. Fulfilling this step in the strategy outline above meant automating much of our clients' process in onboarding a seller and buyer, instructing a solicitor for them, invoicing them, collecting information, and more.
Automating auctions
After shipping the product above, we spent the following month addressing bugs and feature requests. I often travelled to their office to spend the day with our customers and users, watching them use our product, more deeply and empathetically understanding their experience, problems, and needs.
We also learned that we could be bolder and aim to automate the sale of a home via auctions. Instead of the 4 months (or much longer) it would take normally, via an auction a sale of a home can take place in a month. From these learnings it was clear, the next step had to be the automation of auctions. So we laid down what that journey would look like on Homey, and began work.
Click and drag around 👇
Along with the design principles mentioned above, our priority was to remove any sources of friction and duplication for the user, and take on the entirety the majority of workload.
Most of the documentation (such as land searches, environmental, energy certificates, etc.) was collected directly by us or from open sources, local authorities and other partner businesses. And we developed questionnaires with decision trees, helping the users get to the end with no time wasted on unnecessary questions.
Design system
I'm a big believer in starting off organised, with a design system organically coming to life as I design solutions and as the brand develops. At this point, it shouldn't be so rigid and mature. Although some components will be standard, the design system should allow for new components to be created and reimagined if needed.
Would you like a walkthrough?
I don't have permission to showcase all of my work here but book a call with me to find out more.