MicroAcquire December Product Update 2021

Hey everyone. I wanted to create a quick video and walk you through the updates. Really awesome updates we have coming out in our next product release, which is happening on Tuesday, December 21st. And it really is comprised of two main components. The first being an easier and more scalable way to search and find things, either on the marketplace or within requests or any other area of the product that requires us to search and find things and then secondarily increasing the discoverability of these key actions throughout the product. So being able to find where the send an LOI button is for a buyer, being able to find the complete acquisition action for a seller, putting those actions in multiple places so they're readily available. So yeah, and then, and then some of the learnability of where these things should be located. A lot of these actions were hidden with icons before, which didn't really represent what the, the action was or the button was. And so now we've kind of went away from that and we, we've tried to use more text in our buttons and also give them more emphasis. What's a primary button? What's a secondary button? What's like a tertiary button? Things of that nature. So let's jump right in. I'll start with searching, just because visually it's a bigger change. We can see what the marketplace looks like now. And I'll tell you why we established this new pattern for searching and filtering. So when I first came on, there was a lot of feedback about, hey, we want to add all these different pieces of information to startups and be able to find them as a buyer. I want to be able to filter by EBITDA or I want to be able to filter by location, or I want to be able to filter by all these like industry or, you know, sector things like that. So all these other things that kind of go with the startup listing that's, that's missing now, but we want to add in the future. And I couldn't. We wanted to add that information, but also we wanted to provide an easy way for buyers to filter, like to really refine their, their targeting, their acquisition targeting strategy by those different fields in that information. And what I quickly found out is there wasn't a whole lot of real estate here to be able to add things. We're kind of maxed out right here in terms of sort options. We've got sort options mixed with different types of filters. And then we had a bunch of unnecessary dropdowns with, you know, yes or nos, which could be checkboxes. And then we had the, the startup the generic startups filter at the bottom which included favorites, it used to include premium buyers and it was just kind of like a generic bucket and stuff. And so anyways, we looked at this and thought, hey, you know, there's probably some ways that we can improve the way that we're able to find information and lay a great foundation for the future, which unlocks our ability to add more information to startup listings and provide a way for buyers to then find those startup listings, ultimately creating a better matching experience. So in any case, what we did was instead of the other thing is like we could have added more here, but now I have to scroll all the way up to see which ones are applied and I got to go back down. So anyways, we tried to come up with a better solution and a pattern that could cascade across the entire product and platform. So we came up with this paradigm at the top which is super common amongst a lot of marketplaces today. It's kind of the go to way. And the reason is, is because it's more scalable for mobile and tablet as well. You don't have to create a layout for desktop where you have this on the left and this on the top and then when it gets down to mobile, you basically are creating a new layout. So there's a bunch of decisions that, a bunch of thoughts that went into it and a bunch of considerations. In any case, we went with this approach and so basically we now have the sort here with the sort options, we have the startup types here, we have the price here and then we moved favorites up in priority because there were so many buyers that had mentioned, hey, favorites are really important. I favorite all my startups and I can never find them or relocate them. Those, that's basically my short list of targets. And then what we did was we took all of the other filters that maybe weren't as high priority as these right here and we basically move them into a more filters area which is this provides us the scalability in the future to be able to group these things, give other groups emphasis, to be able to add more, to experiment. So it provides a great sandbox for us to work within. So yeah, in any case this is a new layout. We had to. Obviously there's a benefit of this new layout as well. We get more real estate on the listing card. So things changed a little bit here just because the card has a lot more real estate now. But we tried to make the information the most important part of the card. So right these numbers and these important stats about this startup are the most important thing, that's what the buyers are going to be reading first, along with the description and, and the type. So we tried to do that. The other thing we did was instead of having an arrow that you have to hover over to find, we just displayed a view listing button. So you can easily just get to these listings and, and then obviously the keyword search is over here. And it works kind of the same way that it did in the past. So that's kind of the pattern that you'll start to see across the platform now. So I'm going to jump over to requests and you'll see the same exact pattern that we can continue to use and I'll move into some of the key action or the key action improvements. So basically what we did was instead of having a lot of different statuses and a lot of different buttons, we tried to combine the statuses and the actions and we also tried to add text to a lot of these buttons. So now if I go back to the old experience, I am a buyer here and I've been given private access to the startup, but in no area over here am I is there a call to action for me to send an loi. So I have no idea that that step is even next. The only way for me to find that is to hover over this, click this arrow and find, submit a letter of intent at the bottom or watch one of Andrew's videos or contact support. So in any case, we took a stab at improving that. So basically another thing we did was we added the tags to these cards as well. So this gives buyers now a little bit more context when they're going through the requests so they can say, oh, okay, this, this one's under advisory. You know, I, I found a startup that I was filtering by under advisory because I want to target startups that have a professional or an expert involved. And you know, and then I requested access to that one and then in here now I can see my request and so now I can kind of prioritize a little bit differently based on some of the tags that are showing. So anyways, that was an easy change to just add those tags there. And then you can see we have a view listing button now instead of an arrow. And then the chat was. The chat button to get to the chat is now just a button instead of a, instead of just a little icon, which I think is fine. It's when we get into more some of the other actions, you'll start to see some of the discrepancies but so any case, access the given here we can chat with the seller the same way we normally do. And now I can see my next step here with an emphasized primary action is to send an loi. So this type of structure is cascaded across the platform. So if I go now, sorry, I got a lot of trying to show you guys all the different angles. So this is a seller view, very similar. I can revoke access here. See how we've combined the status with the actions. So now we don't have to have all these competing buttons and statuses everywhere. So let me go ahead and send this loi. We'll just grab this. So now the button has now let's say it gives me the status that the LOI has been sent and then I can also view and cancel. And you can see up here we've added an LOI status filter. So giving the buyer a little bit more of a call to action that hey LOI status is important. Giving them emphasis on hey, send an loi. Use the workflow that we've created for you. So I can just filter by LOI sent if I want. Obviously I can also filter by private access and then message status is still in here. Favorites is here. Hidden requests, those are all standard things that were there before. One thing that's new for the request is now I can find a request using the search. This didn't exist before, so now I can just type in. You know, if I'm looking for a specific startup I can find boost IO. So that's kind of the gist of it all this stuff is pretty much the same. I can still see these cards and stuff but if I go to the advisor experience you can see similar same exact pattern, same exact requests pattern. And now it's just engagement requests instead of Lois. And then I believe I don't have any clients marketplace. Oops, sorry, let me go over back to my seller. So if I cruise into the directory you can see don't mind my favorite advisors, but same exact pattern, I can do all the same stuff. We got the more filters as well. And then we'll also adjust the filter priority based on usage. So I have analytics running on how often these different filters are getting used. So if the preferred deal size is getting used more than the others, we'll move them in and out based on usage. We adjusted the text of this button to say view profile so it's a little bit more clear. My advisors, you can see we've same pattern view profile. We've got the chat with Advisor Pattern in here, same primary action. Right. If. If an engagement request has been sent to me by an advisor and I'm a seller, we want the primary action with the most emphasis to inform them what they need to do next. And so this gives a more stronger call to action and to view that engagement request and accept it. So, yeah, that's. Those are a lot of the updates that I went over. This is the seller. If I want to view that request I sent from the buyer, I can accept it. And then you will see. Now that we have brought in the complete acquisition button here before, the only way to find it would be as a buyer to click the listing. No, sorry, it's initiated from the seller. I'm so sorry. The only way to find it would be to go to my listing and then complete the acquisition button here, which doesn't seem to be clicked very often. We're not really sure why, but because we are. This is kind of the main workflow. This is what buyers and sellers have described to me as kind of like the deal workflow in the past. Even though it's just requests right now we want this to evolve, obviously, because this is the main workflow where they chat with people, where they send Lois, where they accept engagement requests, where they send engagement requests. We simply brought the complete acquisition button in here. So. So when it's under offer, it's an action that is given the primary emphasis. And this really helps with learnability. We're just trying to teach users, hey, this is what you do next with a lot of just subtle usability tweaks in terms of giving certain actions more emphasis and less actions less emphasis or tertiary emphasis. So yeah, that's. That seems like the meat of it. The advisors, I showed you that, I showed you the marketplaces. You got all that advisor, advisor perspective, seller perspective. Oh, admin perspectives, last one. So, yeah, same exact pattern. It's been established across admin as well. So you can all basically all the same stuff, searches, obviously. Over here. One thing for admin, now you can search for. So yeah, you have one search field now and you can search for anything. So I can search for company name, I can search for email, I can even grab a startup ID now we basically made this, the search a lot more scalable. I'm losing myself within these tabs. Bear with me. Oh, sorry. Gotta be a buyer. I'm so sorry, guys. Hold on. Yeah, so if I want to grab this, start this startup's id, I plop it in here and now I found the startup. So ID now works in there. And again, it's across all these. So buyer, I can search for email, full name, all in this one field. I don't have to have multiple fields, multiple search boxes to be able to do that. So I think that's most everything, guys. But yeah, we'll hope you're around for the demo tomorrow. Go through this again. Oh, also, yeah, maybe I didn't walk you through some of the interactions, but as you collapse some of these and you start to filter, like if I choose 10,000 and I click apply, it automatically filters. And then you get this little indicator up here to tell you, hey, you've filtered by two and then it tells you exactly what's going on. So just some small little interaction stuff. But yeah, that's. That's pretty much everything. Again, if you're. Yeah, if you're at the demo tomorrow, we'll go through this stuff and you can ask questions. But yeah, it should be exciting. It's laying a great foundation for us in the future to be able to rapidly kind of add pieces on and then it's kind of just enabling good patterns for us to leverage as we expand. Yeah, that's everything. Thanks, guys, and yeah, I look forward to seeing you at the demo. See ya.