Article
Jeeves Anywhere
This was a hackathon project I was super proud to lead. I wanted to take some time to dissect how it came to be and why it was important.
July 12, 2023
7
minute read
Leadership
Design thinking
Product strategy
Entreprenuership
Visual design
Sometimes, most of the times really, the best ideas are born from experiencing and then understanding pain points.
Like most hackathons, we had a small amount of time to put together a concept and then build it. While at Jeeves I had hoped we could break the chains that bound us and create something so easy, so groundbreaking, so unconventional that we would be undeniable. Lofty goals for a weeks worth of work.
I started with a simple premise (having worked on our payment platform riddled with compliance compromise), what if paying your vendors was as easy as paying your babysitter? Another way to say it, what if our payments product could be as easy to use as cashapp, venmo, paypal, google payment, apple pay, or any other P2P payments platform. Enter an email or phone number an amount and hit send.
The architecture was basic, but sound.
After the architecture was established, I developed user journeys and a script to pitch it to engineering teams to find some folks to work on it with me. As I wrote the pitch I realized it could work really well as a teaser video. So hardened some key wireframes to high fidelity and then made this little guy:
After 3 rounds of pitching the concept we had a development team and got to work building out the core MVP app.
The first thing was how could a non customer claim their account without having to KYC/KYB. We wanted to make it as easy as possible so we relied on a landing based on simple two factor authentication. Here is a partial example:
After we established the ability to claim an account, we had to claim funds and work on a conversion funnel. Part two of the project went beyond making it easy to send money, but rather using it as a network effect tool to attract new organic customers.
We spent a week building and then demo'd it. One of my teammates sent another $5.00 and the receiving engineer claimed the money and then sent it to another engineer. Network effect established.
We tied for first place against another concept that introduced using USDT as a transfer agent to compete with the likes of SWIFT, ACH, and wire transfers.
Much success and a fun project to work on.