Athleticalendar is a two way marketplace for athletic spaces and programs. Their directory provides customers with options and providers with an audience. As co-founder and CCO I am responsible for product team management, branding, marketing, user experience, product, and much more.

Prompt

Objective ― Make a brand, SaaS platform, and complete product from the ground up.

My Role ― Co-founder & CCO - Build a team and execute on all things product and creative.

Challenge ― Creating product, brand, and marketing strategy. Focus heavily on user experience design, user interface design, and design systems while also having a mind towards development cycles.

Result

Deliverables ― SaaS product, complete branding and identity (with external usage guidelines), marketing materials.

Conclusion ― While my time here is not over, so far we have built a scalable product that is comprehensive in features as well as providing simple navigation to customers and providers.

The Brand ―

When I was first contacted by Athleticalendar there were no creatives or designers on board. It was a single sales person outsourcing his development and design to a small company in India.

The first step was developing a unifying and identifiable brand identity for Athleticalendar. Using strongly contrasting colors and bold (in stature, not weight) font choices, we rebranded to what you see today. One of the key components of the new logo was the ability to create a logo and an icon that would be instantly recognizable together for when we begin to pivot to our mobile app experience. This also enabled us to be more versatile for our providers with how they choose to advertise their listings on their material both digital and print.

External Use Guides ―

With so many providers pointing their users to our platform (and their listing), external use of our brand was important for us to regulate. We now provide our users with everything they need to create their own advertising using our brand and theirs together. If a company does not have the resources to create their own marketing, we even provide printable flyers per listing which are automated and put together with the data they provide when creating their listing. We also offer pre-made marketing images for our providers to quickly and easily add to their current site.

User Experience ―

After bringing the company over to sharetribe (a CMS platform for two way marketplaces) and stripe (for payments), the focus turned to perfecting user stories and flows. A two sided marketplace is sometimes tough to find the balance between ease of use for providers and for customers, but by simplifying the flows for both parties we were able to get to a point where both ends of the user spectrum were seeing success with our platform.

Agile Development Process ―

Our process for planning development milestones and sprints is planned and executed using github. We are a small team but we are constantly pushing out features and planning the next ones. Using this process and these tools allows us to stay on top of what is being worked on, what is next and keep a transparent workflow for everyone involved to know realistic timelines and expectations for the work that is being completed. As the head of product, I am responsible for planning the sprints and milestones as well as leading scrums. It is a small team, I wear many hats.

Results ―

Our SaaS platform is a great example of what a single shared vision from co-founders can produce with the right people in place. In an extremely short time we have gone from 0 to 1 and beyond. Our product continues to evolve and add users, listings, and features all the time.