How a 2-Person Startup Built a Thriving Marketplace in WeWeb in 3 Months

Elyse and Shaina, entrepreneurs at heart, had a bold idea: create a marketplace called Hello Generalist to connect freelance operators with startups in need of their skills. 

They quickly got to work, patching together a minimum viable product (MVP) using Webflow and Airtable. To their delight:

• over 100+ operators signed up in the first month,
• 10+ startups posted contracts, and
• they had a waitlist of a 1,000 more.

Hooray!

They knew they were on to something viable with big potential.

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PROBLEM

What’s next? Turning an MVP into a Functional Product

Elyse, the Product Lead at Hello Generalist, had a vision to build a highly functional and user-friendly marketplace. But,

• She had limited budget and bandwidth: Elyse and Shaina were a two-person team with a limited budget, handling everything from marketplace development to marketing, sales, and finance. 
• She was running against the clock: With a thousand customers on the waiting list, she was eager to launch the marketplace ASAP to get their users going. 
• She has limited experience with coding: Elyse wanted to avoid writing code but still needed the flexibility to turn her Figma wireframes into a working web app.‍
• She had to build business logic flows from scratch: Building a two-way marketplace from ground up involved wiring three business logic flows: one for the operators, another for startups, and lastly an admin panel.

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SOLUTION

WeWeb : The quickest way to build pro web applications

Elyse easily customized the workflows of her marketplace for different users using WeWeb’s no-code workflow builder. 

The no-code features of WeWeb, such as its built-in Xano authentication and out-of-the-box responsive design, enabled her to abstract away the more complex aspects of creating a secure, professional-grade web application.

The ability to customize CSS state properties and incorporate JavaScript into formulas allowed her to add unique features like callouts and application & job statuses. Unlike other no-code tools, WeWeb's proximity to code helped her to build a truly dynamic marketplace.

For an early-stage startup like Hello Generalist, rapid iteration is key. 

Elyse and Shaina consistently gather user feedback, head back to the drawing board, and update their workflows in WebWeb to improve their UI/UX.

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RESULT

Within a week of relaunch 30+ customers started using Hello Generalist

Despite her limited full stack experience, Elyse successfully relaunched Hello Generalist using WeWeb and Xano in just 3-4 months, building the product and managing other aspects of the business at the same time.

She went from designing Figma wireframes, to building a UI in WeWeb and testing her backend logic, all the while gathering customer feedback and rapidly iterating on the design.

In just a week after relaunch 30+ customers successfully onboarded and started using Hello Generalist to search for contract work.

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WHAT'S NEXT?

Scaling Hello Generalist

Elyse is confident that a combination of WeWeb and Xano will support her future growth plans, including implementing advanced matching algorithms and filtering functionalities.

Now, Elyse and Shaina are focused on growing their business without getting stuck in coding puzzles, bringing their vision to life faster and more effectively.

Ready to turn your idea into reality?

Launch a scalable web app quickly and easily—no complex coding required—with WeWeb. 

Start building for free →

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