Series A into scale: landing a key funding round opens up many opportunities for a startup.
For Tentrr, closing a Series A meant it could begin to grow while eradicating any legacy technical and design debt. Those key upgrades meant it could come into the next season with a business ready for scale.
Tentrr‘s core business connects private landowners with campers around a beautiful canvas wall tent on a custom-built platform. Uncorked endeavored to make its dual-sided marketplace and brand platforms just as well appointed.
Over the course of several months in mid-2018, Uncorked worked with the Tentrr team as a stand-in for yet-to-be-hired product leadership, creating a new and improved design system and a streamlined dual-sided e-commerce back-end. These changes would enable the company to reach scale in its biggest debut camping season, the summer of 2019.
Tentrr built its initial product with speed in mind, rather than scalability. Uncorked had the opportunity to define a clear path to future scale. Our engagement was designed to set Tentrr up to expand and thrive in a larger spotlight.
The engagement began by conducting basic research, carving out personas, and mapping the core experience of both sides of this dual-sided marketplace.
Our core strategy balanced speed and effort. To bolster Tentrr’s design foundations, Uncorked’s Style Tiles create a sustainable brand behavior and voice and tone system, as well as a design pattern library.
It was important to give Tentrr the tools it could adopt, own, and grow into. The studio fine-tuned Tentrr’s product roadmap and e-commerce framework to the business’ key constituencies and rhythms.
Together with Tentrr’s engineering team, Uncorked’s developers built an architecture to grow with the company and provide tangible business insights along the way.
As we neared the handover point, Uncorked’s Product Partnership team delivered a growth strategy and key C-suite counsel. Passing the baton the right way ensured subsequent key hires would continue to help the company realize its ambitions.
