West Tenth
Tech Startup: Marketplace for Local Micro Businesses
Consumer Marketplace +
Small Business Hub
In the U.S., one in every ten businesses operates out of a home. Many of these home-based businesses are creative service providers working quietly in neighborhoods across the country.
Lyn Johnson & Sara Sparhawk co-founded West Tenth to shine a light on these local talents—the home bakers, party planners, family photographers, and artists who bring creativity and care to their craft. We set out to make it easier for people to discover and support the small businesses right around them, and to bring a sense of community back to commerce.
The Challenge:
Create a tech product, a marketplace and a community, all in one.
In our own lives, we could turn to Etsy for handmade goods or Angie for home repairs, but there was no easy way to find the creative small business owners in our own neighborhoods—the ones who could throw a Pinterest-worthy birthday party, effortlessly decorate our homes for the holidays, or coordinate a beautiful family photo shoot.
As busy professionals trying to create joyful home lives, we knew these talented people existed nearby, but tracking them down felt like a project in itself.
So we built West Tenth to make discovering and hiring local creative services simple, lightening our to-do lists while supporting the small businesses that make our communities special.
1) We Designed & Built A Digital Marketplace:
iOS & Android Apps
We created a custom consumer app for the App Store, which required a focused & dedicated effort across multiple disciplines, including:
- User research: identifying our target audience, conducting surveys and interviews, and observing existing consumer behavior
- UI/UX design: prototyping & user testing app designs to create an intuitive search & shop experience
- Front-end & back-end engineering development: Building out features like small business profile setups, invoicing, messaging, shopping carts, order histories, featured businesses, favorites, seasonal trends, etc. (React Native, Github, AWS)
- Integration of third-party services: Optimizing app functionality (Twilio, Stripe), analytics (Mixpanel, Google Analytics, Hotjar), security (Travis) by vetting and partnering with software service providers
- Robust automated and manual user testing: extensively assessing use-case & edge-case scenarios before pushing out releases & updates for bug fixes and new features
- Preparing for App Store/Google Play submission: creating marketing assets, compelling app descriptions, and going through multiple review cycles before publishing an approved app
A Custom Website
Developing a custom website that works seamlessly with a mobile app required careful coordination between web & mobile development efforts to ensure a unified user experience across platforms. Our development experience included:
- Architecting a shared backend infrastructure: Synchronizing data in real-time between web and mobile—ensuring that a user’s shopping cart, order history, preferences, and account details remain consistent whether they’re on their phone or laptop
- Incorporating analytic programs: Connecting Mixpanel, Hotjar, Google Analytics, etc., to measure conversion rates, customer LTVs, discover user patterns, as well as identify friction points
- Building robust APIs: Implementing secure authentication systems that work across both platforms, and designing databases that can handle concurrent requests from multiple sources without conflicts or delays
- Implementing responsive design: Ensuring the frontend web development accounted for various browsers, screen sizes, and accessibility standards, while maintaining visual and functional parity with the mobile app’s design language
- Incorporating cutting-edge AI: Utilizing our unique dataset of local commercial transactions to generate a helpful chatbot that could seamlessly match consumers with businesses best suited for their tasks. And architecting our data for a future of agentic AI that would allow us to contract with local businesses on consumers’ behalf to get projects started & completed for them.
2) We Raised Capital (from investors big & small):
From Crowdfunding
We created a crowdfunding campaign to raise money from our community and other small investors who wanted to see a platform like ours exist in the world. Not only did we attract commitments from hundreds of small investors, but their willingness to back a burgeoning platform like ours also served as powerful market validation.
The crowdfund process required compelling storytelling, including video production, to convince strangers that the idea was worth being part of.
We Attracted Capital from Silicon Valley, NYC & Techstars
To Venture Capital Funding
Pitching to venture capitalist firms was a challenge, but our traction and vision resonated with investors across the country. We successfully raised funding from several sources, including traditional Silicon Valley VCs, corporate funds in New York City, and family offices nationwide.
We were also accepted into Techstars, a prestigious accelerator for promising tech startups, where we built valuable connections, learned from fellow founders navigating similar challenges, and refined our growth strategies alongside some of the brightest minds in tech.
3) We Built a Brand, Helped Small Businesses Grow & Created Community Along the Way
We created West Tenth to remind us all that some of the most talented creators, makers, and entrepreneurs live right in our own communities.
At West Tenth, we illuminated independent expertise, things made locally, and customization as a means of connection.
It was our pleasure to be part of it.
