In 2021, I have co founded Soltype with Juan Pablo Briceno and Donald Frederick. At Soltype we make eBook NFTs and as CEO of the company my main goal is to facilitate Soltype's success as a startup.
Read more
At Soltype I have been focusing on connecting and attracting talent to our team and advisory board, securing a pre-seed funding round, joining accelerator programs, designing a scalable digital product, getting exposure and pitching at events, attracting and selling our vision to reputable writers, delivery and support in the engineering process, user testing, community building, hiring, communications, and establishing brand awareness. It's been and still is an incredible learning process that keeps me at the forefront of innovation.
In this project case I will go through our product journey while touching upon all business related matters.
As a freelance UX/UI designer in the summer of 2021, I worked with clients in Miami who were using NFTs and blockchain technology for their company. Through this experience, I gained valuable insights into the technology's limitations from a user experience perspective, while also realizing the vast opportunities in this emerging industry. In fact, after completing the project, I co-founded a company in web3 with my client: Soltype
Our vision was simple: bring NFT technology to the world of book publishing. And so, Soltype was born. Together with my co-founders Juan Pablo Briceno and Donald Frederick, we worked day and night to create our web3 publishing platform.
Currently, when you purchase an eBook, you only own a license to view it not the eBook itself. This means that you cannot resell it. So you end up with a lifetime of eBooks in your digital library that hold no retail value.
Soltype allows users to own and resell digital books as they would with physical books, giving them greater control over their digital content.
We do it with eBook NFTs, which unlock an entire new class of buyers for writers while also providing a new approach to publishing and digital ownership. We provide the technology for writers to create eBook NFT collections that appeal to NFT traders alongside traditional readers.
Soltype's journey has been characterised by many iterations and pivots, each one shaping our design approach and influencing the direction of our company. Initially, we began as a collaborative book where different writers could purchase individual pages of a single book. However, we soon transformed into a publishing platform that allowed writers to independently publish their own work. As we continued to evolve, we found our niche in curated publishing, producing exclusive, limited edition eBook collections in collaboration with authors. This constant innovation has given me the opportunity to create a diverse range of designs that meet both the needs of the business and the expectations of our users.
With over 1000 active Discord members, our startup makes optimal use of our direct connection and feedback loop with our users and customers. This close relationship, coupled with website analytics, ensures that our product development is driven by data, not assumptions - a critical factor in optimizing resources for any startup. In addition, we have learned the importance of launching "fast and dirty" products to gather customer feedback as quickly as possible, allowing us to co-create solutions with our users' needs in mind.
Everything is born from an idea and a sketch, and Soltype is no different.
I designed a simple version of our product while keeping the styling to a minimum and focusing on functionality. What initially begun as an attempt to stay away from styling distractions to focus on UX became a style of its own! The resulting style is a testament to the idea that less is often more when it comes to UX/UI design. The minimalist approach allowed for a more streamlined and efficient design process, while still maintaining a visually appealing product. This allowed us to invest more time in solving engineering challenges and onboarding users.
To promote our product and generate buzz around its development, I created targeted social media content for various platforms. Our efforts were primarily focused on Twitter, but also on LinkedIn, and Instagram, where we crafted posts tailored to each platform's unique audience and tone.
.png)
As a UX/UI designer, it's crucial to consider not only the visual aesthetics but also the functionality and scalability of a product. In order to achieve these goals, I developed a comprehensive set of design styles and guidelines to ensure consistency and coherence throughout the design process. These styles are practical in terms of facilitating quick and efficient development of new features and functionalities. By adhering to these design standards, we were able to streamline our workflow, resulting in a more productive and effective development process. Ultimately, this approach resulted in a better product that met our users' needs while maintaining a consistent and polished user experience.
After creating our first MVPs and validating the market demand for a product focused on eBook NFTs I refined our designs to match a more mature look that reflects professionalism.
With early traction, a strong team, a scalable product and a community we successfully raised a pre-seed funding round of USD 100K.
Hereunder I show a few slides from our Pitch Deck.
We managed to Involve and engage some incredibly smart people to be part of our advisory board and support us on our entrepreneurial journey.
Throughout these 18 months we created a product that is used and loved by many. We have sold out 3 eBook collections and have Marvel writers and best selling authors in our upcoming release pipeline.
The journey is not over, in fact we have many plans ahead for Soltype.
