Back
Intro
Sydecar helps fund managers run their investment funds
I designed how their investors onboard & invest in their first deal
sydecar.com
Cardless
$25,000
Filing
Personal
Accreditation
Citizenship
Address
Tax Witholding
Save & Exit
Investor Info
Tell us who you are as an investor, it’ll help us file taxes. Learn more ->
Individual
Investing as an individual who is not affliated with any trust or separate entity.
Entity
Investing as an entire group where you pool the money of multiple individuals.
Trust
Investing on behalf on someone else by making decisions about their capital.
IRA / Retirement account
Investing for specifically for a goverment regulated retirement account.
Continue
What’s an Entity?
An entity is an existing legal structure, like an LLC or S-Corp. You should use this option if you are investing as a part of a group.
Cardless
$25,000
Investor Info
Tell us a bit who you are as an investor, it’ll help us file taxes.
Individual
Investing as an individual who isn’t affliated with any separate entity.
Entity
Investing as an entire group where you pool the money of multiple individuals.
Trust
Investing on behalf on someone else by making decisions about their capital.
IRA / Retirement account
Investing for a goverment regulated retirement account.
Filing
Personal
Accreditation
Citizenship
Continue
Team
Brian Leung, PM
Lauren Garcia, SWE
Chris Vasquez, SWE
Timeline & Status
3 weeks
Launched in January 2023
My Role
UX Lead
Interaction Design
Visual Design
User Flows
Rapid Prototyping
Context
Simplifying angel investing
Sydecar is an early-stage deal execution startup that allows fund managers to create and run their investment funds.
Sydecar's two customers:
Fund managers – We want them to create & run deals easily
Investors – We want their investors to trust and use Sydecar to invest in deals
I led the end-to-end redesign of the desktop experience for investor onboarding and played a pivotal role in defining it. This resulted in less customer success lift and faster deal commitments.
The problem
Onboarding is a tedious, legal, & expensive process
Before, Sydecar's customer success team manually onboarded investors to the platform. This became an resourcing issue as the customer base started to grow. We also realized that entire flow was quite tedious and needed to be broken down to digestible parts. I grouped questions thematically and aligned with our PM.
Gaining context & managing stakeholder goals
Guiding principles
Using qualitative signals to define success
Sydecar was still early at the time, so we did not have substantial quantitative data to help guide us towards a certain direction. We took a qualitative approach using feedback to set these goals for the redesign:
Accurate
We will ask questions clearly to get accurate responses
Educational
We will be welcoming to novice investors and guide them
Premium
We will design an well-crafted and seamless user experience
Issues
Auditing the current experience
By auditing the previous design, I identified a couple I wanted to improve:
User Experience – to break up a long & overwhelming form
Copy – to clarify why we’re asking what we’re asking and its significance
Interaction design – to guide novice investors through the process
Hi! Let’s create an investor profile.
Are you investing as an individual or via an entity?
An individual
Tell us about yourself.
legal first name
First Name
date of birth
MM/DD/YYYY
legal last name
Last Name
phone number
+1
(123) 456-7890
are you a us citizen or resident?
Yes
No
ssn
MM/DD/YYYY
Primary Residence
Street Address
Street Address
United States
City
Select States
Zip/Postal Code
Mailing address is the same as the address above
The IRS has notified me that I am subject to backup witholding
Which best describes you as an investor?
Please choose the highest accreditation that threshold that applies.
My income was over $200,000
Are you subject to tax withholding
Yes
No
Withheld Amount
$20,000
By clicking continue, you confirm that all the information entered for this profile is true, correct, and complete to the best of your knowledge.
Save & Continue
Sydecar is not a registered broker-dealer or investment advisor. Sydecar does not give investment advice, endorsement, analysis or recommendations with respect to any securities.
Securities offered on this site, and all information relating to investments of any companies, funds, or other investment vehicles are the sole responsibility of the applicable issuer of such securities.
Initial form
Filing
The type of legal entity investing
Personal
Info needed to legally register
Citizenship
American resident status for taxes
Address
For the IRS to get their taxes
Accredidation
Credentials for venture investing
Tax withholding
Income set aside for taxes
Which best describes you as an investor?
Please choose the highest accreditation that threshold that applies.
My income was over $200,000
Tell us about yourself.
legal first name
First Name
date of birth
MM/DD/YYYY
legal last name
Last Name
phone number
+1
(123) 456-7890
are you a us citizen or resident?
Yes
No
ssn
MM/DD/YYYY
Primary Residence
Street Address
Street Address
United States
City
Select States
Zip/Postal Code
Mailing address is the same as the address above
The IRS has notified me that I am subject to backup witholding
Are you investing as an individual or via an entity?
An individual
Are you subject to tax withholding
Yes
No
Withheld Amount
$20,000
Grouped form
Breaking down onboarding
Are you investing as an individual or via an entity?
Individual
Individual - not associated with any entity
Entity - an group where you pool money
Trust - investing on behalf of someone else
Retirement - government regulated retirement fund
Question
Why does this mean?
Why are they asking?
Choices
What does each mean? What implication does each choice have?
Investing as different legal structures
Accreditation
How is your entity accredited?
All owners are accredited investors
The entity owns more than $5M in investments
It's a family office with more than $5M in investments
Tell us about the trust.
Is your trust a US trust or non US trust?
US Trust
Non US Trust
Legal Trust Name
Trust Name
Is your trust revocable or irrevocable?
Revocable
Irrevocable
Trust registration
Requires information that is not readily available
Tell us about your retirement account.
Retirement fund name
Name of your retirement fund
Tax identification number (TIN)
Tax Identification Number
Retirement tax
Requires information that is not readily available
Entity accreditation
Requires information that is not readily available
Form requires a ton of information
Iterations
Rethinking flow and layout
We revamped it by first redesigning the high-level flow. I collaborated with domain experts (lawyers) to create a step by step questionnaire design. Afterwards, a lot design critiques and iterations was required to achieve the layout, copy, & interactions.
1
Investment summary
Investors will see this information on the deal page. Feel free to skip this part and come back later.
2
SPV Terms
3
Company info
4
Data room
headline
Placeholder
Company Logo (optional)
Please upload a square image at least 100 x 100 px
Choose file
dob
Placeholder
about this investment
B
I
U
Why do you like this investment? Add your investment memo here.
Continue
investment for cardless
Tell us about yourself
We’re required by law to collect certain information that helps us know it’s you when you login to Sydecar. It’s all about keeping your account safe.
First name
Placeholder
Last name
Placeholder
phone number
Placeholder
dob
Placeholder
Continue
investing in company
Tell us a little about yourself
We’re required by law to collect certain information that helps us know it’s you when you login to Sydecar. It’s all about keeping your account safe.
First name
Placeholder
Last name
Placeholder
phone number
Placeholder
dob
Placeholder
Continue
investing in company
Personal info
Explorations of investor onboarding
Final Design
We shipped a clear & informative questionnaire
My questionnaire design
Gave context on what they’re doing and their progress
Asked the current question
Shared helpful context when asked
sydecar.com
Deal invitation & details
sydecar.com
Legal guidance & context
sydecar.com
Entity selection & preparation docs
sydecar.com
Question to question
Outcome
Investors loved it!
With the launch of onboarding, we saw a decrease customer success requests and great feedback from users. Since then we’ve onboarded many more investors to platform.
37%
time saved
customer success support time
249
investors
onboarded onto Sydecar
1
month
implemented after handoff
Retrospective
Design the experience, then the UI
I learned a lot from redesign legal onboarding from the ground up.
Progressive disclosure
Allow your users to ask for more information
Make UI Systematically
Design UI patterns when there’s redundancies
Adaptable
Design for a large range of customer profiles
Next up: Fun.xyz
Fun.xyz
Product Design
Web3
Developer Tool
Fun.xyz builds a SDK for web3 wallets — I designed the wallet monitoring app, documentation site, and demo app.
app.fun.xyz
Date & Time
Transaction Type
Status
Apr 4
Bridge
Reverted
Apr 4, 7:02 PM
Unstake
Success
Apr 4, 7:02 PM
Token Swap
Success
Apr 4
Token Transfer
Reverted
Apr 3
Create FunWallet
Success
Apr 3, 7:02 PM
Arbitrary Transaction
Success
Apr 4
Token Transfer
Success
Apr 4
Token Swap
Success
Apr 2
Stake
Success
Apr 4
Stake
Reverted
Apr 4
Token Transfer
Success
Apr 4
Stake
Success
Apr 4
Token Swap
Success
Unstake
0x9fd3…cF9
stETH
0.69
$1346.45
ETH
0.69
$1346.45
Authentication
Target Blockchain
Polygon
Gas Payment
Gasless Paymaster
.04 ETH
Frontend Framework
Typescript
Block Explorer
Search & Filter
Admin’s API Key
Executed Transactions
Onboarding
Wallets
Transactions
Sponsors
A
Alex Fine