Feb 4 Written By Ben Gifford Designing a SMB M&A platform from the ground up.

Role: Product & Design Lead, Product strategy, UX Design, Research, UI design, prototyping Timeline: 1 month Team: CEO, Biz Dev Tools: Figma, ChatGPT, Cursor

Most business sales sites are wastelands: posts go up, never get updated, stay up forever. There is no incentive to be active.

The product strategy and design I develop for Confetti was built around a model that focused on delivering continuous value to the user throughout the process, helping them run the process, get ready, find leads, and navigate the sales process, rewarding engagement and responsiveness.

You’ll see a design focused on showing momentum, communicating next steps, providing encouragement, and focused on knowing the person and what matters to them.

The platform is designed as a consumer-grade native iOS experience. This decision was taken because the target audience is operating out-of-pocket and during off hours when engaging with the sales process. We wanted to meet them where they were.

Additionally, no platforms are utilizing higher-touch engagement models, and I realized the advantage of being able to engage the audience more directly and regularly: small snacks over time versus a single giant bite.

We designed a farm system which allows business brokers to grow leads they don’t have capacity to help, allowing businesses that would have previously gone un-assisted to get readiness help.

The design introduces a double-blind matchmaking model, shifting the interaction model from transactional to connection-oriented. The users tell Confetti who they are, their goals, what matters to them, what makes them tick. Think Hitch or Tinder, but for selling your business.

AI tooling was used heavily to explore critical features and interactions in high fidelity, native environments. This accelerated iteration, allowing me to identify technical and usability dead-ends quickly, validate concepts earlier, and dedicate more time to the higher-leverage decisions.

To deliver on the promise of connection and matchmaking, the design places a heavy emphasis on getting to know the user. Rich onboarding and training-wheels experiences allow them to build trust in the system while providing information that increases the quality of our help and matches.