Waller Perez, originally from the Dominican Republic, graduated from the University of Chicago with a degree in economics and a background in college basketball. His career spans corporate development at a public education company, investment banking at Lazard, and private equity at Madison Dearborn Partners.

Through these roles, Waller experienced firsthand the inefficiencies and repetitive tasks that plague M&A workflows. These challenges led him to found Sett, with a clear mission: to help dealmakers save time and focus on high-impact work by offering them intelligent web development solutions tailored for their needs.

Waller approached multiple software development agencies to find the right partner for building Sett’s MVP. After a thorough evaluation, he selected OAK’S LAB as his product development partner due to our deep expertise in custom software development, especially in the FinTech and enterprise web development space.

The challenge:

• Define and validate the product idea
• Build a high-quality MVP on a startup-friendly budget
• Deliver real user value and generate early revenue
• Position Sett to achieve product-market fit

With a long-term vision of offering a suite of intelligent workflow tools, Waller needed an MVP that tackled the most critical problem—while also laying the foundation for scalable React development and future growth.

We kicked off the project with a thorough product discovery phase, interviewing investment bankers and M&A professionals from firms of all sizes to uncover real pain points. During this process, we mapped the competitive landscape to identify Sett’s advantage, validated core features through prototypes and user interviews, and used pre-launch marketing to test product-market demand and user acquisition costs.

From there, we defined Sett’s product roadmap by organizing features into three key levels:

• MVP Features – immediate value
• Advanced Features – near-term enhancements
• North Star Features – long-term vision

Using MoSCoW prioritization and agile sprint planning, we created a lean roadmap that stayed within budget while maximizing user impact. We then developed the product in two-week sprint cycles, leveraging modern React and Node.js tech stacks to ensure scalability and high performance.

We delivered Sett’s MVP in just four months—on time and within budget. The launch gained immediate traction, as beta users (interviewed during the discovery phase) from five major investment banks became product champions and helped onboard their firms as early Sett customers.

Waller came to us with a bold vision and a rough idea of what Sett could become. Through focused product discovery, user research, and lean development, we transformed that vision into a high-impact MVP that directly solves one of the biggest pain points in M&A workflows.

We’re excited to continue working with Sett as it scales into a powerful platform for finance professionals worldwide.

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