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A marketplace that helped women turn home-based side hustles into local storefronts, an anti-MLM alternative that grew to ~600 storefronts and went through Techstars in 2020.
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Around nine million US women run businesses from home, yet without a storefront they struggle to reach local customers. Women control 80% of consumer spending, but only 4% of it reaches women-owned businesses. There was no marketplace built for home-based, women-led sellers to be discovered and transact locally.
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After a decade growing companies in tech and finance, Lyn Johnson set out to build West Tenth. She saw that some of the best local businesses ran quietly out of “kitchens, bedrooms, and garages,” led by women crafting and creating around busy lives.
What was missing was the infrastructure: a marketplace to act as the interface between women-led, home-based businesses and local consumers. Lyn partnered with OAK’S LAB to build that platform from scratch.
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The mandate was a two-sided marketplace: a mobile app where home-based business owners could set up a digital storefront and transact with local consumers, and an admin platform for West Tenth to onboard storefronts and keep the community trusted and well-run.
Localization was central. Consumers needed to discover the women-owned businesses near them, and the platform had to encourage more women to turn side projects into part- or full-time work.
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Working remotely with Lyn’s team, we set up a virtual office and a tight call-and-meeting cadence to operate like an in-house team, and hosted West Tenth at our Prague HQ to align on goals. We ran the build in distinct phases using our product development process, the OAK’S LAB WAY.
We started with in-depth market research, scoping, feature prioritization, and architecture, which surfaced the essentials: cloud infrastructure, geolocation to connect users with local vendors, and payment integration. Design aimed for a modern, aspirational “Main Street” feel with a seamless experience for vendors and consumers, and engineering prioritized a fast, scalable MVP ready for marketplace volume.
Home-based business owners set up a digital storefront and sell to local customers, with payments built in to complete transactions in-app.
Gives West Tenth control of the marketplace: onboarding new storefronts and keeping the community trusted and well-run as it scales.
Localization technology that connects consumers with the women-owned businesses near them, the core of how the marketplace drives local discovery.
Accepted into Techstars. Early traction from the MVP earned West Tenth a place in the 2020 Techstars accelerator.
Funded to grow. $1.5M raised in venture capital to expand the marketplace.
A new economy for women. Around 600 home-based, women-led businesses sold across 9 categories, and West Tenth championed female entrepreneurship.
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“This team is invested holistically in your business’s growth.”
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