👀 Problem

Example questions to answer: What problem are we solving? For whom? When do they experience this issue? What data, research, and feedback do we have that explains this problem? Which customers are we working with, or hearing from, to better understand this problem? Why is solving this problem urgent? Why is it important?

We are solving the problem for two-sided markets - Freelancers, agencies, and their clients.

Freelancers face the issue of clients disappearing without paying after they have started or completed the work. Some clients may also have unrealistic expectations and refuse to pay for the freelancers’ work output. Oftentimes, freelancers rely on clients’ deposits, either to survive or to purchase the necessary materials to start work. Clients’ reluctance to put down a deposit could lead to a cashflow problem and the unwillingness of freelancers to accept work.

Clients may pay for work output that does not meet their requirements. Clients end up paying for incomplete or non-existent work output when freelancers disappear after getting paid a full or partial amount.

Aside from the main problems faced by freelancers and clients, we also target to improve payments by making international transactions less secure and traceable, sending and receiving international payments a seamless process, and providing invoices for freelance payments to serve as proof of income for banking purposes.

💭 Proposal

Example questions to answer: How are we solving this issue? What alternatives did we consider? Why did we land with this? What is the general shape of this solution? Do you have any mocks, prototypes, or relevant comparisons in the market? How will we know that we’ve solved this issue? What will we measure? Have we considered how we’re building this to be fast, performant, scalable, and/or relatively low-cost on our services?

We are solving this issue by providing Escrow service through our platform.

Our protected payment system will allow clients and freelancers, wherever they are located, to create a protected transaction in the following manner:

1. A transaction will be created with the full amount and conditions for payment, which can be broken into a series of payments and conditions called milestones. This step can be initiated by either party
2. Once both parties have agreed to the payment amount and conditions, the client will pay us, a trusted party, the full contract amount
3. Once the condition has been fulfilled, the money will be released to the freelancer