Blink Network

For media companies, finding editorial talent in the right place and at the right time was difficult. Information was spread across spreadsheets and email. If they could not find the right person, they had to move a team or trust someone without references. Freelancers, on the other side, depended on already being on an editor's list.

The product had to help people find the right freelancer for each role, in the place and at the time needed, with a profile, portfolio, and reviews that made the work easier to evaluate. The invite only network included profiles in more than 180 countries. For subscriptions to make sense, briefs and coordination also had to stay inside the product.

We combined interviews, surveys, usability tests, and key events tracked in Amplitude. The founders came from media companies, so we had better access to that segment and could understand its needs and pain points more clearly. I created user personas to align the team.

Feedback showed that finding the right profile was not enough. We also needed to know whether the freelancer had insurance and the equipment required for the job. A strong match by role and portfolio could still fail if the freelancer was already booked for the day and time we needed. We also questioned the assumption that everyone would update their location. Some freelancers did not want to do that when they were in conflict zones. These signals helped us learn and iterate on the features.

Development lasted less than a year and a half with a small team. Most of that time went into building features that founders and the PM had already prioritized around finding and coordinating talent in the right place and at the right time. We were not building a roadmap from scratch. The work was to design and implement how that marketplace would be delivered and make each part clear in the interface.

Discovery helped us understand how buyers and freelancers thought. Feedback showed where to adjust the experience around what was already prioritized, not whether to open the roadmap.

The product team delivered what the founders and PM had prioritized: the features shipped and subscriptions generated revenue. There was real traction, especially among freelancers on Plus, and the product still charges users and drives hiring inside a curated community. That shows users saw value in it: they kept paying and using it to hire.

In the middle of 2016, the company relied on curated vendors to offer custom audiovisual production services. Without the runway to keep investing in the marketplace, there was no way to maintain the development team. What remained was an experience users valued, not a business that could keep being developed.

This was my first time inside a classic product team with a PM and engineering, far from the agency delivery model I knew. In that context, I built interfaces with a consistent visual language in Materialize and a Sketch design system that made reuse faster.

The strongest product learning was that a well designed experience can retain use and still fall short if demand, pricing, and go to market are not tested early. We had identified a clear pain in work coordination, and booking was the opportunity to solve it, but we did not get to build it. Since then, I have separated more clearly between something that works for the user and something that can sustain a business, and I am more careful about what I claim as my ownership.