Statement of Work

Overview

 Swayance is a personal style platform that connects e-commerce shoppers with product reviewers to help them discover new styles that they'll not only love but that also fit! It was born out of a desire to improve online shopping through more personalized product recommendations and product discovery process. 
  • Focuses on reviews because research highlighted the credibility of product reviews to consumer decision making online.
  • Makes connections across size + fit, culture + creed, and style + taste. 
  • Collects data to be used to develop machine learning models.

 Governance

 We will be setting up an LLC for the business this week and are currently working on an operating agreement that determines equity for each of our four partners - Brandon Atkinson, Dallas Edwards, Cierra Edwards, and myself. As the founding member, I will hold majority equity and will have governance over business decisions.

 Approach 

 Back-End Development
  1. Build crawlers and scrapers to mine review content from online retailers. 
  2. Continue to iterate on the database design.
  3. Develop proper logging and alerts pattern. 
  4. Fine-tune our message queue pattern. 
  5. Implement our deployment pipeline.
UX/UI (User Experience / User Interface)
  1. Develop UI to show aggregated content.
  2. Identify pilot group and have them use the site.
  3. Iterate on user feedback. 
User Acquisition
  1. Continue to research strategy.
  2. Determine active user baseline count for launch. 
  3. Develop associated plan and budget.

Deliverables
  • Legal entity and associated paperwork
  • Aggregated reviews from 10+ online retailers
  • Beta version of website with pilot group
  • Marketing strategy and associated budget
  • Potential raise plan

 Timeline + Milestones
  • By May 31st - four (4) crawlers and scrapers completed and LLC filed
  • By June 14th - first iteration of the UI completed and Lighthouse Labs applications submitted
  • By June 28th - second iteration of the UI completed and eight (8) crawlers and scrapers completed
  • By July 12th - begin initial user testing and ten (10) crawlers and scrapers completed
  • By July 26th - expanded user testing
  • By August 9th - third iterations of the UI completed and identify next retailers to target
  • By August 20th - expanded user testing and marketing strategy identified

Cost Estimate
  • Cloud fees (3 months): $450 (this is an estimate and is dependent on the quantity of mined reviews; this will not be a fixed cost) 
  • Source Control: $75
  • Jira: $30
  • Legal filing: $125

 Assumptions
  • The crawlers will continue to work without any unforeseen blocking by retailers.
  • Cloud costs will remain within or near our initial estimates. 
  • Development of initial UI without additional resources, as this is not within our expertise. 

Comments

  1. AnonymousMay 29, 2019 at 4:18 PM

    How exciting! I'm excited to see what comes of this, I've talked to some people about this idea and it's been well received!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. JennieJune 26, 2019 at 8:21 AM

      Thanks for sharing that! We've been working hard the last few weeks and feeling a little worn out so that was a nice little pick-me-up. What are you up to? We should get coffee now that my Leadership class is wrapping up.

      Delete
  2. GWJune 4, 2019 at 11:52 AM

    Really glad to see you in the Lighthouse U boot-camp. I hope this week can bring you all some additional attention and mentorship. Did you ever connect with the Brandefy team? https://brandefy.info/ I think there are some lessons to learn from them.

    ReplyDelete

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