local board

• 2022 Fast Company World Changing Ideas Finalist!

• 2021 NYC[x] Moonshot: Financial Inclusion Challenge Finalist!

Product Vision

Local Board is an alternative financial market that allows residents in a locale to invest in the small businesses near them. Blending the capital raising ability of publicly-traded financial markets with the social service impact of a community board, Local Board is a digital investment service that creates a market in which investors can earn competitive returns (relative to stock market) while contributing finances to the local community that can be used to enact community-driven program and initiatives.

People who normally invest in publicly traded companies will be able to trace their investment into a local business through a measurable community impact to understand the monetary and social returns they could be earning by investing locally. Local Board works with small business owners to ensure that they are systematically contributing to community-driven initiatives by passing a portion of the investment raised from local investors back to the community. Small businesses can set the initiatives and organizations that they will support, as well as the manner and frequency with which they will donate time, financing, or supplies.

While residents have several options for investing in privately-held companies, the majority of the existing offerings promote only financial returns and appeal to professional investors looking to make sizable investments. Furthermore, none of those services focus on local companies or have a commitment to making a local impact with the investments received. Local Board aims to strengthen community economies by bolstering small businesses so that they can grow and expand, serving as sources of revenue, employment, and enjoyment for local residents.

the Key Insight that inspired local board

As a thesis product offering, the concept for Local Board stems directly from the product development process I undertook while crafting The Regulars. A major factor of the design process for The Regulars was the research element, in which I designed and implemented a research protocol to gather an understanding of how New Yorkers relate to their neighborhood businesses. After implementing this research method, I learned that New Yorkers are quite interested in learning about several ways that they can support their local businesses, especially ones that they can interact with daily.

Generally, the people surveyed reported being familiar with crowdsourcing, with many people having participated in funding businesses and products through platforms like GoFundMe, Patreon, Indiegogo, and others. Looking at the survey results, I envisioned a future where small businesses beyond restaurants, bars, and cafes, could grow and expand by building rapport with and receiving funding from people in their neighborhood. Local Board serves as the first iteration of product offering designed not only to help companies get the funding they need to expand, but also to embed those companies in their communities by holding them accountable for systematically reinvesting a portion of those funds into the surrounding communities.

Activities

• Competitive Audit

• Analogous Audit

• 2 Logic Modeling Sessions

• 1 Assumption Discovery Session

• 2 Impact Ideation Sessions

• 1 Market Discovery Session

• 2 UI Sketching Sessions

• 2 UI Prototyping Sessions

addressing intergenerational poverty

Local Board is an innovative solution to systemic, intergenerational poverty because it reframes entrepreneurship, which is traditionally viewed as a risky endeavor, as an attainable path toward financial freedom. Coming from a low-income inner city neighborhood myself, I understand how hard it can be for residents lacking traditionally employable skills to find work needed to support themselves and their families. However, I believe that every person has a collection of skills and talents that can be combined in a unique way to create value for the local community. It is with this spirit that Local Board innovates on the concept of entrepreneurship, presenting it as a path that people with expertise in trades and vocations can take to elevate themselves and their communities.

Furthermore, Local Board makes entrepreneurship a community sport. Instead of perpetuating the perception that the only successful entrepreneurs are the geniuses with rich friends, Local Board proves that successful entrepreneurs are the ones that create value for the people around them and that even micro-investments of $10 or $20 can be meaningful to both the business and to the community. Local Board contends that neighborhoods already have what it takes to grow and bolster themselves by helping residents to unite and to strategically invest funds in local businesses. It’s agenda is to support existing businesses with the financing needed to expand and to show first-time founders that running a business with the support of your community is a sustainable and profitable endeavor. Local Board gives contributors a clear call to action and a simple mechanism to take their own neighborhood’s profitability and economic health into their own hands by putting forth community agendas that participating small businesses commit to co-developing. Local Board mandates that a portion of the funds local businesses receive gets reinvested into community initiatives (via contributions of time, money, or supplies), affording resident investors both financial and community returns. 

Local impact, Global Vision

Lessons Learned

Concepting and refining Local Board was an iterative process that forced me to flex and integrate both my financial and design skillsets in ways that propelled both of them forward. This was, of course, incredibly uncomfortable. There were times where I found myself getting bogged down with the details of the market design (which I am sill, and may always be, refining) and times where I found myself nitpicking the visual identify and interface design. Simultaneously pushing these two vastly different skillsets to the extreme reinforced in me the importance of prototyping, testing, and refinement in any design process, and especially when designing impact-based products and services. To make something that resonates with people and accommodates not only their needs and pain points, but also their emotions and perceptions, we must constantly volley between both skillsets. If we do not, we run the risk of creating something inconsequential.

Local Board presents entrepreneurship as a community sport and a viable avenue out of intergenerational poverty. To focus more on the financial implications of this service, for both individuals and communities, would discount the role that people’s thoughts and feelings about entrepreneurship might play in their willingness to participate. Likewise, to focus more on the human experience and psychology would promote a product design that might not be financially or legally possible. In both cases, the result is the same: if no one wants the service or if the service cannot legally exist, then the impact it makes becomes zero. Finding the point where the financial implications of Local Board intersect with the lived experience of the people it serves will be an iterative process, and that point will certainly change over time. This excites me! I look forward to continually exploring the role of entrepreneurship in addressing intergenerational poverty and community resilience.