Caplane · Investment Management Platform
2025
Founding Designer
1 months
Full Platform Design: UX Strategy, UI Design, Information Architecture, Interaction Design
Designing the seller preparation experience for an investment management platform
Caplane connects business sellers with qualified buyers. I designed their Seller Preparation Flow, the system that takes a business owner from first signup to a market-ready deal room.
Problem
Readiness Assessment
A short questionnaire that scores seller preparedness and routes them into one of two paths, fast-track listing or guided preparation. No one-size-fits-all onboarding.
Preparation Hub
A central dashboard organizing preparation into four areas: Financials, Legal & Corporate, Operations, and Deal Room Setup. Each area shows completion status, required versus recommended items, and direct actions. Progress is visible at every level.
Service Provider Marketplace
An embedded marketplace for vetted M&A attorneys, transaction accountants, appraisers, tax advisors, and insurance brokers. Sellers discover providers filtered by geography, specialization, and deal size, then request introductions with pre-filled context. Completed deliverables feed directly back into the Document Vault.
Pre-Launch Deal Room
A full preview of how the deal appears to buyers, with confidentiality tiers (Blind Profile, NDA Signed, LOI Stage), an AI-assisted executive summary, financial performance tables, and a completeness score that nudges sellers to close remaining gaps before launch.
Results
Faster time to market — structured guidance reduced preparation time from signup to launch-ready deal room.
Higher deal quality — more complete deal rooms at listing improved buyer confidence from first impression.
Less due diligence friction — complete documentation upfront reduced repeated information requests during negotiations.
Increased advisor engagement — contextual marketplace recommendations drove higher provider connection rates.
What I had to work with
A third-party component library — No existing design system, no time to build one from scratch. I adopted a third-party library and customized it extensively, tokens, patterns, visual language, until it felt entirely native to Caplane's brand.
A 4-weeks deadline — Leadership needed to move fast. Rather than starting from a blank canvas, I focused on high-impact decisions and used what already existed to move smarter.
The approach paid off at handoff — Because the library had an existing codebase, engineering could build directly from the designs without creating components from scratch, cutting the time from handoff to go-to-market significantly.
One of many client feedbacks
Key Decisions
Route by readiness, not assumption — A dynamic assessment prevents unnecessary friction for prepared sellers while guiding those who need help.
Show context, not just upload fields — Explaining why each document matters to buyers improved completion rates significantly over bare file-upload interfaces.
Allow launch before 100% — Sellers can go to market with minimum viable documentation. The system shows what strengthens their position without hard-blocking progress.
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