typeworkCollab
Internal
typeworkCollab
Internal
Reboot v3 · Positioning · IA · Journey
Collab is a business speed-dating platform for small and medium businesses — Tinder for Small Business. This is the reboot spec, read as a page: what the product is, how it is structured on mobile and PC, how a business moves from discovery to a real partnership, and how the whole thing pays for itself.
Collab is a "business speed-dating" platform for small and medium businesses. It helps a small business quickly discover partners that are commercially relevant, post its own collaboration needs, and turn matches into real business partnerships. The one-line pitch is deliberately borrowed from a product everyone already understands.
Collab reads differently depending on who is looking. To the user it is a complete, standalone product; to the team and investors it is a prototype for something larger. Both are true at once, and the reboot has to hold the line between them.
| Layer | Positioning | Audience | Success criteria |
|---|---|---|---|
| Product layer (external) | A standalone, fully usable SMB business speed-dating product | SMB owners | Users self-serve discovery, matching and partnerships, and will pay a subscription to facilitate deals |
| Strategic layer (internal) | A scalability prototype for the Typework ecosystem | Team & investors | Proves business synergy and scalable growth, and draws users toward the Typework core product |
Collab does not presuppose a single kind of collaboration. Users choose and describe the type themselves when posting a need, and matching and AI recommendations run on top of those types. The front end's job is to present these heterogeneous intents as clearly scannable tags and cards.
Target users are SMB owners looking for suppliers, distribution, joint marketing, cross-industry partnerships or referrals — but who lack the channel and the time to screen the right partners one by one. Collab compresses that screening into a product loop of three verbs.
Discover commercially relevant businesses and the partnerships they are actively seeking.
Quickly find "the right person" through swiping, need posting and AI matching.
After a match, unlock the other party, start chatting, and move the online match into a real partnership.
Collab is built from three community interaction modes plus one AI analysis capability. These four things — cross-platform, shared by mobile and PC — are what the entire UI is organized around.
A geographic map is the primary visual, but its role is a confidence device — it answers "how many reachable businesses are near you" to reassure cold-start users. Alongside it, recommended Need Cards surface partnerships nearby and relevant businesses are seeking. Positioning is deliberately imprecise (blur to a region, allow manual correction), never sold as a feature.
One card = one business (logo / industry / bio / intent tags); its specific needs live in a secondary position or on the detail page. A limited number of swipes per day, one card at a time — swipe right = interested, swipe left = skip, fixed and clearly labeled. Mutual interest becomes a Match and moves into the Inbox.
The center homepage tab becomes a +; tapping it opens the post-a-need flow. Users proactively post a collaboration need and wait for responses, with AI-assisted copy generation. This was V2's most critical gap — without it, the community only supported one-way discovery, with no active closed loop.
A paid deliverable that generates a report covering (a) your current business state, (b) possible improvements, and (c) recommended potential partners. It is the automated version of business-consulting delivery — high value, high willingness to pay — and a core selling point of the paid tiers.
Mobile and PC are a division of labor, not a responsive copy of one product. Each platform gets the navigation model that suits how it is actually used.
Fixed order, left to right. Post-a-Need has no tab of its own — it lives behind the center +.
| # | Tab | Content |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Inbox | Match list and conversations; matches not yet paid-unlocked appear with a blur overlay |
| 2 | Swipe | Daily swipe deck of business cards |
| 3 | Home / Map (+) | Map confidence device + recommended need cards. On this page the center tab becomes +, opening the post-a-need flow |
| 4 | AI Analysis | AI analysis reports — a paid capability, locked or unlocked |
| 5 | Account | Company profile, subscription & billing, settings, "Import to Typework" entry point |
For first-time users with no posting history, the homepage + directly surfaces a hovering preview of a recommended need for their business — empty-state cold-start guidance that nudges them to complete a first post.
PC webThe classic SaaS pattern: a left sidebar plus a large right content area. The sidebar is collapsible — expanded for full navigation, collapsed to free up width for the map, AI reports and board views. After login the default landing view is Map / Discover, map-first, with the latest message and match-activity cards floating above it rather than opening straight into a cold report.
| Section | Content |
|---|---|
| Map / Discover | Map + recommended need cards — the default home after login |
| Inbox / Collaborations | Matches, conversations and proposal progress; unlocked matches shown with an in-place blur overlay |
| My Needs | Post new needs, and manage posted needs and their responses |
| Swipe | Kept as a top-level entry, but the page shows a QR code — "scan for a better experience on mobile" — driving cross-platform acquisition |
| AI Analysis | Paid reports + chatbot follow-up — the deep-use case that leverages PC's large screen |
| My Account | Account settings and subscription management |
Bidirectional matching on PC is handled by Map / Discover's recommendations and need discovery, so nothing is lost by moving swipe to mobile. The paywall is consistent across platforms: same triggers, presented as an in-place overlay plus an upgrade modal, with card-on-file management centralized in My Account.
The logged-out landing leads with a one-line value prop, a "how it works" trio (sign up → match → collaborate), and the map showing N reachable businesses nearby.
The user picks their industry to seed relevant matching and recommendations.
Paste a website link and the platform auto-fetches company info — the same logic as Marketing Hub — so profile creation is near-zero effort.
AI drafts a company bio from the fetched info; the user confirms or edits.
A verification code creates the company, and the user lands on the homepage, ready to discover.
The user swipes the daily deck or browses the homepage map and recommended need cards.
When interest is mutual, a Match is created and moves into the Inbox.
Matched-but-unpaid contacts appear with a blur overlay and a visible count ("3 businesses want to collaborate with you") to create curiosity and urgency.
Tapping unlock forces a card-on-file subscription and reveals who the other party is — the moment that truly needs protecting.
The user starts a conversation or sends a proposal — joined businesses can initiate collaboration directly from the detail page.
The online match becomes a real, off-platform business partnership.
The platform is never empty: business info is sourced from industry and map APIs, shown as "not joined," and can be claimed by the business itself or invited to join by other users. On a detail page, a joined business can be sent a proposal; a not-joined listing shows "not joined yet" with an invite action.
Why lock viewing rather than chatting? Once a user sees a matched business's identity or contact info, they can bypass the platform and connect offline. So the action worth protecting and monetizing is revealing who the other party is — which is exactly what the Inbox blur overlay and unlock button gate.
| Tier | Capabilities |
|---|---|
| Free (Taste) | Browse map and recommendations, limited daily swipes, can get matches — but the other party stays blurred |
| Subscription (monthly · card required) | Unlock viewing matched parties, chat and send proposals, post needs, more daily swipes |
| Premium | Higher need-posting quota, AI Matching, and full AI Analysis reports |
The prototype prices the paid subscription at $29/mo. The paywall is presented consistently on both platforms — an in-place overlay plus an upgrade modal — with subscription and card-on-file management centralized in Account → Subscription.
This layer is for the team and investors — not exposed directly to users. Narratively, Collab is a scalability prototype: it proves scalable acquisition (API sourcing plus the invite loop), real business synergy, and the ability to run a standalone product — paving the way for future business integration into the Typework ecosystem.
The conversion mechanism is a single, non-intrusive entry point in Account: "one-click import of business info into Typework," smoothly guiding businesses that have already been validated on Collab into Typework's core-product onboarding.
The elevator pitch, both ways at once: Collab is Tinder for small businesses — swipe, post a need, let AI match you up, and find the right partner to close a deal with. And for Typework, it is a living prototype of our scalability capability, and the first entry point on the path to the core product.