Kribbz was a real estate platform enabling homeowners to sell their property as-is for cash within 72 hours. No agents or fees for sellers.
My Role
〉Established brand identity and produced brand book
〉User research and UX design of all web & mobile interfaces
〉Designed all marketing collateral & printed materials
〉Acted as Interim Director of Software Development
Results
〉Public launch of an unprecedented real estate platform
〉End-to-end product design of iOS application
〉Front end engineering for public website & landing pages
〉Hired, mentored & managed 3 software engineers
Dream team…unite
Founded by real estate magnate Kent Clothier & a single developer, Kribbz spent its first 18 months struggling with technical issues and missed deadlines.
Frustrated with the lack of progress, Kent attracted significant angel investment and began assembling a top notch team of both real estate and product experts (including a former Yahoo! executive).
Clarity from chaos
Problem: Given the nature of building a novel product, the team struggled to fully understand or articulate the platform being built, resulting in contention between the product and real estate teams.
Solution: My first undertaking at Kribbz was to make sense of the disparate and complex systems at play. After numerous lengthy conversations with the CTO and founders, I produced a handful of diagrams and visual assets that greatly improved the team’s understanding of the platform and ultimately improved the dialogue between teams.
Building a brand
In close collaboration with the CMO, we pieced together the Kribbz brand identity. After several weeks of feedback and iterations, I produced the brand book to establish the branding guidelines.
Concurrently, I worked closely with the real estate team to develop user personas for the various customers we would be serving.
Click to open PDF in new window ↗
Click to open PDF in new window ↗
Marketing campaigns
Our go-to-market strategy involved targeting a series of cities chosen for their market conditions, starting with Phoenix. Together with the CMO, we developed a multifaceted marketing campaign including TV commercials, mailers, targeted online ads and capture pages.
Kribbz TV commercial
Kribbz landing page targeting property owners in Phoenix
Kribbz landing page targeting potential buyers
Kribbz TV commercial
Kribbz landing page targeting property owners in Phoenix
Kribbz landing page targeting potential buyers
Proof of Concept
After 18 months of development, the product was still slow, buggy and far from complete. Along with the CTO and new dev team, I was tasked with reimagining the product (which we referred to as the “proof of concept”) to be a fully-baked, scalable product ready for public launch.
Kribbz 2.0
The Kribbz business model was unique for a handful of reasons:
- No agents or fees meant sellers saved up to 6% of the sale price
- Properties could be sold as-is regardless of the condition
- Bids had to be placed within a 72 hour window
- Transactions were completed entirely online
- Offers included only: cash offer amount, inspection contingency & closing date
- Sellers could counter multiple buyers concurrently without commitment
Despite what seemed like simple auction-style bidding mechanisms, there was significant complexity involved in accurately communicating counter-offers to both buyers and sellers.
There’s an app for that
Once development of the webapp was up to speed, I was tasked with designing the entirety of the Kribbz iOS app. In just 3 weeks, myself and 1 developer were able to produce a fully-functioning app that closely mirrored the webapp that was still in development. Kribbz for iOS launched just 1 week before the business ultimately folded due to loss of investment capital.
More info available upon request
Due to non-disclosure agreements, some collateral from this project is not available. Please inquire for more details.
