01 / CONTEXT
Aban Foundation is a Swedish foundation that owns a portfolio of for-profit operating companies. Prospective member and investor interest was handled through a Google Form, a sparse website and personal introductions.
The process depended heavily on the founder, did not scale well and did not provide the product experience or proof needed for a curated membership and investment model.
02 / THE PROBLEM
What needed to change
The core challenge was not simply adding a transaction flow. It was creating enough trust and signal for a prospective member to understand the model, follow the portfolio and decide whether to commit — without creating an unmanageable operational burden for a very small team.
03 / MY CONTRIBUTION
How I approached it
- Researched impact-investing and adjacent platform models, interviewed three potential target users, then translated the findings into positioning, journeys, design archetypes and a phased go-to-market plan.
- Defined the product model, pricing architecture and scope, and wrote a detailed PRD covering information architecture, permissions, state machines, data model, application and payment flows, admin operations, communications, analytics, GDPR and the release plan.
- Designed prototypes for the member journey, applications, invitations, administration and scope decisions, followed by a high-fidelity 2027–28 vision prototype for investor conversations and roadmap planning.
- Built the live MVP — V1 of the member platform and admin panel — with Next.js, TypeScript, Supabase, Postgres, Drizzle, Stripe Payment Links, Resend, Vercel and Claude Code, feeding implementation findings back into the product specification.
04 / KEY DECISIONS
The choices that shaped the work
Make trust the product problem
The platform was framed as a trust-making tool rather than a transaction tool, so proof, clarity and controlled access shaped the experience.
Build a native product surface
A dedicated Aban Hub could express the model and brand more coherently than assembling generic community, fundraising and portal tools.
Use a phased application model
The first phase supports warm invitations, while the next phase opens public applications without changing the underlying membership model.
Keep the operating surface small
Managed authentication, payment links, private file storage and a focused admin flow reduced complexity while keeping later upgrades possible.
05 / OUTCOME & SCOPE
What changed — and what the result means
The result was a live V1 of the member platform and admin panel, connecting application and membership flows, portfolio content, events, payment handling and the admin work behind invitations and reviews.
A versioned PRD and build-time feedback loop kept product decisions, technical implementation and operational rules aligned as the product moved from concept to working software.
The 2027–28 vision prototype made the longer-term value proposition concrete for investor conversations and now provides an input to roadmap prioritization.
WHAT THIS REINFORCEDIn a 0→1 product, strategy, experience, technical scope and go-to-market are one system. Progress comes from making the core risk explicit and keeping every simplification deliberate and reversible.