10xers Labs

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Founder & CEO of Commodities Trading Digital Marketplace

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Our core business is that of commodity trading, where we act as intermediaries, traders, buyers, and sellers. We buy real commodities, mainly in the Middle East region, such as hibiscus, ginger, sesame, rice, and other agricultural commodities. We wanted to take our business digital and create this marketplace called Jasminetrades, which enables any farmer or supplier across the world to list their produce. Any buyer across Europe or any part of the world can see those available produce orders and then buy or sell those orders via the platform. They can do the whole buying journey through the platform, including the documentation and all the processing, and keep track of these long-running contracts. Jasminetrades empowers farmers, suppliers, buyers, sellers, and traders to trade more efficiently with AI. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire 10xers Labs to accomplish?

• Replace phone-call-based price discovery in commodity trading with a digital marketplace where a seller anywhere can post an offer to sell a commodity at a stated price and tonnage, and any registered buyer can discover it, bid on it, or take it up directly, without a single phone call.
• Make listing simple enough for non-tech-savvy and unschooled farmers selling sesame, rice, wheat, hibiscus and ginger to post their commodities unaided, so the marketplace fills with real supply instead of depending on our own staff to enter listings on the farmers' behalf.
• Build an AI pricing agent that helps a seller set the right price by weighing future demand, current stock levels, seasonal patterns and market conditions, so small sellers stop under-pricing out of urgency and stop pricing themselves out of the market.
• Let buyers place bids and counter-offers against listings, with the marketplace guiding both sides toward a fair, win-win agreement, so negotiation happens on the platform against a data-backed reference price instead of over the phone with no reference at all.
• Give our own trading desk a single view of live offers, demand signals and pricing across commodities and regions, so we plan our buying and selling positions with data instead of reacting to whichever phone call happens to come in first.
• Build trust and transparency into a traditionally opaque trade: every offer, bid and accepted price is visible and traceable on the platform, so a small farmer and a bulk buyer can transact with the confidence they currently only get through personal relationships.
• Architect the marketplace so new commodities, new regions and new participants can be added over time without rebuilding, because the launch set covers a handful of commodities and the ambition is a general agricultural commodity marketplace across markets.
• Keep the platform usable for people with low digital comfort and limited literacy: simple flows, plain language, minimal steps between sign-up and a posted listing, and an interface that works on the low-end phones our sellers actually carry every day.
• Establish a long-term technology partnership that keeps improving the platform after launch, with our consulting team advising on which AI capabilities to add next, so this becomes an evolving AI-assisted trading venue rather than one static build handed over and abandoned.
• Bring the full trade flow onto one platform: post a commodity, discover counterparties, open and close negotiations, and confirm the deal, replacing a process where a trader calls multiple contacts one at a time to validate prices, availability and reliability.

SOLUTION

How did you find 10xers Labs?

Referral

Why did you select 10xers Labs over others?

• Pricing fit our budget
• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost
• Referred to me
• Company values aligned
• AI Expertise

How many teammates from 10xers Labs were assigned to this project?

6-10 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

1. 10xers Labs has been our technology partner since early July 2023, and the engagement continues to this day.
2. We hired 10xers Labs to design and built our digital marketplace platform end to end
3. Our target users on both sides were agricultural commodity traders, buyers, sellers, suppliers including farmers with no technical background. That's the persona the marketplace is built for and 10xers had to first deeply understand that persona to be able to build the product for such a non-tech-savvy audience
4. Key deliverables: the marketplace’s web application and mobile apps on both iOS and Android platforms, covering posting, browsing, bidding and negotiating; an AI pricing assistant that weighs demand signals, stock levels and market conditions to suggest a fair listing price.
5. AI assisted negotiation support that guides both sides toward a win-win agreement by showing them the current market dynamics and other offers and rates on the marketplace so that both parties feel confident that they are selling or buying it at the best price that they can
6. One of they key requirements that we put great emphasis on was building onboarding flows for users with low digital literacy; and ongoing support and feature development. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Cut price-discovery time from days of phone calls to under 5 minutes: a seller now posts a listing and receives the first serious buyer bid in minutes on the platform, versus the 2-3 phone rounds across multiple contacts the same exercise took before.

Over 85% of listings are now created directly by sellers themselves, with no assistance from our staff, proving the onboarding flows and the AI assistant work for users with no technical background, which was the hardest usability goal of this project.

The marketplace has processed more than 400 listings spanning sesame, rice, wheat, hibiscus and ginger, with over $1.2M in total trade value transacted through the platform across its first two full trading seasons since launch.

Negotiations complete in an average of 3 bid rounds per deal versus the 6-8 phone calls a traditional deal took, because both sides now negotiate against the AI's data-backed reference price instead of guessing what the other party can accept.

Accepted prices land within about 7.3% of the AI agent's suggested listing price on average, showing the pricing agent gives sellers a realistic anchor rather than an optimistic number they later abandon mid-negotiation.

The platform has grown to 500+ active buyers and 300+ active sellers, and both sides keep returning: over 60% of sellers re-list within the next season, which for a first-of-its-kind marketplace is the retention signal we watch most closely.

First response time to a new listing is under 30 minutes on average, because buyers are notified of matching supply the moment a listing goes live, replacing response that used to depend on whoever happened to pick up the phone that day.

More than 250 deals have been closed end-to-end on the platform, from listing to accepted bid, without a single phone call - transactions that would previously never have been discoverable across regions at all.

Sellers report spending roughly 70% less time finding buyers for their produce: what took a week of calls and middlemen now takes one listing and a few bids, measured through our seller surveys and platform timestamps.

1. The engagement has run continuously since June 2023 - over 28 months of active partnership - spanning design, marketplace build, AI pricing and negotiation features, and ongoing improvement releases rather than one handover-and-depart project.
2. We wanted to make the platform simple enough for even sparsly educated farmers to use, and the platform 10xers Labs built now has over 85% of listings created directly by sellers themselves, with no assistance from our staff
3. The marketplace has processed more than $1.2M in total trade value transacted through in our first 2 trading seasons since launch.
4. The AI 10xers Labs integration is working really well. It's absorbing the data on the marketplace really well and producing great outcomes. The final deal prices land within +/- 8% of the AI agent's predicted listing price
5. We'be been able to scale to 500+ active buyers and 300+ active sellers in such high transaction value trade market, over 60% of sellers re-list with us

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

This is the best part about them because we were assigned a very dedicated product manager who had been a developer himself. He was very good at understanding our business requirement, as well as very proficient technically. He was also managing the engineering team that was assigned to us, and they did a great job. They were running sprints, and mostly after every sprint, they were showing us the progress on the app. They also deployed testing environments for us where we could test without touching the real code or database. Overall, we had a great experience, and that's why, together, we could make this marketplace a success. 

What was your primary form of communication with 10xers Labs?

• In-Person Meeting
• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

When we started building this one‑of‑a‑kind digital commodity marketplace. We had initially worked with a German company; after two years of development they still could not finish the project. Severe delays were hurting us, so then I asked friends and contacts for a trusted partner who could work with us for years. Then a relative introduced us to 10xers Labs, having directly worked with them before and amazed by the way they supported his starting in fund raising and to succeed in the Saudi market. 

When I spoke with the founder, I noticed he truly understands founders because he is one himself. He puts himself in your shoes and sees what would really help at that moment. While they built the tech platform, the founder also guided us on how to run a startup. Coming from a traditional business background, I was unfamiliar with the startup and technology ecosystem, so he hand‑held us throughout the process.

Are there any areas for improvement or something 10xers Labs could have done differently?

While I met their founder in person multiple times as he keeps flying for business, conferences, and events, but we wanted somebody from their team or the product manager to visit one of our sellers or a commodity trader's factory in Northern Africa. So that he can understand how they really conduct the business and what the environment is. They could not do that because of visa issues, but we still understand the work turned out well. Also, maybe they can hire more engineers because they are like a boutique firm. Sometimes one AI specialist or a senior developer who was working on our project had to be working on another project, so sometimes things got delayed. Overall, they covered up for it, and we don't have much to say about them.