Unicorn Road

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder and CEO of STIGMA, a mental health community that uses async messaging to connect people who are struggling with people who share their lived experiences. Our platform is usually focused on mental illness, but we also offer support around other misunderstood conditions.

What challenge were you trying to address with Unicorn Road?

I’m a documentary filmmaker and I worked as a creative director and brand strategist. As such, I didn’t have any technical background. Despite that, I wanted to create an MVP and determine if people were interested in what I was trying to build or not. As a result, I reached out to Unicorn Road.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Unicorn Road put together a scope of work, which included figuring what tools on the API Economy could be used and patched together to create the MVP we wanted. In addition, they ensured that the MVP itself was inclusive, addressing the needs of all people that had varying levels of communication. As such, the team incorporated an async messaging tool that includes video, audio, and text. They also ensured that users had the option to be anonymous so that they’d feel safe using our tool. 

The Unicorn Road team strived to build a platform that was thoughtful of people at varying parts of their journeys. The platform was also meant to give all people an equal chance to share what they were going through. On top of that, they built a system where we could manage all of our members and capture and store information.

They determined the algorithms we would use in order to match people based on their lived experiences in order to ensure that we were sharing content that matters to our users. After developing the MVP, they optimized our platform so that it could be used on every mobile device.

What is the team composition?

We worked with their owner, project manager, designer, and developer.

How did you come to work with Unicorn Road?

I talked to 4–5 companies about my project, but what I liked about Unicorn Road was the fact that they presented themselves as a company that helps founders get an MVP to market faster and cheaper. On top of that, they came back to us with many suggestions on what we could do with my MVP. I could tell that they were very passionate about working with founders so I decided to work with them. They were also recommended by someone I knew, and that person shared her positive experience about Unicorn Road.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent $19,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our partnership ran from September–December 2021

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

They provided exceptional technical expertise so that I could understand the options that they were presenting to me. As to the impact of their work, it would be difficult to say because we only had a soft launch recently. Anecdotally, we created something that we thought would be valuable to people, specifically those who didn’t have better alternatives and were part of the underserved population. Our investors were also impressed with the platform and they told us that the MVP looked better than they thought it would be.

While we were building the MVP, I created a Tiktok and constantly shared what we were working on. I never spent money to promote that account, but I gained 12,000 followers there. We also had someone signed up from the UK and that user created her account at 5:04 p.m. and shared a message of hope by 5:09 p.m. Furthermore, we had a lot of people that were able to find their way to the action we wanted people to take, and that was a testament to the solid design and functionality that Unicorn Road created. In fact, we didn’t receive a lot of emails from people asking about our system works – they just figured it out.

In the future, we’d check how many signups and referrals we have. We’d also look at how many times people activate their video, audio, or text recorder when they’re sending their messages.

How did Unicorn Road perform from a project management standpoint?

They were always available; there was never a time where we needed to get a hold of them and couldn’t. We also had weekly calls, and they always showed up on that. We appreciated that they considered our insights and we were impressed that they always told us why certain things couldn’t be implemented. Above all, they were open to feedback.

We managed the project over Teamwork, and they set expectations at the beginning of the project. They really did a wonderful job keeping things connected and putting relevant notes about the project. We also liked that they recorded every Zoom meeting with permission to ensure that they had notes for everyone who couldn’t attend the call.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They really listened to what I wanted, and they were patient with me. Their price was also amazing, and they never complained when we had to change things based on the feedback of our investors or potential users.

Instead, they were always ready to build something new and something that could really benefit our target audience. Moreover, they developed as fast and as cost-effectively as possible without sacrificing quality. Overall, the value we received from that would be hard to quantify.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I was really happy with my experience with Unicorn Road.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

They’d help you figure out the best option for your project. You only need to be completely open and honest about what you know and what you don’t know. In my case, I did my work and talked to a lot of people before finally settling with Unicorn Road.