Prototype to launched marketplace in six months.
- 6 months from a clickable prototype to a launched marketplace
- 4 people: a CTO and three developers
- 5,000 products imported from Shopify, with variants and images
What is AnyoneGroup and what did Bushido build?
AnyoneGroup is a global two-sided marketplace where buyers join groups anonymously to unlock group discounts in any industry. Bushido took a clickable prototype to a launched product in six months with a CTO and three developers: storefront, backend, buyer and seller dashboards, an admin dashboard for onboarding approvals, payments charged only when a group fills, and product analytics. Stack: Next.js, Hasura GraphQL, PostgreSQL, Stripe Connect, Shopify API, SST, TalkJS, TaxJar, Octobat and AWS.
We build products,
not just tech.
E-Commerce, Marketplaces, Retail, Escrow
6 months, 2021
CTO + 3 developers
Marketplace storefront web application with backend system, including dashboards for sellers and buyers.
Admin dashboard
Next.js, Hasura GraphQL, PostgreSQL, Stripe Connect, Shopify API, SST, AWS (Lambda, API Gateway, Cognito,S3, SES, RDS, Cloudfront), Google FCM, TalkJs, TaxJar, OctobatAPI
The starting point
The founders had a clickable prototype and clear written descriptions of what everything should do. The idea: a global marketplace where anyone can get group discounts in any industry, with buyers joining groups anonymously to buy products for less.
Sellers lower their prices for large groups, and tiered group pricing gives buyers a reason to share products and buy with others, which lowers acquisition cost for sellers. An order is placed only if the group reaches its minimum size by the deadline to join.
What we built
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Charged buyers only when a group fills.
Stripe Connect authorises the payment when a buyer joins and charges it only if the group reaches its minimum size by the deadline. Express accounts handle seller KYC and onboarding, with a custom payout mechanism behind them.
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Let sellers build their own groups.
Listings in the spirit of Meetup's: photos, product variants, nested categories, tiered group pricing with templates, shipping options with processing times and group renewal. Buyers find them through search and filtering.
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Brought whole catalogues in from Shopify.
CSV import with images, variants and prices, which is how 5,000 products arrived without anyone retyping them. A Shopify integration also ran a store of our own that listed and fulfilled products automatically through a dropshipping API.
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Worked out tax and shipping at checkout.
TaxJar and shipping calculation APIs feed a checkout with secure payment and address options, and Octobat handles invoicing, so the marketplace can settle with many sellers compliantly.
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Gave operations an admin dashboard.
Approving newly onboarded businesses and their product groups, or sending them back with requested changes, happens in one place, without an engineer in the loop.
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Made every group easy to share.
Sellers generate share images with custom affiliate links, coloured to match their brand, for social media or as a copied link. Sharing is the model: buyers bring other buyers, which lowers acquisition cost for sellers.
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Covered everything after the sale.
Order management with shipment tracking, fulfilment, returns and inventory; in-app messaging and notifications for buyers and sellers; buy now, ratings and reviews; and product analytics, both for adoption and on the seller dashboard.
Before and after
| Before | After | |
|---|---|---|
| The product | A clickable prototype | A launched marketplace with buyer, seller and admin dashboards |
| How it should behave | Written descriptions | Group pricing tiers, payment on fill, tax, shipping and order management, all running |
| Seeing adoption | Nothing to measure yet | Product analytics tracking adoption, and insights on the seller dashboard |
Six months, a CTO and three developers, and the prototype became the product.
What made you happiestworking with us?
"Their understanding of the product. I've worked with many developers, but this team is very curious beyond just how the app will work. They want to know what its purpose is, what the value is, etc., and then they will use that information to serve you new feature ideas or give their input into how the application should be designed."
Collin S.
Co-founder & CEO of AnyoneGroup
Questions people ask about AnyoneGroup.
Can Bushido turn a prototype into a production product?
Yes - AnyoneGroup is exactly that. Bushido started from a clickable prototype and written descriptions of intended behaviour and shipped a launched, full marketplace in six months.
How were sellers onboarded and moderated?
Through a purpose-built admin dashboard that automates approving or requesting changes to newly onboarded businesses and manages product groups, so operations do not need an engineer in the loop.
How were payments handled between buyers and sellers?
With Stripe Connect for split payouts, plus TaxJar and Octobat for tax and invoicing, so the marketplace could settle to many sellers compliantly across jurisdictions.
Yours is next.
Same team, sharper tools. Tell us where you are and we will tell you what it takes — scope, shape and a timeline we would actually hold ourselves to — on a 30-minute call with an engineer.