Leid: Tool Rental Marketplace — From Discovery to MVP

Finding the balance between off-the-shelf solutions
and tailoring the product to new business ideas

Leid is a Norwegian, eco-friendly startup built on the idea of sustainable tool use. The company enables individual customers to rent renovation tools instead of buying them and then leaving them on a shelf most of the time, gathering dust. With 2 pickup and return points, Leid has introduced a new product range: complete product bundles designed for every stage of a renovation.

Challenge

As their initial MVP, Leid used a standard web application to validate the original business idea. In the second phase of hypothesis validation, they needed a tailor-made solution: one that would allow them to add new product variants to the catalog, deliver a more compelling user experience (UX) – especially on mobile devices – and scale processes in step with market response, all while following agile software development.

Product discovery

The founders came to us with many ideas and new hypotheses. We helped them refine the scope and prepare a solid, prioritized roadmap.

During remote workshops, we prepared several user personas (both B2B and B2C), mapped the key stages of the customer journey, and developed other business and functional concepts, then translated the most important ones into a clickable prototype.

Scope of our work

Our mission was to validate the new user flow and UX solutions by combining the core features of the first version of the application with new ideas. The key milestones in this process? Design, user research, and scope prioritization for the first release.

Solution

After several rounds of testing, we were ready to build a fully functional MVP with advanced pricing adjustments as well as inventory and order management. Using the Ruby on Rails framework, in 5 months we rebuilt the functionality of the previously used solution and added many tailor-made features – all to help Leid scale operations in the consumer segment.

Leid launched a ready-to-use, responsive platform that, within the first 2 months, registered over 350 users and more than 330 bookings. The next stage of development will focus on automating internal processes, Quality Assurance, and opening up to B2B customers.

Ready to move from an off-the-shelf solution to a product that truly belongs to you? Talk to an expert.