Backabl set out to be Carvana for small-business funding: every loan and grant from hundreds of lenders in one place, searchable, comparable, and applied for without the paperwork. Most of its founders were seeking capital for the first time, and what they had instead was opportunities scattered across lender websites and PDFs, and applications that asked for a Social Security Number and a bank login on page one without saying why.
As founding designer, I built the product and its design system from the ground up around one question: what does this founder need to see right now? The marketplace opens with the founder’s own numbers and a short list of matches. Search narrows thousands of options to the ones that fit. The application became five pre-filled steps, with every sensitive ask explained where the hesitation happens.
A marketplace that opens with a short list, not a long one.
Thousands of loans and grants sat behind search and filters. A first-time founder had no way to know which ones were meant for them.
The dashboard leads with the founder’s Backabl Score, the five factors behind it, and the one step that would raise it. Matched opportunities, applications in progress, and saved ones sit under a single set of tabs. Saving, resuming, and applying happen in place, so the product feels personal from the first session.
Shopping for funding the way you would shop for a car.
Founders pieced funding together from lender websites, PDFs, and word of mouth. Backabl put every loan and grant in one searchable place.
Search opens matched to the founder’s profile. Type, amount, industry, and eligibility filters narrow thousands of opportunities in place, with live counts and a running total of available funding, and results read as comparable rows. Choosing between opportunities became comparing, not researching.
Five steps, and most of them are already done.
The original application was one long page: name, Social Security Number, date of birth, full address, and five legal questions before any sense of progress. Founders who loved the marketplace quit here.
I reframed the application as confirmation. Backabl pre-fills what it already knows, a step rail shows exactly how far is left, and progress saves on every step. Founders scan, confirm, and edit only what has changed.
Every sensitive ask explains itself.
A Social Security Number, five legal questions, and a bank login are exactly where founders hesitate. The old form asked for all three with no explanation of why, who sees it, or how it is protected.
Reassurance sits where the worry happens: masked fields with a lock, plain-language legal questions with a note on where the answers go, and a bank connection that leads with read-only, encrypted, and never seeing a login.
The same application, sized for a phone.
Founders run their businesses from their phones, and an application should not have to wait for a desk.
Every step, the same trust cues, and the same saved progress, laid out for a smaller screen. Start on the phone, finish on the laptop, or the other way around.
Outcome
5 steps
One pre-filled application
Confirm and edit only what changed
~5 min
Estimated time to apply
From our own click-throughs
Every ask
Explained where it happens
What it’s for and who receives it
A founder will open Backabl to a short list of matches, apply in five pre-filled steps, and know exactly what happens next. The marketplace, the application, and the mobile experience run on one design system built from the brand up.
