WORK // UI/UX // Linqto Company Discovery
As Linqto prepared to scale its presence in the pre-IPO investment space, we identified key areas of the platform that needed to evolve to meet the expectations of sophisticated investors. The “Company List” page was outdated, text-heavy, and difficult to scan or filter, making it hard for users to discover and compare opportunities. The “Individual Company Page” lacked critical decision-making information and failed to convey the credibility needed to build investor trust. These optimizations became central to elevating the platform experience and aligning it with Linqto’s growth strategy.
The creative ask was to create a modern, intuitive experience for browsing, comparing, and learning about pre-IPO companies—balancing clarity, credibility, and conversion.
THE PROBLEM
Linqto’s existing company discovery experience created friction for users trying to evaluate and compare investment opportunities. Key information was difficult to interpret, and the interface lacked mobile optimization.
Why was it important?
As a result, users struggled to make confident decisions, leading to low click-through rates from the Company List page and high bounce rates on individual company pages. The business needed a more usable, visually appealing experience that would increase engagement, improve investor confidence, and drive higher conversion rates.
SUCCESS METRICS
Our primary goals were to improve usability, visual clarity, and investor confidence—measured by increases in time on site, company page click-through rates, and overall investor conversions. Baseline data showed low engagement with individual listings, providing a clear benchmark for measuring impact.
2k+ signed-in users view the invest page daily
~32% of users who get accredited in the US never made a purchase
~65% of users only purchase 1 company
DESIGN PROCESS
Ideation & Information Architecture
We began by mapping out the ideal user journey across both the Company List and Individual Company pages. This included defining what information investors needed at each stage of discovery and evaluation. I led working and teardown sessions with product, marketing, engineering and stakeholders to align on content hierarchy and designed updated site maps and modular layouts that could scale with future listings.
Wireframing & Prototyping
Low-fidelity wireframes helped us quickly explore layout variations and test structural changes—especially how filtering, sorting, and content previews could improve discoverability. We built clickable prototypes to validate flow, scanability, and information density before layering on visual design.
Research
Research was both qualitative and quantitative. We reviewed user behavior data (scroll depth, bounce rate, click-through paths), ran user interviews with existing investors, and gathered feedback through surveys and in-product prompts. These insights directly shaped decisions like which metrics to surface, how to simplify terminology, and what users needed most to feel confident investing. See a deeper dive into the research below.
Visual Design
With structure and functionality validated, we developed high-fidelity designs that aligned with Linqto’s evolving brand. We refined the UI with a clean, modern aesthetic and ensured consistency in color, typography, and components across pages. Key elements included a card-based layout for the list page and modular, storytelling-driven sections on company detail pages.
Collaboration
Throughout the process, we worked closely with stakeholders across Product, Marketing, Compliance, and Engineering. I set up weekly design reviews helped align on priorities and catch gaps early on our design iterations. We partnered with Legal to ensure that investment language and risk disclosures were accurate, and held regular engineering syncs to account for any CMS limitations and future scalability.
DISCOVERY & RESEARCH
Our research strategy combined quantitative data analysis, qualitative feedback, and competitive benchmarking to build a well-rounded understanding of user behavior and pain points within Linqto’s company discovery experience.
Behavioral Data
We started by analyzing behavioral metrics using Mixpanel. We focused on:
Click-through rates from the Company List to detail pages
Bounce rates on individual company pages
Scroll depth to see how far users were engaging with long-form content
Device behavior, which confirmed that a growing share of traffic was mobile—yet mobile users showed significantly higher drop-off
This data gave us a clear signal: users were interested enough to visit, but not enough to engage or convert.
User Interviews
To layer in context, we conducted 7 in-depth interviews with both active and prospective investors. Our goal was to understand how they evaluated pre-IPO opportunities, what instilled trust, and where friction occurred.
Common themes emerged:
Users wanted at-a-glance summaries with transparent data points but the opportunity to deep dive
“I think I'm just trying to get myself up to speed on, like, buying pre IPO shares, and what that means and why.” - User 1
“It would be nice to know a little bit more information about, like how big. Like what is the size? What's the maximum I could potentially buy, is this just out of some pool somewhere?” - User 2
Terminology like “implied valuation” was confusing or intimidating without context
"Implied valuation gets a little confusing—like, if you're calculating it that way, it feels like it could be a bit inflated." - User 3
These conversations highlighted the need to not only restructure the experience but to simplify the language, provide the right information at this point of the buying process and emphasize trust-building content.
Competitive Benchmarking
Finally, we looked at how similar platforms—like Forge, Equity Zen, and Republic—presented company data, risk disclosures, and investment flows. While none offered a perfect solution, they helped inspire improvements to content hierarchy, filtering logic, and visual presentation.
This research directly informed our content strategy, information architecture, and visual design choices, ensuring the final experience was grounded in real user needs and business priorities.
