Website UX Design/Development and WealthBlock Integration Enable Established Private Equity Group to Launch Crowdfunding Platform for New Investors

A traditional “handshake” firm built on personal and professional networks of high-net-worth individuals goes modern with a new brand and visual identity, website, and integrated investment platform that removes barriers to entry and enables accredited consumer investors to get in on the hottest opportunities in real estate. 

Background

Sage Equity Partners is an established private equity investment firm based in Houston, Texas, that offers its 400 limited partnerships (LPs) diversification across commercial, multi-family residential, and industrial real estate investments, among many others. 

Previously, the firm raised capital only through face-to-face engagement from high-net-worth, accredited investors, which limited its access to capital and ability to scale. Sensing a shift in the industry toward democratized, self-serve online platforms aimed at consumer investors and not wanting to be left behind, Sage Equity decided to launch a new brand, called SageStreet, and accompanying online crowdfunding investment site. 

Sage Equity’s goal was to appeal to a younger demographic of accredited investors by presenting a modern, digital presence while still maintaining the “handshake” feel that conveys their trustworthiness and expertise. They hoped to use this new platform to raise capital from outside their immediate professional and personal networks while at the same time keeping their existing investor base—mostly retirees or people accustomed to one-on-one interactions and manual, paperwork-heavy processes—engaged and happy. They selected WealthBlock as their technology partner for fundraising and customer relationship management. 

Sage Equity engaged Praxent to design the new brand, including developing the visual identity and logo, designing a website that reflects traditional values but presents a modernized look and feel, writing user-centric copy that attracts new investors, developing the site, and integrating it with the WealthBlock platform. From concept to functional website and platform, the entire engagement lasted nine months.

Now as a result of having a brand and website that fully integrates—functionally and visually—with its new digital crowdfunding investment platform, Sage Equity is able to automate its entire process and expand its customer base. From signing up new investors to announcing new opportunities to fielding questions to processing deals, everything can take place online without the involvement of portfolio managers, who are now free to focus on growth.

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The problem

Sage Equity was looking to design and develop a brand identity and website that would allow new and current investors self-serve access to their real estate deals, as well as give them the ability to sign up and view opportunities without having to engage directly with one of their portfolio managers in a labor-intensive, paperwork-heavy process. They wanted to convey the trustworthiness and expertise they had earned over years of serving their 400 LPs but also wanted to appear fresh and modern, so they chose the name SageStreet as a way to position their new brand alongside others in the crowdfunding investment space. 

More than simply expand their customer base, they were seeking to convert their current customers—who were used to dealing directly with people they knew personally—to a digital experience. In order for that to happen, they needed to remove friction while also making the experience familiar. Finally, they wanted to realize the gains from the efficiencies created by removing barriers to self-service for both current and new investors.

After a long search, Sage Equity hired Praxent because they needed a partner who understood the industry and could get up to speed quickly. Having worked extensively in the investment space, the Praxent team was able to take an established firm and develop an entirely new brand, website, and integrated platform that built on the strengths of the managing partners but was attractive to a new breed of investors. 

Scaled Fundraising Platform through WealthBlock integration, SageStreet’s investment management software for fundraising, and customer relationship management

Extended SageStreet Brand through visual design and StoryBrand-led content to build excitement and trust with accredited investors

Offers Displayed and Updated Automatically on the website through a rich integration with WealthBlock’s API

Account Sign-Ups for prospective investors so that they can begin funding their accounts and making investments via the WealthBlock integration

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How we helped

Praxent’s mission was to focus on the design and development of SageStreet to help scale Sage Equity Partners by creating an automated, self-service, crowdfunding investment platform for accredited investors.

The approach started with defining the brand for SageStreet’s digital presence that struck a perfect balance between trusted and modern, whose image conveyed experience but not buttoned-up and stuffy.

Praxent then expanded on the client’s vision of what their website could be by leveraging their design expertise to tell a story—one that carried through from the brand website to the investing platform—as well as guide the customer through an entirely new process from start to finish. 

The approach included:

Branding

• UI Design
• Digital Style Guide
• Logo

UX Strategy and Design

• Brand Sprint and Customer Journey Map
• StoryBrand-led copywriting
• Style Tiles
• Wireframes

ClickModel^®

• Development ready, interactive prototype

Website Design

AgileDev

• Developed the mobile-responsive website
• WealthBlock Integration

Project Management 

• Roadmap planning, backlog grooming, and weekly meetings to touch base on scope, budget and timeline
• Provided high-level overview of the project by major milestones and feature interdependence in order to keep all stakeholders in the loop.

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Results

Praxent partnered with Sage Equity Partners to develop a brand and visual identity for SageStreet that will appeal to their existing investor base but also pave the way for new investors.

The new automated investment flow and frictionless surface will allow for self-service and dramatically increase efficiency for the firm because they no longer have to handle investments manually. All documentation related to signing up, researching opportunities, and processing investments will be online, meaning no more endless back-and-forth interactions requiring mountains of paperwork.

By connecting the SageStreet brand site with the investment platform and leveraging the WealthBlock integration to create a custom deals page, Praxent provided a fully cohesive and consistent user experience while still allowing Sage Equity to leverage the cost efficiencies of a third-party service. 

Leveraging the WealthBlock API and creating a custom PDF export of the deals in the SageStreet website will enable the client to remove the WealthBlock branding until the customer gets to the stage where they want to actually invest, again creating a more consistent experience. 

Ultimately, Sage Street was able to quickly stand up a digital presence that will allowe them to handle very large-denomination transactions and meet all regulatory needs while hiding this from the end user experience, so it will feel like a SageStreet experience backed by WealthBlock technology.

Client Review

Overview

A real estate investment firm partnered with Praxent to design modern webpages for their services. The team extracted the design requirements from the client and built off of their values and goals.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m an executive assistant of Sage’s portfolio manager. Sage Equity Partners is a real estate investment firm and provides people with a different way to invest. We have about 400 limited partnerships (LP).

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Opportunity / Challenge

What challenge were you trying to address with Praxent?

We wanted to create a really nice webpage that could allow other people access as well as give accredited investors the ability to sign up and look at the opportunities that we provide. Our boss based its design off of the website of similar firms, which is also how we came up with the name Sage Street. We hired Praxent to develop this website.

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Solution

What was the scope of their involvement?

Our other website was done by our portfolio manager herself and it was very plain and simple. We had Praxent develop something better and more dynamic as we’re trying to reach out to a different group of people. A lot of our LPs are retirees or people in their late 40s, but we wanted to be more in sync with a younger crowd.

We started by informing Praxent about our timeline and about how our boss needed to be involved throughout the project. He’s a very busy person but, at the end of the day, this would be his website. We wanted to make sure that it was something he would like. 

We communicated information about the company, our values, and what we were trying to accomplish. Our boss, who was in the meetings, never got to ask himself these questions even though he’s been running the place for 4–5 years, so it was a good opportunity for him to classify the company. 

We then moved into selecting a color scheme. They also came up with different options for the design and arrangement of a page, which our boss modified. He pointed out specific elements, like a picture or a button, that did or didn’t like, and Praxent changed the design accordingly. 

How did you come to work with Praxent?

We’d been looking around for a developer for quite some time, and one of our former employees happened to have a lot of connections in the web development space. He was familiar with how to go about this project and push for the proposal. 

We also looked at who developed some of the top websites that we really loved, and Praxent was ultimately referred to us by another developer who didn’t have enough room in their schedule to accommodate us. We’re very glad that they pointed us in Praxent’s direction. 

How much have you invested with them?

This phase of the project cost approximately $5,000. The development stage will cost around $110,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We engaged Praxent and had our first kickoff meeting in mid-May 2021. The design phase for the website ended in July 2021 and we are now moving into development, for which Doug will be helping us. 

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Results & Feedback

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

They were very helpful and the partnership was a good learning experience. Praxent guided us on how to deliver the points we were trying to make on the website in a fast and consistent manner. They’re very creative and really built off of our goal which was to present people with different ways of investing. That was clearly reflected in the design that they made. 

We haven’t gone public with the website, but we did show it to our investment committee and some of the directors of our company. They were all blown away by it and are excited to take it to the next stage. These are people with a combined experience of 70 years working in private equity and have never seen anything like this before, so they think that it will help increase our engagement tenfold.

The feedback that we’ve received from high-level team members in our offices has also been very positive. 

How did Praxent perform from a project management standpoint?

Praxent did a phenomenal job. They did everything they said they were going to do. They were also very great at hitting deadlines. We were fifteen days behind schedule, but that was on us and not on Praxent. We have a CEO who runs about 50 companies and wanted to be on every call, causing some of the meetings to be pushed back.

Our boss is what we like to call a ‘window shopper’ in that he sees something he liked but doesn’t necessarily know how to explain it. Praxent was actually able to extract every idea that he had in is head and put it on the screen, which was great. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

Obviously, their design and technical skills are phenomenal, but my favorite thing about their services is the constant stream of communication and follow-ups that are not by any means pushy. When we had deliverables on our end, they laid them out point by point so that we knew exactly what we had to do. We didn’t have to overthink or spend a lot of time on one particular thing, which was very nice for a team like ours that’s very busy with other things. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

I can’t think of anything. They were very flexible with our needs. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

You’re going to get out of it whatever you put into it, so when Praxent gives you deliverables, really think about and work on them. If you put the bare minimum into it, they can take a small idea and turn it into something glorious. If you’re going to spend time doing something like this or working with a company like Praxent, you definitely need to be ready to do a bit of homework and internalization of your company, its values, and its goals.