InvestorPrism
Turning a multifamily deal board into a professional network where real estate investors find, vet and message each other
- Type
- Capstone · real client
- Client
- Tony Tamales, founder of InvestorPrism
- My work
- My Network, connection cards, Profile, competitive analysis
- Colin
- Home Dashboard, Messaging
- Stas
- Splash page, FAQ
- Tools
- Figma, Google Sheets
InvestorPrism is a website where real estate sponsors advertise apartment and commercial property deals to investors. It could show deals, but it couldn't help people find each other or decide who to trust. For our capstone, Colin, Stas and I worked with founder Tony Tamales to turn it into a LinkedIn-style network for real estate investing, in time for him to show investors.
Real estate deals run on trust. The product only had listings.
In a real estate syndication, one experienced sponsor (the general partner, or GP) finds and runs a property, and investors (limited partners, or LPs) put money in. Before anyone wires money, they ask one question: do I trust this person?
InvestorPrism let sponsors post deals and let investors browse them, but it stopped there. You couldn't find a partner, see who you had in common, or start a conversation. Tony wanted it to work more like LinkedIn: a place where those relationships form. He needed a clickable prototype of that vision to show potential funders.
Me: My Network, cards and Profile
How people find each other, what you see before you connect, and what proves a sponsor is worth trusting. I also led the competitive analysis.
Colin: Home Dashboard and Messaging
What you see when you log in, and how conversations with connections happen inside the app.
Stas: Splash page and FAQ
How a new visitor learns what InvestorPrism is and gets their questions answered before signing up.
A deal board, not a network.
We started from mockups by a previous designer. We reviewed them against the one thing Tony cared about: helping the right people connect. Drag the slider to compare the old Profiles page with the My Network page I designed to replace it.
- You couldn't find the right people. "Profiles" was one long grid with no way to narrow it to sponsors or investors in your market.
- There were no relationships. Nothing let you connect, follow, or see who you had in common.
- Profiles didn't prove anything. A sponsor's track record was buried in a paragraph of text.
- There was no home and no way to talk. You logged in to a list of deals, and any conversation happened by phone or email, outside the product.
Home (Deals): live deals filtered by status and check size, with no people in sight
Sign up: a clean start, but nothing about who's already on the platform
Skills used — Heuristic evaluation · Content audit
Competitors had the deals. None of them had the community.
I compared the two platforms Tony's users already knew, looking at strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.
Pallas
Friendly for new investors, with strong education and direct access to sponsors. But it's focused narrowly on syndications and has few social features.
Janover Engage
A large, trusted network with over $1B in confirmed investments. But it's limited to accredited investors, pricing is unclear, and there's little community beyond raising money.
Both platforms show deals and sponsors clearly, and both stop there. Neither lets people build a network, see shared connections, or talk inside the product. That gap became InvestorPrism's opportunity: keep the clear deal information investors expect, and add the social layer nobody else had.
Skills used — Competitive analysis · SWOT
From problems to user stories to screens.
We turned every problem into user stories: short sentences describing who needs something and why. Each story was scored with Tony for priority, value, risk and effort, then placed in a release. The highest-scoring stories became the screens we designed.
Problem: you can't find the right people.
"As a GP, I want to search for Co-GPs, so that I can connect with them."
The screen that answers itMy Network (designed by me): people grouped by deal role and location, with search.
Problem: there are no relationships.
"As a user, I want to connect with other users, so that I can ask about offerings and build a network."
The screen that answers itConnection cards (designed by me): Connect, View Profile and Message on every person, with mutual connections shown.
Problem: you can't tell who to trust.
"As a GP, I want to showcase my success, so that LPs and GPs feel confident investing with me."
The screen that answers itProfile (redesigned by me): track record as numbers, live offerings, and trust badges.
Problem: logging in shows nothing personal.
"As a user, I want to log in and see my news feed, navigation and relevant information at a glance."
The screen that answers itHome Dashboard (designed by Colin): your stats, a feed from your network, and people to meet.
Problem: conversations leave the app.
"As a user, I want to direct message other users, so that I can network with them."
The screen that answers itMessaging (designed by Colin): an inbox sorted by connections and partnership requests.
Problem: newcomers don't know what it is.
"As a user, I want an FAQ section, so that I can get important questions answered quickly."
The screen that answers itSplash page and FAQ (designed by Stas): what InvestorPrism does, for whom, and answers to common questions.
Lower-priority stories, like deal notifications, switching between Tony's other platforms, and post-close updates for investors, were real needs but didn't help Tony show his vision, so we moved them to later releases.
Skills used — User stories · Prioritization · Roadmapping
Ten tabs became five.
I designed My Network from scratch. It needed three things: filters with search, the new left-hand navigation, and cards that give a quick look at each person.
All Connections, Near You, GP, LP, Co-GP, Syndicators, Favorites, Following, Followers. It covered everything, but several tabs were the same people under different names, so it was hard to know where to click.
All Connections, Near You, GPs, LPs, Co-GPs. Each tab matches a role in a real estate deal, so every one answers a question a sponsor or investor actually asks.
How should people be grouped in My Network?
Why: Tony asked us to keep only the roles that matter in a deal, and it matched what we'd seen: "syndicator" and "GP" are the same people. Fewer, clearer tabs meant less guessing.
Skills used — Information architecture · Wireframing · Client feedback
What should you know before you connect?
The card is the building block of the whole network, so I explored many versions before choosing one. Every version showed the same information: name, city, role badges, followers, deals, a short description and mutual connections. I shared the strongest with the team and Tony. After his feedback, I added assets under management (AUM) and deals led as both GP and LP, then restyled the card to match the rest of the product.
Role first
GP, Co-GP and LP badges sit right by the name, so you know how someone fits a deal at a glance.
Proof over bio
Deals, AUM and mutual connections get more space than a self-written description, because they're what builds trust.
Two clear actions
View Profile and Message are the only buttons. Share sits in the corner, so a page of cards doesn't become a page of buttons.
Skills used — Visual design · Design exploration
A profile that answers "can I trust this sponsor?"
Drag the slider to compare the profile we started with and the one I designed.
I redesigned the profile over three versions. The second added everything an investor might want and grew very long. The third cut it back to what investors actually use to decide. The final is about a third shorter than the longest version, and easier to scan.
A photo, a short bio, contact details and a list of social links. Experience was three lines of small text, and there was no way to connect.
A header card with a banner, role badges, connections and mutuals. Experience shown as big numbers. Active offerings and current investments you can expand in place, and a Recommended column to find the next person to meet.
How much contact information should a profile show?
Why: Tony wanted conversations to happen inside InvestorPrism, and he wanted a reason for people to buy a badge. We removed phone and email, kept the website so sponsors still look credible, and blurred social links behind "Purchase Gold Badge to view."
Skills used — Iteration · Business trade-offs
Colin's screens: a home about you, and a place to talk.
Colin designed the Home Dashboard and Messaging. The dashboard shows your own numbers at the top (active deals, investments, upcoming events), your feed in the middle, and your profile summary, recently viewed people and recommendations on the right. Messaging sorts conversations into All, My Connections, Connection Requests and Requests to Co-GP, so a sponsor looking for a partner can find those requests quickly.
Because my cards and profile appear inside his screens, we reviewed each other's work to keep badges, avatars and buttons consistent.
Home Dashboard: your stats, your feed, and people to meet
Messages: every conversation, with role badges on each thread
Requests to Co-GP: partnership requests, kept apart from everyday chat
Skills used — Collaboration · Design reviews
Stas's screens: explaining InvestorPrism to someone new.
Stas designed the splash page and the FAQ. The splash page tells each audience what's in it for them: sponsors can advertise their deals, investors can find opportunities, and GPs can find co-sponsors in their market. The FAQ answers the questions people ask before signing up, from raising capital to pricing and security.
Skills used — Collaboration · Content design
Three designers, one product.
We started in high fidelity, so the first thing we built together was a shared system: colors, type, badges, cards, buttons, and the top bar and left-hand navigation. That's what lets three people's screens feel like one product.
One action color
Green always means "do something": Post a deal, View Profile, Send. Everything else stays neutral.
Badges mean the same thing everywhere
GP, Co-GP and LP each have their own color, on cards, profiles and messages alike.
Same frame on every screen
Every screen shares the top bar and left-hand navigation, so moving between them never feels like a different app.
Skills used — Design systems · Visual design
From a listings site to a network.
- A prioritized list of 28 user stories, with a clear MVP and two later releases
- My Network, organized by deal role and cut from ten tabs to five
- A connection card built around trust signals
- A profile rebuilt around track record and live offerings, with a badge model Tony can charge for
- A home dashboard, messaging, splash page and FAQ from Colin and Stas
- A clickable prototype and shared component library for Tony's funding conversations
The timeline didn't allow usability testing, and InvestorPrism had no users yet, so our feedback came from working sessions with Tony. That worked because he knew exactly what he needed to show. The next step would be testing My Network and the profile with real sponsors and investors, starting with whether the badges actually build trust.
Skills used — Client handoff
What I learned.
User stories keep a team honest
Writing every problem as a user story, and scoring it with the client, meant we never argued about taste. Each screen had a clear reason to exist, and a clear reason when something was cut.
Complete isn't the same as clear
My ten-tab network covered every case and helped no one. Grouping people by what they do in a deal was the turning point.
Working as a team of three
It was my first time splitting a product between designers. Building a shared system first is what let our screens come together as one prototype, and reviewing Colin's and Stas's work taught me as much as my own.