Building a Marketplace for Safer Selling

Dolo Review — From Bootstrapped to Funded

Dolo Review - Safe Marketplace Platform

Bootstrapped to Funded. We helped a solo founder migrate from a hacked-together Squarespace + Airtable setup into a secure, full-featured marketplace MVP with Stripe integration, multi-party transactions, and onboarding flows—culminating in a successful pre-seed raise.

8-Week Timeline

From concept to launch-ready MVP

Pre-Seed Funding

Successful raise using the new product

Trust & Safety

Escrow logic and verification systems

Full Migration

From Squarespace + Airtable to custom platform

🚨 Problem

Online marketplaces can be risky—especially in niche communities and peer-to-peer transactions. Scams, broken trust, and payment disputes were common complaints among users trying to buy and sell safely online. The founder of Dolo Review set out to solve that, starting with a simple solution: a manually curated marketplace using Squarespace and Airtable to vet listings and buyers.

The demand quickly outgrew the scrappy setup.

🌿 Enter the Founder

A passionate community builder and entrepreneur, the founder had bootstrapped the platform with ingenuity:

Squarespace for the storefront
Airtable for listings and inventory
Manual emails for coordinating payments

This approach worked surprisingly well—for a while. But as volume grew, sellers and buyers needed a smoother, safer, more automated experience. That's when he approached us.

🚀 Our Role: From Hacky Tools to Real Product

We partnered with the founder to turn his proof-of-concept into a full-fledged, investor-ready marketplace MVP that became Dolo Review.

✅ What We Delivered:

Full migration from Squarespace and Airtable into a scalable custom frontend and backend

Stripe integration for seamless, secure payments

Multi-party transaction support, with escrow logic to protect buyers and sellers

Listing management system for verified sellers

Admin dashboard for disputes, reviews, and trust controls

Automated onboarding flows to scale seller verification

This wasn't just a prettier UI—it was a full infrastructure overhaul built for trust, scale, and safety.

💡 Outcome

Launch-ready MVP built in under 8 weeks

Immediate traction with the original community

Founder raised a strong pre-seed round, using the new product to demonstrate execution and vision

Now expanding into other niche marketplaces beyond the original focus

💬 Final Thoughts

What started as a clever, bootstrapped workaround became Dolo Review—a high-trust, high-utility marketplace with real traction—thanks to a founder with vision and a product team that could ship fast and right.

Want to do the same? We specialize in turning scrappy tools into serious products that scale.