Weave
A Platform for Global Market Entry.
A workflow tool that helps companies find, evaluate, contract, and collaborate with overseas partners, all in one flow.
Overview
Why I started this project
I kept hearing the same story from companies trying to expand overseas: weeks lost to scattered tools, uncertain partners, and regulations that seemed to change overnight. The workflow was broken and nobody was connecting the pieces.
I proposed this project concept and led research strategy, problem definition, and solution ideation from initial desk research through feature architecture. Over one semester, we took this from a question to a fully designed product.
Full scope
Covers the whole workflow: finding partners, collaborating with them, staying compliant
Validated
Tested with 3 users across 2 task flows; iterated on real feedback
Originated
I came up with the original concept and led how we framed the problem
The Problem
Companies trying to expand overseas waste weeks on scattered tools, unclear regulations, and unreliable partners.
Teams over-rely on a small set of local partners, government resources are too broad for real decisions, and critical support is scattered across dozens of institutions. The process feels like assembling a puzzle with pieces from different boxes.
Fragmented Resources
Essential expansion data is scattered across multiple institutions and platforms, costing teams significant time just to locate and consolidate.
No Customized Insights
Existing resources offer broad information, but lack the tailored market analysis companies need for their specific industry and target region.
Partner Dependency & Brand Risk
When companies rely heavily on local partners, those partners end up making decisions that directly affect the brand. If the partner mishandles something, the company takes the hit.
Rapidly Changing Regulations
Compliance requirements shift frequently across countries and industries, making them nearly impossible for most teams to track and respond to.
The Solution
A workflow tool that helps companies find overseas partners and collaborate in one connected flow.
Each problem we found maps to something Weave does. The goal was one connected system, not another standalone tool.
Centralized Expansion Hub
One platform aggregating government programs, consulting resources, and market data in a single place.
AI-Powered Roadmap
A tailored expansion plan generated from company profile, industry, and target market.
Partner Marketplace + Co-Management
Vetted partner marketplace with a shared workspace for HQ-partner collaboration.
Regulatory Monitoring & Alerts
Automated tracking of regulation changes with impact analysis and response suggestions.
Research
What the research told us
We did desk research, analyzed case studies of companies that succeeded and failed at expansion, and looked at where AI could actually help.
Case Study — Successful Expansion
Karrot: How hyperlocal strategy drove global growth
Karrot (당근)
Korean hyperlocal community marketplace that scaled to 4 countries
43M
Total users
14M
Weekly active
4
Countries
1,400+
Regions
01
Hyperlocal Strategy
GPS-based verification builds trust through physical proximity — applied identically in every new market.
02
Deep Localization
Replaced "Manner Temperature" with a 0–100 score and adjusted trade radius per region (1km in Seoul vs. 50km in Canada).
03
Founder-led Market Entry
CEO relocated to Canada; CSO appointed as Japan branch lead — enabling fast, on-the-ground decisions.
04
AI-Powered Features
AI auto-generates listings from photos and predicts pricing — launched first in Canada before global rollout.
Localization is a product strategy, not a translation task. Adapting to local culture, trust models, and user behavior is what separates scaling from just launching.
Case Study — Failed Expansion
Toss: Why a Korean fintech giant withdrew from Vietnam
Toss (토스)
Korean fintech super-app that withdrew from Vietnam & Southeast Asia
300K
Peak MAU
4x
Debt increase
2024
Full exit
01
Underestimated Regulatory Hurdles
Vietnam requires local bank partnerships and central bank approval — licensing timelines blocked the path to monetization.
02
Misread Cash-Based Culture
Imported the Korean "all-in-one finance" model into a market with low card/account-based payment penetration.
03
No Differentiation
GrabPay, MoMo, and ZaloPay already dominated — Toss couldn't articulate a unique value proposition against entrenched locals.
04
Financial Risk Explosion
Aggressive expansion led to 4x debt growth, forcing leadership to cut overseas operations for domestic IPO focus.
A strong domestic product doesn't guarantee overseas success. Without understanding local regulations, payment habits, and who you're competing against, growth turns into debt.
Desk Research
What the data told us about overseas expansion
We went through government reports, startup failure data, and existing support programs to understand what Korean companies actually face when expanding abroad.
15+
Government agencies offering overlapping support programs
#1
Barrier cited by SMEs: regulatory complexity
0
Integrated tools built for SME global expansion
Government support exists, but it's scattered
Programs from KOTRA, GoBiz Korea, and KOSME offer real value — but companies either don't know they exist or can't navigate across fragmented institutions.
Partner discovery relies on personal networks
No structured marketplace exists for finding vetted local partners. Companies default to word-of-mouth, increasing risk and limiting options.
Compliance tools serve enterprises, not SMEs
Global legaltech offers advanced regulatory solutions — but they're priced and scoped for large corporations, leaving SMEs with manual, error-prone processes.
Over-reliance on partners leads to failure
Companies often over-rely on local partners who lack a solid understanding of the business, giving them outsized influence over critical decisions — ultimately undermining the HQ's control and leading to expansion failure.
Support programs and useful information exist, but they're scattered across so many places that companies trying to expand overseas struggle to figure out where to even start. And once they're in a new market, regulations change constantly and are hard to keep track of.
Ideation & Process
From problems to a connected solution
Our research kept pointing to the same thing: every part of the expansion process is broken in a different way, and no single tool tries to connect them. We started with a question:
From there, we structured our approach around three design goals:
Reduce the fragmentation
Bring regulations, partners, contracts, and collaboration into one platform.
Build trust through transparency
Show verified partners, track compliance, and let both sides see what's happening.
Make the complex manageable
Break the process into steps with clear roadmaps and AI suggestions where they're useful.
We took every pain point from our research and mapped it to a feature. That mapping became the backbone of the product.
AI in Weave
How AI powers the platform
The problems we found are tedious at their core: digging through government databases, cross-referencing regulations, evaluating dozens of potential partners across different criteria. That's exactly the kind of work AI is good at. Instead of bolting AI on as a feature, we made it part of how the platform works. It crawls and aggregates sources that would take a team weeks to cover manually, and it scores partner matches based on variables like industry fit and compliance history that no one has time to compare by hand.
Collect
AI
Analyze & Deliver
Personas
Four user profiles across two sides of the expansion equation
We mapped personas for both overseas-expanding companies and local service providers — the two sides Weave must connect.
Overseas Expanding Companies
SME Founder
Small business seeking overseas partners
- Relies on personal networks to find local partners
- Can't verify reliability or compare options objectively
- Manages compliance and partner communication across scattered tools
- High brand risk from unvetted partnerships
First-time Expander
Company preparing for first overseas entry
- No internal playbook or prior international experience
- Overwhelmed by regulatory complexity
- No unified dashboard to track expansion progress
- Wastes time on manual regulatory monitoring
Local Companies
Local Consultant
Local consulting & service provider
- Difficult to reach overseas clients looking for local support
- No platform to showcase services and past case studies
- Wants to be discovered by companies entering their market
Local Partner
Established partner working with overseas HQ
- Communication gaps and timezone friction with overseas HQ
- Scattered documents and unclear expectations
- Needs a shared workspace for smooth co-management
System Design
Mapping the architecture before moving to screens
I defined how users, features, and data connect across the platform, starting with concept models.
Concept model diagram
Core Flows
Weave is built around four connected modules, here's how each one works.
01 Roadmap
A structured starting point for global expansion
Companies generate a tailored expansion roadmap based on their target market, industry, and readiness — giving them a concrete starting point instead of a blank page.
02 Marketplace
Discover and compare trusted local partners
A unified marketplace surfaces vetted service providers. Teams can evaluate partners side by side, review case studies, and shortlist candidates.
03 Proposals & Contracting
Move from selection to engagement in one place
Teams can generate proposals, request quotes, and draft contracts within the same workflow — reducing handoffs and accelerating deal closure.
04 Workspace
Operate, collaborate, and stay compliant
Shared workspaces support ongoing collaboration between HQ and local partners, with built-in regulatory monitoring and AI-assisted tools.
User Testing
Testing with real users
We conducted remote usability tests using our Figma prototype — testing two core task flows: navigating the marketplace and roadmap, and collaborating on documents through the workspace.
3
Participants
2
Task flows
Remote
Google Meet + Figma
Participants found the marketplace intuitive to navigate, but the contracting flow revealed friction — specifically around proposal templates and how terms were presented. We iterated on the contract workspace based on this feedback, simplifying the layout and surfacing key actions more prominently.
What participants said
Participant A
"The features are convenient. It's great that companies can see everything gathered in one place without having to search separately."
Participant B
"The functionality was more useful than expected. Being able to check which documents have been shared is helpful. Having legal consulting as a separate feature builds trust — when you're in a legally sensitive business, you want help from a real expert."
Participant C
"It's convenient that the platform suggests tasks that would be hard to do alone, reviews them, and guides you toward better directions. Being able to go step by step from start to finish — toward a better proposal, a better project — feels like a real strength."
Iteration Principle
Participant C's feedback highlighted that the step-by-step progression was the platform's key strength. To reinforce this, we established a design principle: visually emphasize the sense of stages — guiding users through each phase so they feel led through a clear, structured process rather than dropped into a dashboard.
Reflection
What I learned from Weave
Scope discipline matters more than feature breadth
The platform covers a lot of ground, so the hardest part was deciding what to cut. If a feature couldn't trace back to a real problem someone told us about, it didn't make it in.
Leading research sharpens product intuition
I ran the research myself from start to finish: desk research, case studies, personas, problem framing. Doing all of it made the design decisions feel less like guesses.
AI should solve real workflow gaps, not add novelty
Scattered regulations and partner data are problems of volume, not complexity. AI is useful here because there's too much to process manually, not because the task is hard to understand. We made sure every AI feature mapped to a specific problem from our research so it wouldn't feel tacked on.
User testing reveals what wireframes can't
Participants liked the step-by-step guided flow but got stuck in the contracting module in ways we didn't expect. That feedback shaped our main iteration principle: make the sense of progress more visible at each stage.
What I'd explore next
If I kept working on this, I'd want to test the roadmap with real expansion data, see how the compliance alerts hold up across different countries' regulations, and watch how teams actually use the collaboration workspace over a longer period.