Firm | Devpost

Track Selection: FinTech/Business Tech

Inspiration

Small businesses face the same inflation and supply-chain pressures as big-box retailers, but without bulk pricing, logistics leverage, or negotiating power. Corporate players win on unit economics because buying in huge quantities unlocks better per-unit pricing and cheaper delivery. Independent shops often get stuck with wholesale minimums and repeated delivery fees. We built Firm, a FinTech and business-tech platform designed to reduce this resource gap by helping local businesses collaborate while staying independent.

What it does

Firm is a Business-to-Business collaboration platform that helps verified independent businesses pool resources like a digital Group Purchasing Organization (GPO). On Firm, businesses can create and join purchasing blocks to aggregate demand and place a single bulk order, such as three cafes splitting a large oat milk order to unlock tier-1 pricing. Beyond purchasing, the platform helps businesses coordinate shared operations like last-mile delivery and shared drop-offs to reduce repeated delivery fees, and it enables hyper-local resource sharing such as storage space and expensive equipment. A neighborhood map is included as a perk of the platform to help businesses discover nearby partners and form pooling groups faster.

How we built it

We designed the end-to-end product flow primarily in Figma and Figma Make and organized it into three phases. In the Registration and Intro phase, we focused on onboarding, verification, and location-based setup to enable local matching. In the Matching and Main phase, we designed the discovery experience for nearby businesses and active Pooling Requests, along with the flows to propose, join, and manage purchasing blocks. In the Operational phase, we outlined the FinTech workflow for split invoices and escrow-style funding, plus coordination features for shared logistics and additional operational services.

Frontend: TypeScript, React, React Router, Mapbox GL JS (interactive map), inline CSS styling with a strict design system (DM Sans, Instrument Serif, warm sand/black palette).

Backend: Design-focused scope, so no backend implemented. However, we discussed that a document database like MongoDB would be nice, as GPO entities have highly variable schemas.

Challenges we ran into

Trust and coordination were the core challenges, since pooling money and inventory requires safeguards and clear accountability. To address this, we prioritized escrow-style payment logic, transparent cost splitting, and participation agreements that commit businesses to the GPO purchase with defined risks and responsibilities. We also had to be precise about compliance framing, so we positioned Firm as a GPO-style purchasing power aggregator focused on better prices and terms, not anti-competitive behavior. Finally, because small business owners are busy, we designed a low-friction experience from forming a group to paying and coordinating pickup or delivery.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We’re proud of coming up with an interface that’s relatively usable, and we put thought into how to configure our Figma Make prompts to create screens that ask relevant questions. We enjoyed discussing this process and even created lo-fi wireframes to explore what information is important and what isn’t.

What we learned

From our research, we learned that delivery fees and wholesale minimums can be just as damaging as pricing, especially for businesses operating on thin margins. From making the project, we learned a lot about Figma Make.