Convert Sight
Shushma Sharma, a lawyer turned entrepreneur who had worked at Wall Street law firms and headed a practical law department at City University of Hong Kong, saw people across three continents struggling because they lacked good communication and access to lived experience. Convert Sight was born as her answer to that problem: a platform where people could connect one-on-one and share knowledge drawn from personal experience.
The founder started the project alone and spent about a year and a half building it before opening to the public in October. The team grew from two people to roughly eight, with six full-time or part-time staff and a few consultants. The company raised $1.3 million in a seed convertible note, which completed in November and funded the early months.
The model was built on a few deliberate choices. Listings carry a small charge of one credit, which equals 50 cents, because the founder believed that nothing valuable should be free and that a fee keeps the platform from filling with low-quality content. Paid sessions bring a 10% commission, out of which Stripe takes a little over 3%.
Growth was slower than the founder hoped. The company focused first on filling the provider side, and about half of provider listings were seeking boxes rather than offers. Many providers were willing to do free conversations but hesitated at paid ones, largely because of the Stripe onboarding form and the personal information it required. Explaining the payment setup became a recurring hurdle.
Pricing also took shape through experimentation. Events and a questionnaire asked people what they would teach for $30 for 30 minutes, and that answer became the average order value, which the founder described as roughly a dollar a minute.
What worked was the two-sided design: people could be providers and seekers at once, and the platform kept generating small, steady revenue. The founder reported that revenue was growing by a small increment each month. What didn't work as fast was converting listings into transactions. The company had about 800 providers and roughly 200 completed transactions, and the founder admitted that traction on the seeker side had been slow.
At the time of the interview, Convert Sight was about three months old and had reported about $600 in revenue to date. The founder was focused on growing the provider base, reducing payment friction, and planning larger goals for the future. The company's revenue was described as early, but growing.
- •The two-sided design lets every provider also act as a seeker, so one user can both earn and learn, which deepens engagement on the platform.
- •The small listing fee of 50 cents filters out low-quality postings, meaning the marketplace is curated by the same economics that fund it.
- •Anchoring prices around a simple $30 for 30 minutes gives buyers a clear, low-risk entry point and makes the marketplace easy to understand.
- •Payment friction through the Stripe onboarding form is the main barrier to paid transactions, so the gap between listings and completed sessions reflects trust and setup costs rather than lack of demand.
- •Recurring small commissions rather than large one-off sales mean the model depends on volume, which explains why the early focus on supply was logical but slow to produce revenue.
- 1.Build the supply side first by recruiting providers with free sessions, then introduce paid sessions once they are comfortable on the platform.
- 2.Charge a small fee for listings or credits to deter low-quality postings and make providers feel accountable for what they publish.
- 3.Use a simple, standard price point for the first sessions, and collect provider input through events or questionnaires to set it.
- 4.Reduce payment onboarding friction early by offloading security-sensitive data to a trusted processor and explaining the process clearly to providers.
- 5.Track listings versus completed transactions as a core metric so you can find where the funnel stalls and fix that step before scaling.
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