How I coordinated the product lifecycle for Moldova's first freelance marketplace — from discovery and spec through sprint delivery, launch, and growth to 100+ activated users and 30+ posted jobs with zero paid spend.
Moldova — a country of 2.6M with a fast-growing IT and creative sector — had no dedicated platform where local talent could find local clients. Local freelancers went through expensive international platforms like Upwork, where Moldova barely registers as a market. Businesses looking for local talent had nowhere organised to look.
The gap was obvious once you looked for it. Nobody was building for Moldova's freelance economy specifically.
I owned the product coordinator role end-to-end — discovery, spec, sprint coordination, launch, and iteration.
A product that doesn't pay for itself isn't really a product. I designed two complementary revenue streams from day one:
For payments, I researched providers that actually work for the Moldovan market — local bank eCommerce (MAIB, Victoriabank), PayPal Business, Paddle, Stripe — and selected a merchant payment provider that covers Visa/Mastercard without requiring a registered Moldovan business entity. This was a product decision, not a technical one: which option unblocks the most paying users.
I acquired every user organically. The strategy was specific:
Result: 100+ activated users, 30+ posted jobs, ranking #1 for the niche — and growing organically without a marketing budget.
My job was to keep engineering, content, and growth contributors moving in the same direction — translating business goals into specs, tracking delivery, and removing blockers. Day-to-day this meant sprint planning, weekly product syncs, stakeholder reporting, and direct vendor coordination.
Market research, value proposition, user positioning, monetisation model, payment provider selection, growth strategy, content positioning, bilingual UX decisions, iteration prioritisation. Every decision that answers "what should this be?" — mine.
Engineering delivery (specs, prioritisation, release coordination), content production (SEO briefs, editorial calendar), growth execution (community presence, retention loops). I ran weekly syncs, maintained the backlog, triaged bugs and feature requests, and reported to leadership.
Worked directly with payment, email, and captcha vendors to integrate and troubleshoot. Owned vendor selection, contracts negotiation basics, and ongoing technical relationships.