PM Case Study · Maipelo Letebele · 2019–2022
WealthSpaces

A fully shipped two-sided marketplace connecting remote workers with hospitality venues across South Africa. Built from scratch. Raised funding. Reached Top 10.

Top 10SA App Downloads
R350KAngel Investment
22Venue Partners
8.2/10Demand Score
WealthSpaces App
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01 · The Problem

Two groups.
One unmet need.

01
The Workers
Entrepreneurs, freelancers, and remote workers couldn't afford traditional office or co-working space. Home was full of distractions. Coffee shops felt unwelcoming. There was nowhere designed for productive, flexible work.
02
The Venues
Hotels, cafes, and restaurants had significant underutilised daytime capacity. They wanted more foot traffic but had no structured way to attract and retain a working crowd reliably.

"The problem wasn't a lack of spaces. It was a lack of structure, trust, and value exchange. Nobody had solved the match."

The app in the real world
Map view
Featured locations
02 · Market Research

We didn't assume.
We asked.

8.2
Out of 10

Propensity to use WealthSpaces across 166 respondents. Survey 1, 2019.

Survey respondents
166 respondents (2019) 123 respondents (2020) 289 total 47.6% aged 25–34 62.7% female
What the data told us
Likely to work from coffee shops78%
Distracted working from home67%
Environment affects creativity67%
Networking critical to business75%
Google Play growth — Jul to Dec 2020

Installed audience showed a sharp spike in November 2020 — outperforming peers in the Productivity category as remote work became mainstream globally.

Top 10
Most Downloaded · South Africa
Location view
03 · The Solution

Work out the box.
The WealthSpaces model.

WealthSpaces connected remote workers with hotels, cafes, and restaurants offering co-working-ready spaces. Members paid a monthly subscription. Venues got increased daytime trade and a revenue share.

Three subscription tiers
Essential
R99/month — Township entrepreneurs
Entry-level access to WealthSpaces network. Inclusive pricing for South Africa's emerging market.
Classic
R249/month — Freelancers and SMEs
Free coffee, Wi-Fi, parking, 20% food discount, meeting rooms, Raha Rewards, networking events.
Premium
R449/month — Corporate and teams
Full benefits plus team management, priority bookings, and extended perks.
Packages screen
Packages marketing
04 · What We Built

A fully shipped,
production product.

Q3 2019
MVP launched — map-based location discovery, search, and booking
Q4 2019
22 venue partnerships signed — Coffee on 73rd, Been There Done That, The Office, and more
2020
289 market research respondents. 8.2/10 demand score. Angel investment secured: R350,000. Top 20 Women in Tech SA FinTech Summit
Nov 2020
Sharp growth spike on Google Play — Top 10 most downloaded apps in South Africa as COVID normalised remote work globally
2021
Premium venues onboarded — The Maslow Hotel Sandton, DAVINCI Hotel and Suites, The Marion on Nicol, Pizza Boyz Umhlanga
2021–2022
Phase 2 private rooms launched. Full booking workflow shipped. Closing phase as founders transitioned
The full feature set — shipped
Map DiscoveryLive location search
Booking SystemReal-time calendar
NetworkingCo-worker discovery
My TeamsCorporate accounts
Meeting RoomsHourly booking
Push AlertsReal-time notifications
Notifications
My Teams
Booking calendar
05 · The Booking Workflow

End-to-end.
Fully automated.

The complete booking system worked seamlessly across member and venue — with real-time push notifications, email confirmations, and a calendar management dashboard for venue owners.

🗺️
Member finds location on map
→
📅
Books a date
→
🔔
Venue gets push + email
→
✅
Venue confirms
→
📱
Member notified instantly
Lock screen notification
Booking confirmed
Marion on Nicol venue
Locations list

Premium venue partners included: The Maslow Hotel Sandton, DAVINCI Hotel and Suites, The Marion on Nicol (Owner: Maipelo Letebele), Pizza Boyz Umhlanga, Coffee on 73rd, Been There Done That, The Office, Afrikoa, and more.

06 · Honest Reflection

What went
wrong.

WealthSpaces taught me more about product management than any course ever could. I share these failures openly — because they shaped how I think about every product decision today.

Vanity Metrics
We celebrated downloads, not retention
Top 10 downloaded app felt like success. But downloads are an acquisition metric. Users were leaving and we weren't measuring why.
Premature Build
New features before validating the MVP
We got excited by early traction and added features instead of sitting with the MVP long enough to understand what users actually needed.
Wrong Response
Treated a product problem as a marketing problem
When retention dropped, we increased marketing. We were solving the wrong problem. The issue was core experience, not awareness.
Supply Imbalance
Venues signed up but weren't properly activated
Low user frequency meant venues deprioritised WealthSpaces. Out of sight, out of mind. Both sides of the marketplace needed equal attention.
Problem Fit
We assumed the problem at the scale we needed it
We validated demand in surveys, but not behaviour change. Would people actually change where they work? That question needed deeper discovery.
07 · The Through-Line

The product is never
the point.

The person is the point. Every lesson from WealthSpaces now lives in how I approach user research, problem framing, and product decisions.

Validate
before building
·
Measure
what matters
·
Iterate
with honesty
Presented by
Maipelo Letebele
Associate Product Manager · Cape Town, South Africa
maipelo.letebele@gmail.com