Tespire serves schools across emerging markets with payments and operations software. Growth was bottlenecked by a direct sales model that could not reach long-tail institutions efficiently.
Schools in underserved regions needed a local, trusted intermediary to onboard and adopt the platform. Without that layer, CAC stayed high and activation rates lagged.
- Stand up an agent-led distribution channel
- Onboard 500+ schools within two quarters
- Reduce school activation time from weeks to days
- Maintain quality of onboarding at scale
Interviewed prospective agents, school administrators, and existing customers to understand trust dynamics, commission expectations, and the activation jobs that needed to be done.
Designed Agent X around three primitives: agent identity and KYC, a guided school-onboarding flow, and a transparent commission ledger. Released to a closed cohort first, then opened nationally.
- Wrote the product brief and aligned commercial, ops, and engineering
- Designed and shipped the agent app and admin console
- Built an automated KYC and payout pipeline
- Ran a 30-school pilot and codified the playbook before scaling
Balancing aggressive growth targets against onboarding quality and fraud risk in a commission-driven channel.
Agent X onboarded 500+ schools, drove 60% market expansion, and reduced school activation time roughly 4x via automation.
- Distribution is a product. Treat the channel like a first-class surface
- Commissions are an incentive — design for the behavior you want, not just the volume
- A 30-customer pilot beats a 300-customer guess