Product Pieces helped shape Trader X (Pepperstone's trading-meets-gaming venture) from a bold idea into a defined product proposition: the audience, the mechanics, and the shape of the experience the team went on to build. Delivered by our founder as a Toptal Top 3% product manager.
The brief.
Trader X was a new venture under Pepperstone with an ambitious premise: bring the engagement and mechanics of gaming to the experience of trading. The idea had energy; what it needed was shape. The ask was to help define the offering — who it was really for, what the core experience should be, and how gaming mechanics could work alongside a regulated trading product without trivialising the risk.
The challenge.
Fusing two worlds is harder than bolting one onto the other. Gaming rewards engagement; trading carries real financial risk, inside a regulated frame. Get the balance wrong and you either build a dull trading app with a points badge, or a game that encourages bad financial behaviour. The work was finding the version that was genuinely both, engaging and responsible, and defining it tightly enough to build.
What we delivered.
We shaped the proposition: the target audience, the core experience and loop, and how the gaming layer should sit against the trading platform. We pressure-tested concepts against what was buildable and what was responsible, and translated the ambition into a defined product the team could take forward — a clear answer to "what is Trader X, and who is it for?"
The result.
The ambition became a concrete, buildable proposition — one Trader X went on to deliver. The team came away aligned on the audience, the experience and the mechanics, with the trading-meets-gaming concept sharpened from an exciting idea into a product with a clear shape.