blackthorn.ai

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of a chemistry solutions company. We’re a marketplace for small molecules that support drug discovery projects along with pharma and biotech companies.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenges were you trying to address with blackthorn.ai?

We needed help finding small molecules within huge virtual spaces through machine learning and AI-based approaches.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Blackthorn.ai provided AI development services for us. The project was related to finding a relationship between the properties and activity of the compound. We started the process by giving blackthorn.ai data and molecule structure and activity they could analyze and, through AI, build a model that could be used for unknown molecule property prediction.

What was the team composition? 

We worked with Oleksandr (CEO & Founder) and two other IT developers from the blackthorn.ai team.

How did you come to work with blackthorn.ai?

A colleague referred blackthorn.ai to me.

How much have you invested with them?

We invested around $3,000 with them.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from September–October 2023.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

We were satisfied with the work blackthorn.ai did for us and what they accomplished. The team showed initiative and proactiveness in developing alternative solutions to reach our goals. As a result, we obtained very complex and high-quality support.

How did blackthorn.ai perform from a project management standpoint?

Blackthorn.ai completed the project on time, stayed within our budget expectations, was communicative, hosted a few update meetings, provided detailed reports, and responded to our questions.

Regarding communication methods, we used email to share information and documents.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I appreciated blackthorn.ai’s initiative and willingness to develop new ideas to ensure we were getting the best results out of their work.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I didn’t think there was anything they could improve on — they were good at doing what they did.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the CEO of ONE.SKIN TECHNOLOGIES LLC

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Closed-loop IOT system for skin care treatment using AI tools for skin diagnostics and product recommendation

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire blackthorn.ai to accomplish?

• Develop an AI approach for medical images recognition
• Establish (classify) medical condition severity from patient images
• Develop data strategy, annotation rules, and annotate patients images
• Develop semi-automated pre-labeling engine for specialists
• Productionalize the AI core as the web application deployment
• Provide automated continuous deployment and continuous integration service
• Observe and record real-world performance metrics, collect user feedback

SOLUTION

How did you find blackthorn.ai?

Referral

Why did you select blackthorn.ai over others?

• High ratings
• Good value for cost
• Referred to me

How many teammates from blackthorn.ai were assigned to this project?

6-10 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

1. Data Strategy development and Annotation of Images by manually labeling the regions of interest or structures that need to be segmented. 
2. Exploratory Data Analysis included understanding the distribution of the data, identifying any imbalances or biases, and exploring any patterns or characteristics that could aid in model development. 
3. Data Preprocessing involved resizing the images, normalizing pixel values, handling missing data, removing noise, and augmenting the dataset by applying transformations and adding synthetic examples. 
4. Feature Engineering focused on extracting relevant features from the preprocessed images that could help improve model performance. 
5. Training and Validating Machine Learning Models involved developing and training machine learning models to perform the classification and segmentation tasks. 
6. Deploying the Web Application 
7. Setting up Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery. 
8. Delivering Documentation and Transferring Knowledge

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

• Improved Diagnostics Accuracy. The AI algorithm achieved 84% accuracy.
• Faster and efficient diagnosis. 
• The AI model achieved an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.82.
• Personalised treatment planning. 
• Enhanced Patients Experience. 
• Remote Patient monitoring.

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

The project management was top-notch, consistently delivering on time and/or communicating the ongoing development. All our needs were addressed in a very professional manner.

What was your primary form of communication with blackthorn.ai?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

The team and the management. Very high level experts always finding the most effective and non-standard approach to any problem. Personalised client/project treatment.

Are there any areas for improvement or something blackthorn.ai could have done differently?

There was nothing they needed to improve on.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a deputy at the surgical center of an orthopedic trauma clinic.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with blackthorn.ai?

We needed help with AI and custom software development.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

I've been working with blackthorn.ai on three projects for a clinical study. The first project analyzes and identifies several markers originating from the patient data to predictive outcomes. The second task is to build a data bank to use as a foundation to further integrate patient data. The third effort is to provide a frontend application to visualize the data integrated into that data bank.

Regarding tools, they've used Python-based software for machine-learning analysis on AI development.

What is the team composition?

I mainly work with a project manager from blackthorn.ai's team.  

How did you come to work with blackthorn.ai?

I found blackthorn.ai through online research.

How much have you invested with them?

So far, we've spent €80,000 (approximately $89,000 USD) with them.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in November 2022, and the engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

We needed them to provide me with information from the collected data I wouldn't have the chance to identify manually. We have the first results on blackthorn.ai's work, which indicates that we have independent predictors for patient outcomes that we'd not have been able to identify without them.

How did blackthorn.ai perform from a project management standpoint?

blackthorn.ai's team is very flexible. We've had a slightly different idea, and they've been able to adapt the project according to our requests. In addition, they've been meeting deadlines and communicating with us via weekly WebEx meetings. Moreover, we use email and phone calls if anything unexpected comes up.

What did you find most impressive about them?

blackthorn.ai is great at adapting to our needs; it's not easy to work with us as a critical infrastructure provider because we have many restrictions that make it difficult to work with data since it has to be secured.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don't think there's anything they can improve on.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

They do a good job putting a team together, so I recommend discussing the project intensively, especially if you're unfamiliar with the subject. Communication is key.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m an executive at a medical diagnostics company. My division works on therapeutic research through small-molecule drug discovery.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with blackthorn.ai?

We needed support to build and train a machine-learning model. We started the project development but weren’t able to finish it.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

blackthorn.ai has designed and developed custom AI software. At the beginning of our engagement, blackthorn.ai created a detailed statement of work (SoW), and any time they update it, they give us a summary of the aspects they’ll change.

We had started developing the machine-learning model ourselves but couldn’t develop autoencoders for a specific data type. We’ve worked in close collaboration with blackthorn.ai since there are many variables in the code. We have to be able to pivot and train models as we go. 

Our project involves machine-learning algorithms, training models, autoencoders, and big data architecture. blackthorn.ai explains every possible pathway, lays down the options, and executes accordingly.

The machine-learning model blackthorn.ai has developed uses around 40–50 different data sources to find ways to develop new drugs without risking our patent. As we evolve with the project, the model will create new modules. Our goal is to accelerate our drug discovery timeline. 

blackthorn.ai provides input from an outside point of view since they have staff with chemistry, biology, and mathematics backgrounds. blackthorn.ai has helped us create specific machine-learning models, and they’re currently working on data wrangling.

What is the team composition?

We started working with 2–3 teammates from blackthorn.ai, and the team composition has changed throughout our engagement. We currently work with around five teammates, including a manager, different software developers, and Alex (CEO). We’ve also worked with different specialists as needed. For instance, we needed mathematics specialists to develop one of the modules.

All the people I work with are in high roles, and they can delegate work to other specialists as needed. 

How did you come to work with blackthorn.ai?

I found blackthorn.ai through a friend’s recommendation. We received other business proposals and liked the content and architecture of blackthorn.ai’s proposal. 

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent around $250,000–$500,000 with blackthorn.ai. We plan to increase this budget since we just realized we’ll need to add more staff to our team. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with blackthorn.ai in July 2022, and our partnership is ongoing. We had an introductory meeting in June 2022, they sent us their SoW on July 2022, and we’ve been working together since then. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

I really like that blackthorn.ai creates detailed SoW and is good at giving updates. We’ve worked with other companies in the past, and when they pivot and change, sometimes the changes aren’t clear to them, even though we had previously discussed them verbally. 

Before working with blackthorn.ai, we had developed our machine-learning model up until the point of clinical trials, but we had trouble getting past that. The way blackthorn.ai stepped in and helped us revamp the model was excellent. blackthorn.ai has developed in a couple of weeks what we tried to develop for about a month and a half.

Before working with blackthorn.ai, we tried to hire internal developers. However, blackthorn.ai’s staff background really stood out.  They really helped us with the model’s autoencoders. I’m a chemist with a heavy programming background, and I don’t think we’d ever figured out how they architect these autoencoders. We’re actually thinking about publishing papers with them about this case.

Overall, our collaboration with blackthorn.ai has been great. They’ve developed detailed code and created great reports, which allow anybody from their team to continue the work at any given point.

How did blackthorn.ai perform from a project management standpoint?

blackthorn.ai exceeds our timeline expectations. Whenever they say they’ll deliver something by a certain date, they keep their word and deliver it even ahead of time on some occasions. I don’t need to be on top of them because blackthorn.ai works autonomously, which I appreciate.

We don’t have to meet with blackthorn.ai that often. They’re always descriptive in their emails about the work they’re planning to do. We have a quick check-up meeting with blackthorn.ai every other Tuesday, and if they run into a problem in the meantime, they email us so we can jump into a call. We also have a long call with the development team, usually about 1–2 hours long.

Moreover, blackthorn.ai’s recently sent an SoW for our extended engagement that includes the revision history, the list of data sets, the implementation roadmap, the responsibilities of each party, and an executive summary at the end. Every detail is pointed out, which is great for us since we’re a small team, and this way, we can manage our work more efficiently.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I’m most impressed with blackthorn.ai’s honesty. When we come up with an idea and blackthorn.ai thinks it won’t work, they tell us upfront and propose new ideas the next time we meet.

Are there any areas they could improve?

The only constructive feedback I can give blackthorn.ai is that they hesitated to suggest ideas at the beginning of our engagement. However, that has changed throughout our partnership, and blackthorn.ai has been great since. I told Alex this was a collaborative relationship, and their proposed solutions have worked most of the time.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I suggest approaching blackthorn.ai with a clear picture of what you want to accomplish. You don’t need to know all the details, but be clear about your project goal. I also recommend asking blackthorn.ai for their input during the project and engaging with them. They might not be the right fit for every customer, but when they send you their initial SoW, you’ll know if they’re right for you. 

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the CTO of an over the top (OTT) company. We provide TV and VOD service in 27 countries. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire blackthorn.ai, and what were your goals?

• Modernize the company’s current approach of analytical data collection, storage, and preprocessing as well as interfacing with existing users.
• Achieve competitive advantage in Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) by moving to the Cloud-based SaaS model.
• Offload the DBA team by automating the BI as well as providing access to the required data and analytical tools to a wide range of end-users so they can do the analytics on their own.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

The team has a lot of certificates including Amazon and Google cloud technologies, and works with big data.
The company's approach at the research stage made it clear that the project would be implemented with high quality and on time.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

• Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) was carefully considered by comparing the performance and costs of alternative services offered by a number of cloud providers. The most advantageous combination of cost, quality, and sustainability was chosen to meet customer requirements. 
• Business requests were collected by interviewing numerous stakeholders. The requests served as a starting point for the BI dashboards, the DWH schema, and data pipelines design. 
• The multidimensional analytical Data Warehouse (or OLAP cube with facts, dimensions, etc.) was built and extended piece-by-piece revealing one business request after another. The cloud warehouse consolidated large amounts of data from disparate on-premises sources. 
• Convenient BI dashboards were designed and implemented to meet collected earlier business requests and their possible future variability. The end business users with no SQL skills could perform requests using straightforward BI dashboards, without DBA team involvement. 
• Auto-scalable ETL workflows were designed and implemented as the business requests and DWH schema had been established. The pipelines extract, transform, and load data from the source databases (on-premises) into the target DWH (on the cloud). 
• An incremental index was introduced to large source tables to upload only updates, not complete tables. 
• Backward historical consistency was achieved by introducing meta-tables and unique timestamps that indicated the time range when a source row or table was actual. 

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

The team consisted of:

• Solutions Architect
  • Responsible for the project success
  • Business requirements collection and analysis - System analysis and design
  • System requirements specification
  • Project management
  • Team technical leadership
• Sr. Data Architect
  • Technical leadership of the project
  • DWH schema design and implementation - ETL schema and workloads design
  • BA/BI reports design
  • Code review
• Data Engineer
  • Executes the project plan
  • Implements DWH as designed by Data Architect
  • Implements ETL workloads as designed by Data Architect
• DevOps
  • Deploys cloud resources
  • Develops scripts for automated deployment of the environments (dev/prod)
  • Manages user and service accounts permissions
• Business Intelligence Engineer
  • Implements BI dashboards and scheduled emailing as designed by Data Architect.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

All goals were achieved. 

We have accelerated the process of generating reports day by day, previously the process took an average of a week. 

The analytics team received a flexible reporting solution. 

We have optimized the workload of developers and freed up about 300 hours per month per team thanks to the new solution. 

Also, thanks to the cloud solution, we did not need additional Devops to maintain the infrastructure. 

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

Blackthorn’s team uses an open management style, they are open to discuss any project question.

They provide video recordings for every meet, make a summary of the meeting with the step plan.  They always use a tracking system for the tasks.

Blackthorn’s team communicates via messengers, email and are available 24/7 for the dialog and solving questions!

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

Exceptional communication, great work, efficiently and extremely knowledgeable!

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

I wish the team to grow and open new directions!

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of a skincare company; we have some brands. Currently, we’re developing a personalized skin treatment solution. We have a connected device, an application, and an AI system to detect skin conditions and recommend products.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with blackthorn.ai?

We wanted to build a reliable skin condition classifier. The system would take an image, recognize the person's skin condition, and convert it into a diagnostic. Our challenge was making a personalized product that could be used on a mobile device at home.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Initially, blackthorn.ai created the architecture for the AI system. They built models of skin classification from scratch. Several models were under investigation, and we selected the best one in the end. Then, they tested, implemented, and deployed the model that’s now used in our mobile application. blackthorn.ai didn’t work on software development; they did the backend on the AI and machine learning side. We provided briefs, and their team worked with our team of dermatologists to align with the actual skin conditions.

The system is connected to a mobile app. Users have a simple interface; they can go in, answer questions, and scan their skin via their phones. The system takes an image, which is further analyzed by the AI system to provide the results.

What is the team composition?

We’ve worked with about 4–5 people, including the main architect, a computer vision specialist, and a DevOps person.

How did you come to work with blackthorn.ai?

Another company recommended them. Before we started working, we got acquainted with their chief solution architect, who is also the company’s CEO.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent about $100,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

The official scope of work started in September 2021. We ended the first part of the project, but we're now investigating the next phase, so the partnership is still ongoing. They’re currently offering a few hours per month of support.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

We're very satisfied with their work in general. We ran blackthorn.ai’s model against an open-source code that was available in the market by another large corporate and found that their model’s results were 18% better than the other one.

How did blackthorn.ai perform from a project management standpoint?

Project management is excellent. Everything has been delivered on time and well documented. Communication is good. During development, we had weekly updates. If there were any sort of delay, it was always shared — although we didn’t really have delays. Additionally, we used Jira to track all the tasks.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They stand out for their competitive advantages and expertise. Moreover, they deliver what they promise and don’t promise what they can’t deliver.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, there’s nothing to change. They should just move in the same manner.

Any advice for potential customers?

Be very precise at communicating the goals you want to achieve with your products; the clearer you are, the better.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am a scientist at a biotech company.

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Biotech company with discovery, manufacturing, and commercialization teams.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire blackthorn.ai to accomplish?

• AI & Machine Learning
• Custom Software Development
• Data Engineering

SOLUTION

How did you find blackthorn.ai?

Referral

Why did you select blackthorn.ai over others?

• Pricing fit our budget
• Great culture fit
• Referred to me
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from blackthorn.ai were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

We needed to accelerate internal R&D processes by introducing AI-driven tooling to help our scientific teams work more efficiently with complex biological data and reduce wet lab spendings. Our goal was to improve and simplify how insights were generated and prioritized, without disrupting our existing scientific workflows.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Working with Blackthorn led to faster internal research cycles, wet lab cost savings, reduced time spent on manual data ingestigation, positive internal adoption, and improved clarity in key decision makings.

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

Yes, blackthorn.ai quickly delivered a working prototype, which was further improved with additional requirements to enhance accuracy and user experience.

What was your primary form of communication with blackthorn.ai?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

Faster service, deep knowledge, and competitive pricing.

Are there any areas for improvement or something blackthorn.ai could have done differently?

Improve data sharing, which was improved significantly since start.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am an executive at HealthWorks Dx Inc.

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

HealthWorks develops AI and VR based technology and products to help health conscious consumers manage their health, chronic diseases and predict future health outcomes.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire blackthorn.ai to accomplish?

• Discovery: requirements, roadmap, team composition, software architecture
• XR Healthcare Studio comprises AI Assistant, Digital Twin with organ systems and metrics, a VR Studio environment, a marketplace of healthy products, etc.

SOLUTION

How did you find blackthorn.ai?

• LinkedIn

Why did you select blackthorn.ai over others?

• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost

How many teammates from blackthorn.ai were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

• Discovery: Stakeholder interviews, user personas, success criteria, design constraints, functional requirements, quality attributes, solution architecture decomposition, integrations, epics, major features decomposition, team composition, implementation roadmap of the digital healthcare platform
• VR Application: the digital twin of a user’s body, VR Healthcare Studio, Digital Twin journey, sign in, sign up, MFA, reset password, VR Notification
• Web Development: LLM backend, database integration, storing model inputs and responses in the cloud, branded greeting and loading screen
• UI/UX, 3D Design: Login flow (sign in, sign up, MFA, reset password), Branded greeting/loading screen
• 3D Avatar for the AI Assistant DevOps: CI/CD for LLM model and inference, Terraform IaaC for GCP services that are used for LLM model and inferences, CI/CD for WebGL code, Deployment of LLM model and inference on GCP, Error diagnostics system

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Functional VR Studio where a user can move freely and interact with details of the interior. A digital twin of multiple organ systems visible and interactive, as well as the AI assistant responding reasonably to health- and diet-related questions. Human-like voice of AI Assistant (converted to voice textual output of LLM model)

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

Alex and his team work fast and provide quality work because they pay attention to detail. Third party contractors often take shortcuts and don't communicate well, but we've never had this issue with Blackthorn. They have also offered solutions to assist with other company challenges we've come across while we've been working with them.

What was your primary form of communication with blackthorn.ai?

• In-Person Meeting
• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

A high level of honesty and integrity. They have a talented team with no shortage of potential solutions to a problem that arises.

Are there any areas for improvement or something blackthorn.ai could have done differently?

NA

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Product Manager of Monitoring Life

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

developing of smart cardiac solutions

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire blackthorn.ai to accomplish?

ML signal analysis application

SOLUTION

How did you find blackthorn.ai?

Referral

Why did you select blackthorn.ai over others?

• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from blackthorn.ai were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

Develop a model to analyze specific cardiac signals: 

• deliver a denoising and pre-processing data model 
• develop a model for integrating and extracting features from the signals 
• wrap both models into a single application

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Blackthorn developed a system that outperformed the legacy proof of concept with more than 70% accuracy and sensibility of the results

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

They always delivered on time and showed 100% transparency in the project development.

What was your primary form of communication with blackthorn.ai?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

• Knowledge 
• youth
• adaptability to client's context

Are there any areas for improvement or something blackthorn.ai could have done differently?

Improve oratory at doing presentations into more business-oriented

UPDATED REVIEW

This review was published on February 12, 2024.

Product Manager, Cardiology Smart Solutions Co
Anonymous
Healthcare
Spain
1-10 Employees
$50,000 to $199,999
Sep 2023 - Jan 2024

Project summary
blackthorn.ai helped a cardiology smart solutions company transform a POC into an MVP. The project required reprocessing and architecting new data sets to fix inaccuracies.

Feedback summary
blackthorn.ai delivered a scalable, friendly, and functional MVP, improving the sensibility and accuracy of the client's legacy POC by 70%. The team delivered on time and was adaptive to scope changes, demonstrating an impressive understanding of the client's product and finding excellent solutions.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the product manager of a company that develops smart solutions for cardiology.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with blackthorn.ai?

We wanted to convert a POC we already had into an MVP. To achieve this goal, we needed to hire multiple types of technology specialists, one of which was blackthorn.ai.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

blackthorn.ai helped us develop the MVP we needed. Initially, we provided them with legacy documentation from early clinical trials, as well as with one of the devices we had produced for the POC.

What is the team composition?

We worked with around 4–5 teammates from blackthorn.ai.

How did you come to work with blackthorn.ai?

One of our technology specialists based in Lima, Peru, recommended blackthorn.ai. They had worked together in the past.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent around €60,000 (approximately $65,000 USD) on their services.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them around September 2023, and the MVP was completed in November 2023. Still, we worked together throughout December 2023 and January 2024 to fine-tune the MVP.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

blackthorn.ai delivered a nice, smooth, and functional MVP that improved the sensibility and accuracy of our legacy POC by more than 70%. The team delivered a scalable model with a user-friendly and developer-friendly infrastructure.

How did blackthorn.ai perform from a project management standpoint?

Everything was delivered on time, although we had some budget overages. Still, the budget went higher than expected because the POC data was poor and not accurate. Therefore, blackthorn.ai not only developed an AI model, but they also had to reprocess and architect new data sets for this model.
Are there any employees from the service provider's team that you would like to give a shout-out to in this review?
I would like to highlight Oleksandr's (CEO) entrepreneurial skills and ability to transform our ideas into a deliverable. I would also like to highlight Viktoriia's (Project Manager) project management and Mukhailo's (Machine Learning Engineer) development work, who delivered quite nice and functional work and communicated his work well.

What did you find most impressive about them?

blackthorn.ai's capacity to adapt to their customer's context was impressive. They adapted to our requirements and way of working, using our platform, tools, and protocols, which was very nice. On many occasions, we had scope changes caused by the data issues. Still, they adapted very well and proposed solutions that actually worked to solve the issues and fix the outcome.

Are there any areas they could improve?

blackthorn.ai could have improved their demo presentations and the way they explained their work to make it more understandable.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

Have very clear expectations and know very well the contexts and risks of development.

RATINGS
Overall rating: 5
Quality: 5   
Cost: 4   
Schedule: 5    
Willing to refer: 5  

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Head of eCommerce of ULTRA MODA LLC.

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Our eCommerce company specializes in providing a seamless online shopping experience, offering a diverse range of products tailored to meet the ever-evolving needs of our customers.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire blackthorn.ai to accomplish?

• Ensure that the final product not only meets the functional requirements but also aligns perfectly with the client's vision for user experience and interface design
• Integrating eCommerce features such as a user-friendly shopping cart, secure payment gateways, product catalogs, and an intuitive navigation system was essential
• Cross-Platform Compatibility. The primary goal was to develop a mobile application that is compatible across various platforms, ensuring a seamless user experience on both iOS and Android devices. This was achieved by using Flutter framework
• Ensuring high performance and bug-free operation of the application was a major goal. Rigorous testing and quality assurance were part of the development process to meet the high standards expected in professional software development.
• Meeting project deadlines and incorporating feedback efficiently throughout the development process to align with the client’s expectations and needs

SOLUTION

How did you find blackthorn.ai?

Referral

Why did you select blackthorn.ai over others?

• High ratings
• Pricing fit our budget
• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost
• Referred to me
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from blackthorn.ai were assigned to this project?

6-10 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

1. Requirement Analysis and Planning 
   1. Collaborating with the client to understand their business needs, target audience, and specific requirements for the mobile application. 
   2. Analyzing the provided UI/UX designs to ensure compatibility with technical capabilities and user expectations. 
   3. Developing a project plan outlining timelines, milestones, and resource allocation. 
2. UI/UX Implementation 
   1. Translating the provided UI/UX designs into functional interfaces. 
   2. Ensuring the user interface is intuitive, responsive, and adheres to the latest design standards for a seamless user experience. 
3. Cross-Platform Mobile App Development 
   1. Utilizing Flutter for the development of a cross-platform application, ensuring consistency and performance on both iOS and Android platforms. 
   2. Integrating eCommerce functionalities like product catalogs, shopping carts, payment gateways, and order management systems.
   3. Ensuring the app’s performance, security, and compatibility across different devices and operating systems.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

1. Reduction in development and maintenance costs due to the cross-platform approach, measured by comparing expenses with previous similar projects or industry benchmarks. 
2. Expansion in the user base, reaching new demographics or geographies that were not engaged before the launch of the app. 
3. Positive feedback and high satisfaction ratings from the end-users, as well as from the client company. 
4. Improvement in app performance, measured through reduced load times, smoother navigation, and fewer crashes or bugs reported. This indicates the technical proficiency and stability of the application.

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

They have efficient internal project management. Our project was delivered on time.

What was your primary form of communication with blackthorn.ai?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

1. I was impressed by their reliable and fast delivery.
2. high quality of work 
3. open and efficient communication 
4. Meeting project deadlines and incorporating feedback efficiently throughout the development process to align with our expectations and needs.

Are there any areas for improvement or something blackthorn.ai could have done differently?

I cannot mention anything here