Distology Studios (previously squareball)

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder and managing director of Black Paint. We’re a creative agency focused on digital marketing solutions.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Squareball Digital?

We’ve been up and running as a business for a year and a half and needed to upgrade our website. It was not responsive enough, and we needed a more professional solution.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We worked with our designer on the new site’s look and feel, and Squareball brought it to life in development and implementation

We use Kontent as our CMS. Squareball provided compelling rationale backed by facts for why we should choose this CMS. This built trust in our relationship early on. It also allowed them to optimize the site and make it bulletproof on desktop and mobile.

We had a very defined scope that didn’t include SEO. However, Squareball still went above and beyond, providing support and useful insights and paying attention to details like file naming for SEO ranking purposes. 

What is the team composition?

We worked with 4–5 people: Martyn (Founder, Product Lead), Donal (Project Director), two main developers, and one other person.

How did you come to work with Squareball Digital?

We heard about them through a mutual contact in Berlin who had done digital work with them. He put me in touch with Martyn.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent about €10,000 (approximately $11,000 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

The project started in January 2020, and the site was live and deployed at the beginning of March the same year.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We’re satisfied with how responsive the site is; it stands up well on mobile and desktop. We’re also really happy with the backend. Squareball took an intelligent approach in delivering a solution that balances our technical expertise and weaknesses. They gave us the flexibility to alter certain pages while setting other sections in stone, making us more independent. 

How did Squareball Digital perform from a project management standpoint?

They were low-key in their efficiency. We didn’t have much feedback for them, but when we did, we sometimes wouldn’t hear back about their responses. When we’d follow up, they’d always have already taken care of it. We didn’t even know they’d sorted it out. I wouldn’t say that’s a negative, though.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Having worked in a big agency myself, there’s something to be said about working with a small operation. As a small team, Squareball is professional while giving that extra bit of service; that’s a big plus about working with them.

On a human level, they are a great team; the people are friendly, personable, and easy to work with. In any project, you obviously want professionals but you also want to enjoy the process of working together. We really built a good rapport with Squareball, and they made the process fun.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I would appreciate more communication. They solved every problem we sent, but it wasn’t always apparent that they were on the problem. Coming from that big agency, I’m used to that responsiveness. However, that’s a really tiny thing and the only comment I’d make here.

Any advice for potential customers?

They’re good. They did the job, they did it well, and they delivered on time and budget. They also did a great job of managing our expectations. We’re not web developers and didn’t always know what was in or out of our scope. 

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the product owner at Kaiser & Kraft. We are one of the leading suppliers of business furniture and equipment. This includes everything from office furniture to warehouse equipment.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Squareball Digital?

We wanted assistance with custom software development. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We had some of the software built at an incubator during the proof of concept phase, but they did the bulk of the work as our architecture and IT development counterparts. Their team provided the React interface and coded the solution using Ruby. It was developed in AWS. 

The product is a SaaS called Pruefplaner. It can be used in businesses to keep track of legal regulations and occupational safety protocols. This includes a document management system that helps whenever a company gets audited. 

What is the team composition?

Our team composition changed based on what phase of the project we were in. The team was about four to six people at any given time. Sometimes it was mostly compromised of people from the design team, but in other phases, the team consisted of more technical experts.

My main points of contact were Martyn (Founder & Product Lead) and Alan (Full Stack Developer). 

How did you come to work with Squareball Digital?

We worked on a proof of concept with an incubator company, and they recommended Squareball. We decided to work with them because they had strong capabilities in full-stack development and design. 

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve invested between €150,000-€200,000 with them. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We began our ongoing relationship in April 2017.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We’ve gotten really good feedback from our users. We have a survey where we ask users how likely they are to recommend our SaaS to a friend or colleague. The results have been positive. 

Even if we get negative feedback, they help us prioritize improvements. They’re able to come up with small-scale solutions and keep things simple, which is especially helpful when our budget is tight. 

How did Squareball Digital perform from a project management standpoint?

They used an agile approach, which worked well for us. We used a project management tool to track feedback from users. We also had regular standups and meetings to discuss progress and plan for the next steps. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their flexibility and ability to adapt to the customer’s needs are impressive. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, we are really satisfied with their work. 

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

Talk openly about your goals and they will adapt to provide the right support.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I work for an international agriculture company. We manufacture fertilizers, so we work with a lot of chemicals, and we also develop digital tools to support farmers to better fertilize their fields.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Squareball Digital?

Squareball Digital has been helping us to set up the basic building blocks for all of our various digital solutions and supplying those to the market.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They started by implementing an SSO system to connect all of our solutions, and now they are working on some of the in-house functionalities enabled by that system.

Together, we evaluated the tools that we offer and decide what system would enable those in the most intuitive way, which in the end we decided was one called Auth0. From there, Squareball Digital worked to connect the UI of the program with our tools and ensure that everything was fully integrated.

What is the team composition?

Depending on the stage of the project and our goals at the time we had about 5–6 people from their team working with us.

How did you come to work with Squareball Digital?

I was not a part of the first stages of our collaboration with them, but someone in my department found out about them and decided that their capabilities were a good fit for our needs.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent about €100,000 (approximately $108,000USD) in total.

What is the status of this engagement?

The project started in early 2018 and is still ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Squareball Digital as a team has been very helpful throughout the project. We are not specialists in this area, and they were really able to walk us through the early stages of our digitalization.

Even though the initial solution that they came up with was unusable in the end, they did a great job of adapting and making sure that the final product we ended up with was the right one. By getting us off on the right foot, we were well prepared for a lot of the work that came after.

How did Squareball Digital perform from a project management standpoint?

We communicated very consistently and made use of several project management tools to keep track of every part of the project. Our teams used JIRA, as well as regular standup meetings to make sure that we all stayed on the same page. That frequency of communication allowed us to catch problems immediately as they arose and get started working towards solutions.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their team is very professional and made working with them incredibly easy for us, which we really appreciated. That ability to pivot and meet us where we were at proved critical to the success of our project.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don’t have much to complain about from the project. The only tiny thing would be more documentation, but it was definitely something that we were able to sort out and which didn’t cause us any problems.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Open communication has been really beneficial for us, so I would just recommend anyone prioritize that if they want to have as smooth a collaboration as possible.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the Head of Digital for Five Vectors. We build software and intelligence around audio in gaming.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Squareball Digital?

We have an end-to-end system that feeds into a backend which supplies various products through an API. Since we’re mainly focused on cloud infrastructure, we hired Squareball Digital to create the frontend for this content ingestion system.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They rebuilt a web platform where musicians can push their music to independent curators. It was originally a WordPress site with basic HTML and wasn’t very appealing. So Squareball Digital came in and rebranded the site on top of redoing the code.

The content ingestion system is built on node.js and HTML 5, and it feeds into our AWS system. The product features containers that are supplied by an API, which filters and transports important data.

What is the team composition?

I communicated with Martyn (Founder, Squareball Digital). We worked with a lead developer called Alan (Full Stack Developer, Squareball Digital). I think there are 2–3 others working in the background.

How did you come to work with Squareball Digital?

I was previously working at Universal Music, and they were recommended to me by the person who created my wireframes and mockups. I had a gut feeling that the partnership would be a good one. Martyn struck me as a genuine, honest teammate. They were also flexible about our tight startup budget.

How much have you invested with them?

We began working together in February or March of 2019 and the partnership is still ongoing.

What is the status of this engagement?

The first project was around $40,000, and we’ve spent around $5,000 a month for maintenance.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Thanks to their work, web traffic has quadrupled. We went from 20,000 monthly visitors to 80,000, and we receive a hugely increased number of submissions.

Squareball Digital is very savvy with building consumer software, so they’ve been extremely helpful. Their frontend development always ties back seamlessly into the backend. Martyn shows extremely strong leadership skills by demonstrating a genuine commitment to the project—he’s not just looking for a quick buck. They’ve always ensured that our numbers look good.

How did Squareball Digital perform from a project management standpoint?

Communication has been great; the guys have been extremely helpful. We’ve been integrated into their Slack, which works very well with us. We also communicate through emails and WhatsApp messages.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re enormously professional. Martyn is also extremely authentic, so it’s great to be doing business with him.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There is always a little bit of back and forth about additional tasks, but that’s to be totally expected. The discussions have always been fruitful, so it hasn’t been an issue at all.

We’ve also had conversations about tweaking their business model so they offer more than contractual work.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Meeting with the founder is very valuable. Once you meet him, you’ll grasp the essence of his company.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the co-founder and head of services for a digital marketing agency that’s been in the market for 12 years.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Squareball Digital?

We needed a web design build-out, development, and technical consultation strategy. It’s been a number of different services over the years.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They’ve worked across a number of our clients’ websites. Integrating with our in-house and our clients’ teams, they both developed from scratch and worked off what clients already had. For instance, they may create a front-end build and then collaborate with the developers of a client to handle the backend. 

While I’m not sure of the systems they were working with, I remember them developing with WordPress. In terms of apps, they built using Unity. Otherwise, the technologies we pretty varied. They created both iOS and Android native apps. 

What is the team composition?

There’s always been a core team of about 4–5 people. However, a number of other specialists were pulled in when we needed them.

How did you come to work with Squareball Digital?

About 6–7 years ago, we got a recommendation from a partner that we trusted to engage in a partnership with them. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together around the first quarter of 2014. Our collaboration is ongoing, as they’re our consistent development partner.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We’re in constant communication with their team and clients on issues and performance metrics to make sure that they’re getting the best possible services out of us. We’ve thrown them into the fire, and they’ve responded amazingly. I couldn’t recommend them enough. 

How did Squareball Digital perform from a project management standpoint?

They were absolutely fantastic. I’ve never had any issues in terms of managing workflow. Whatever is needed, they push the extra mile. They’re also great with budgeting and following timelines.  

What did you find most impressive about them?

In terms of technology, strategy, and execution, they’re a center of excellence. They can turn technical language into layman’s terms in conversations with our less tech-focused clients. Most importantly, they’ve made actions come out of those talks. They can make plans work cross-functionally across many business scenarios. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

I’ve never had any major issues with them. They’re a great tech partner.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Get your team interacting with them on a one-to-one basis. That will build a good working rapport and help you find the middle ground between your organizations.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Block Angel is a platform for multi-unit property management, focusing on communications, maintenance management, financial management, and company secretarial management. It provides interfaces for all the stakeholder involved. That would include, property management agencies, owners, director, unit owners, members, and tenants.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Squareball Digital?

They’re the only development team I’ve worked with, so I brought them on at the beginning of the project.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They drafted prototypes for us which helped me bring investors on board and create an MVP. Then they developed a mobile app, including the backend, and a CMS that enables users to create profiles for different buildings and things like that.

Now, we’re making it user-focused and are doing some cool stuff with accounting software, like incorporating some machine learning and AI. They built the mobile app in React and the backend is Node.js, and MySQL

Then we went on an agile journey where we were getting feedback and had a warm release. Recently, we went into phase two and increased capabilities for communication and maintenance management to bring in new financial features.

They were there for the initial branding and web design. So they’ve done everything on the design side as well, from the logo and color scheme to drawing the designs for the icons. Their UX team got involved with how everything flows and the aesthetic of the app in the later stages.

What is the team composition?

We’ve worked with about 10 people, including a project manager, an engineer, and designer.

How did you come to work with Squareball Digital?

I’m friends with a project manager at Squareball Digital.

What is the status of this engagement?

The concept came around in December 2016, and I’ve been working with them since then.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

 Our investors have been satisfied with their work, and are happy with our relationship. I’ve been really satisfied with their development do far. They’re always available when I need them. They’re quick to respond. They have a really good team with a breadth of skillsets. I highly recommend them. I’m also looking to onboard another team member as we move forward.

How did Squareball Digital perform from a project management standpoint?

Project management is strong. They’re good people to deal with. When things do wrong, they’re quick to respond. Usually, I create business process flows, and work with them to explain that process. Then we use confluence and Jira to create user stories. That’s how we create tickets. Then they do QA and they demo it with me and we release it.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re very knowledgeable and they know the technologies and the processes to get the best out of each project. I’m very confident about working with them. The team has a wide range of experience, which lets me lean in when I need them to deploy a full team of developers.

Are there any areas they could improve?

My requirements are becoming more complex, so project management needs to be more sophisticated. It’s not really a complaint about Squareball Digital, because they’re doing that now, but there was a period of time that could have been deployed a little earlier.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Take a flight to Berlin, grab a beer with them, and get to know them a bit.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a founder and partner of Us Berlin, a creative agency. We’re a full-service creative shop offering everything from corporate brand identity and strategy to product design, UI/UX, and development. For the latter, which we partner with companies like Squareball Digital.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Squareball Digital?

We’ve worked closely with them and were based in the same shared office for a period of time, before they grew beyond the space. We’ve worked with them almost like an integrated team, where we would do design and they’d handle development.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We’ve worked with Squareball Digital on a large number of projects, varying from branding smaller WordPress sites to developing product pages and products themselves.

From our point of view, we lead the UI/UX, integrating and working with Squareball to discuss what’s technically viable, best-practice, and most sensible based on the scale of the project. We do design to the point of Adobe XD and Zeplin handover. They then implement all the front- and backend code. They develop on React, WordPress, Laravel, and other technologies. They’re pretty much full-stack developers. We also do final checks and reviews, making the communication between our two teams very fluid.

Squareball has some internal creative resources. It’s a question of when the scale and the type of project require them. We both have individual clients, so we involve the other team where appropriate to extend our own capabilities. That’s how we’ve led a number of collaborations.

What is the team composition?

We mainly work with the account management team. When we have a handover meeting, it might involve the more senior developers. Usually, we interface with up to four people during projects, but I know that more team members support the development.

How did you come to work with Squareball Digital?

We invested in betahaus, which was one of the original coworking spaces in Berlin. We then left betahaus to work in our own coworking space, and Squareball came with us. They were in the office right next to us. We’ve extended that and have worked very closely with them.

How much have you invested with them?

Often, we will independently bill clients, but they’ve also led some of the projects we’ve worked on, and they paid us. I believe we have a spend with them in the range of €40,000–€50,000 ($43,300–$54,100 USD). They were the lead developer on some of our bigger projects and billed independently from us. I wouldn’t know specifically what those were.

The relationships still exist on some of those projects, but it’s not them working for us. We’re partnering together with them.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our first project was three and a half years ago, in mid- to late-2016. Most of our projects are ad hoc, but they are ongoing. Most of the projects we do with Squareball are fixed-budget. We work with them on an hourly basis if we want something small. They work flexibly with us.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We work with a few different development partners, and Squareball is certainly the better one in terms of their responsiveness, knowledge, and technical lead. We really look to them for leadership in terms of technology, as opposed to them fulfilling requirements. We partner with different companies because they come to us for design, but I’ve used Squareball as a sounding board for things. They’ve acted as advisors to help me understand how to work on things. Our clients have always been satisfied with both the process—because we’ve worked out a good communication between ourselves—and the final product.

How did Squareball Digital perform from a project management standpoint?

We’ve evolved together as agencies. We have very simple Slack channels and use project management tools, but we still have independent systems, and we’re flexible with working with those, whether it’s Asana ticketing, Monday.com, or something similar. We also use tools like TrackingTime for the internal management process. Ultimately, it works well for our scales and the projects we’re working on because we are relatively small agencies.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The biggest thing is their broad understanding. They have stepped into more of a CTO role. I have another startup myself, and I’ve used them as a sounding board. I think that they’re constantly learning and looking to see how they can offer that to clients. They’re very flexible in bringing that to the table.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Nothing comes to mind. There are always optimizations in terms of process and communication, but that’s just the nature of our businesses. I’m generally happy with how the process works between us, and that’s why we like to work with them.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

When we first started, there was always the question of whether it’s all packaged as one company, and what we’ve realized between us is that it’s far better to go in as two independent companies, being experts in the areas we offer. Whilst both of us have opinions and inputs in the other’s realm, we definitely take ownership of the creative side of a project, while they take the technical and development side. We bring them in at the right moment—which is very early on in most projects—to talk about what the limitations or challenges might be and we give them a seat at the table. I think that’s how any team should be built, and it’s particularly the case when bringing technical expertise in. Squareball’s team really understands how to approach and solve the problem.