Duty Labs

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Founder of Cebedia: an information platform on cannabis market data. The long-term vision for Cebedia is to become an enterprise trading platform connecting buyers and sellers to exchange cannabis raw materials.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Duty Labs, and what were your goals?

Duty Labs were hired to develop a startup idea developed with senior executives from a VC fund. The goal was was to create an information platform of the cannabis market based on a data pipeline in Jupyter notebook.

SOLUTION

How did you select Duty Labs and what were the deciding factors?

I knew the Founder and Lead Developer from our university studies.

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

We had a kick-off meeting to discuss goals and technologies. I presented project documents, mock-ups and wireframes. From there, I was introduced to the engineers and worked hand-in-hand to develop the expected deliverables. They developed an efficient login process, email invitations and the expected information platform.

How many people from the Duty Labs team worked with you, and what were their positions?

The agency founder was our main point of contact throughout the process. There were also 2 full stack developers which I interacted with regularly on a weekly basis, and daily when needed.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

After launching our platform, we were put in touch to get absorbed by a competing platform.

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

Weekly sync meeting were set up through Google Meet. We used Slack, Trello, Github, Heroku and Google Drive to coordinate and collaborate.

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

They gave us a professional documentation report explaining all key steps and technologies used in the project.

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

When we first launched, I have asked for transparency regarding working hours, and these are delivered through timesheets updated weekly.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We’re a digital platform that links athletic trainers with people that need them. We're essentially a matchmaker between health care providers and those who need to hire them.

Our platform links athletic trainers with per diem work opportunities, and we're also supplementing at colleges and high schools. Athletic trainers are a blend between professional trainers and doctors for a sports team. Traditionally, they work in the athletic setting, and any time somebody gets hurt in a sports game, they run out on the field and take care of them. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Duty Labs?

We don’t have an internal tech support team. We were using a couple of companies and agencies, but we realized weren’t quite big enough to be using those kinds of firms. As a small company, it made sense for us to work with Duty Labs rather than with those large firms. It was more cost-effective, too, so we hired them.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Duty Labs works on our mobile app for health providers, which can be found on Google Play and App Store. It has a desktop version used by event operators for listing events. The app was already out in the marketplace when we engaged with Duty Labs. However, they’ve been doing a lot of supplemental work for us, such as cleaning up the code and fixing bugs. 

At the start of the engagement, Duty Labs only worked on our customer service needs. We had a couple of kickoff meetings where we explained our business model, opportunities, who we were, and what we did. 

On top of that, we conducted brand exercises on how we operate from a customer service standpoint, helping Duty Labs understand the theory behind our service. Then, our partnership grew, and they’ve since been helping us launch larger app features. 

What is the team composition?

Cosmin (Founder & CEO) is our primary point of contact. We also work with 4–5 programmers and a QA analyst. 

How did you come to work with Duty Labs?

A good friend of ours who uses Cosmin referred Duty Labs to us. That person fully vets every single thing about a product before he ever buys it. As a result, we take any recommendations from him in high regard. He made the recommendation to use Duty Labs, so hiring them was a no-brainer for us.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve probably spent close to $75,000. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in January 2020, and it’s an ongoing partnership. We recently crossed our anniversary.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our customer success turnaround time continues to go down, and that’s one of the biggest things that they’ve provided us. Any time there are bugs or problems on the app, we’re able to decrease our response and problem resolution times.

Duty Labs is always available to help us. Before, we were fumbling around and going back and forth with other agencies. It usually took us around two days just to get through troubleshooting. Now, our customer service response times have drastically decreased, and our account acquisition has gone up.

How did Duty Labs perform from a project management standpoint?

Our overall communication is awesome. We’re constantly talking about whether we can slide features into the next sprints or not. They always tell us if a feature is more complex than we think, so there’s a lot less frustration when we work with them. 

For comparison, other agencies were very conservative. Back then, we were moving way slower, and we couldn’t accomplish anything as fast as we could with Duty Labs.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Duty Labs has grown with us, which is nice. They’re great people, so they’ve become more like colleagues and friends to us rather than contractors. Duty Labs is truly invested in our company and success. As a result, they’re more like a part of our team than a contracted service or external agency. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

We handled the UI/UX design task internally. Given that, one of the things that Duty Labs can do to improve is to have a good UI/UX designer. This can round out their team. 

Having a UI/UX designer can also help them attach metrics to the app. We’ll know where people are getting stuck, and we’ll see the pain points that they have.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be organized and open to communication. Be transparent about the metrics you need to hit and what the team needs to accomplish, and make sure that you’re communicating those goals. In our engagement, we always try to be clear about what we want the end product to look like and what its intended behavior should be. 

For instance, everybody should be in agreement as to where a certain button should be, what it should do when we press it, and what should happen if there’s an error. Think through all of these things and communicate them with the Duty Labs team so that everybody has a plan and expectation about a certain feature. 

Additionally, set a regular cadence. In our case, we work on a two-week sprint. We meet every Friday, and then they work through the goals over the weekend. Every Monday, we talk about what they’ve done, and I start testing features every Tuesday. The following Friday, we do another update, and then we deploy the updates the following Thursday. 

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the president of a youth sports video production company. We film tournaments and showcases for elite athletes nationwide.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Duty Labs?

We hired Duty Labs to build us a web application.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

The team used Ruby on Rails that was the existing framework, but they added a ton of new features and functionalities to update the website. They revamped our entire digital presence.

We sell film at tournaments. Our company goes to every game or match, and then we sell copies of that film to the participants. We’re selling a product that didn’t exist, and we needed something custom in order to deliver that product. The application was meant to automate a lot of stuff we were doing manually and delivering files that weren’t made yet.

What is the team composition?

Cosmin (Founder) was my main point of contact. We also worked with another member of their team.

How did you come to work with Duty Labs?

We connected with them through Toptal. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in 2018.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

I don’t have anything bad to say about Duty Labs. Overall, it’s been great. They comprehend the tasks and easily communicate with us. Their team is available and responsive. With development, there is trial and error with bugs, but for the most part, everything works 90% of the way when we first test something. It usually needs nothing more than minor tweaking.

How did Duty Labs perform from a project management standpoint?

They always hit the deadline. They’re super communicative. If anything, they were better than I was. We also used Slack and Trello.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I appreciate their availability and responsiveness.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, they’ve been the best ones we’ve worked with.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Overload them with tasks because they’ll be done before you’re ready to give them the next one.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

We hired Cosmin's agency to help us get through the development queue. The developers he added to our team have all been great!

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Duty Labs, and what were your goals?

Our goal was to help our development team get through the queue

SOLUTION

How did you select Duty Labs and what were the deciding factors?

Referral

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

The developers helped with dev ops, rails, react native app, fixing bugs and testing

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

2 developers

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

consistently good feedback from our lead engineer

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

we use pivotal tracker

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

They have great personalities, are hard working and smart.

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

no, everything has been great

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Building Micro SaaS to solve business problems. I am the owner & product manager/designer.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with the vendor?

Turning around a testable MVP in short amount of time.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement? 

Full Involvement from tech planning to building.

What is the team composition? 

Just me, 1 engineer on their side and our side. 

How did you come to work with the vendor?

I’ve work with Cosmin previously, and have good experience with him.

How much have you invested with them?

$2500

What is the status of this engagement?

Phase 1 is completed.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Nothing at the moment, as the project is not launched, but soon at eggtart.io

How did the vendor perform from a project management standpoint?

Good, delivered on time and provided insightful suggestions.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Cosmin was able to understand the project quickly and gave his own opinion on the best way to approach the MVP base on their experience.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Need to work longer with them to provide this piece of opinion.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Have a clear objective, and be clear about your scopes.