Faster Than Light

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the CBDO of Findigo

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

We are a full-cycle software development company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Faster Than Light to accomplish?

• We reached out to Faster Than Light to help build an agritech web solution for harvest management for one of our long-term customers, who launched their new agriculture project. They had to design and build the platform from scratch, ensuring it would handle high loads of data effectively.

SOLUTION

How did you find Faster Than Light?

Referral

Why did you select Faster Than Light over others?

• Pricing fit our budget
• Good value for cost
• Have already worked together

How many teammates from Faster Than Light were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

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

Due to the project's urgency, Faster Than Light quickly focused on gathering product requirements and creating the first hi-fi wireframes of the platform. After wireframes were approved, they had to build the platform itself and set up everything it in time. Post-release, they are working on platform maintenance & introducing new features and customer’s requests.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

So far, the first MVP has been released, the platform is live, and the feedback from the focus user group has already been gathered. Right now, Faster Than Light is prepping the app for a big public release, adding new functionality to it, and running tests to make sure that the platform is going to handle a high number of new users and data well. 

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

Overall, the project management was good; there were a few communication overlaps, but they were quickly fixed. 

What was your primary form of communication with Faster Than Light?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

Their attention to details and care about the product. As soon as they understood the customer’s business needs, they went deep into research to make sure the final product would meet them. 

Are there any areas for improvement or something Faster Than Light could have done differently?

The project has gone smoothly, and they met the customer’s requirements, timelines, and expectations. There have been a few minor moments where communication could have been set up differently, but it didn’t impact the project or the impression from the team’s work. 

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the CIO of Digital Classifieds

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Private listings about cars, real estate, digital classifieds and job.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Faster Than Light to accomplish?

• Support with backend development for ongoing frontend migration project
• Fix specific chat product issues and bugs
• Develop and maintain centralized shared chat service for in-house products

SOLUTION

How did you find Faster Than Light?

Online Search

Why did you select Faster Than Light over others?

• High ratings
• Close to my geographic location
• Pricing fit our budget
• Great culture fit

How many teammates from Faster Than Light were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

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

We must develop GraphQL API to support migration from monolith Ruby on Rails application to React SPA.

Provide frontend developers with schema, develop all necessary functions and operators, migrate business logic and write documentation.

Chat is currently working on one of the existing projects. It needs to be maintained by a dedicated Faster That Light team today. They fixed a large amount of bugs and issues by understanding and correcting business logic with PMs and owners.

The next level of the project is to develop and maintain a centralised shared chat service that will provide such services for all our dependent projects. We will start with the website for private automobile listings.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Deliver goals in a reasonable time, understand results, discuss them, implement and take risks.

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

They are listening. We are doing feedback sessions, where we can deliver two-way feedback and make necessary changes on time.

What was your primary form of communication with Faster Than Light?

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

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

I am impressed with the level of in-company culture, and how they fit our needs. We like how they can understand us and ask the right questions.

Faster Than Light is the right partner, which gives us a confident future for our projects and tasks.

If and when we need them, we have them and they do it perfectly and are ready to protect.

Are there any areas for improvement or something Faster Than Light could have done differently?

No one is perfect. Not even tasks, people, or projects.

We understand that when setting the level of our expectations. I like that we can discuss any matter that concerns us. They hear us and always do better.

That level of partnership makes us better since we also need to listen and improve.

I hope we are in a win-win here.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I manage software projects at a publicly traded company I would prefer to not name at this time, as a tech director.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Faster Than Light, and what were your goals?

We hired FTL to build a full stack project focused on live streaming technology. It's a greenfield project built from 0, and we wanted to build a platform that is easily extensible.

SOLUTION

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

Research on various dev agencies, reading reviews, and following up on LinkedIn contacts. The CEO was receptive to my questions and the communication went smoothly.

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

They developed a full stack project based on my specifications. We discussed the requirements, and quickly proceeded to weekly meetings and daily stand-ups. The project show cased the power of live streaming for both video, audio, and chat across multiple types of clients. Technologies used include:

• Java on Android
• Swift on iOS
• React JavaScript and TypeScript
• Java
• Terraform
• RDS
• EC2
• Cognito
• Agora
• Stripe
• OneSignal
• MixPanel
• Firebase Realtime DB

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

There were 5 people in the core team, an architect, backend, 2 web, 1 iOS, 1 Android.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

They completed majority of our large feature roadmap, and brought the project from 0 to 1 successfully.

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

We used Linear to track issues and Slack for regular communication. We had weekly sprint planning/grooming meetings and daily check-ins. Everything proceeded smoothly.

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

They were easy to work with, fairly autonomous once briefed on the project, and have great engineers.

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

The only area I can think of is increased speed - but as customers, we always ask for more and want things yesterday.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

List and Ride Marketplace for Bike Rental.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Faster Than Light?

Develop Marketplace from scratch.

What were your goals for this project?

Develop full stack solution.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

Based on interviews and first test project.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

Full-stack development services for Angular JS / Angular, Rail Backend and QA services.

What was the team composition?

team of 5, 2 frontend, 2 backend, 1 QA.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

FTL is capable to combine the technical excellence with the understanding of the business context. They are among the highest quality developers with a full-stack skillset. He makes sure that the client, team and the company are aligned, and the projects succeed. I would be happy to recommend FTL services to other clients.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Project Management arranged internal.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

They're willing to dive into the project with no prior experience but are fast in understanding the requirements and building a professional solution.

Are there any areas for improvement?

No improvements.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the CEO of a health tech company called MedSpoke. We developed an industry leading credentials management software for all medical professionals.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Faster Than Light?

We have two developers to augment our development team that's maintaining our software and building new features.

What were your goals for this project?

Goals were to accomplish tasks and features from our CTO (Lead Developer).

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

Word of mouth referral. 

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

Backend Ruby on Rails development and frontend React development

What was the team composition?

Two developers.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

They were vital to our software development and reaching our development goals. 

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Faster Than Light assigned an in-house project manager. 

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Their CEO/Founder, Dmitry, was very communicative and accommodating. 

Are there any areas for improvement?

Nothing that comes to mind. 

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the COO at an accounting firm.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Faster Than Light?

We hired them for custom software development for some of our internal tools.

What were your goals for this project?

We mainly wanted to automate a lot of work that's done manually.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

Faster Than Light was recommended to us by a trusted partner. We interviewed them thoroughly and validated their previous projects.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

They're basically working on creating tools that will automate a lot of the tasks that we've been doing manually.

What was the team composition?

They assigned two junior developers and a project manager to our project.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

Faster Than Light has excellent developers and overall very nice and productive people.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Project management is okay. Some limitations on our side have made it a little harder.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Their team is not only hard-working and productive but they're also good at solving problems.

Are there any areas for improvement?

No. They should keep doing a great job!