Faster Than Light

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Founder

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

A personal health agent empowering chronic illness patients through patient generated data sharing

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

• My goal was to validate the product idea by testing the app prototype with potential users and gathering their feedback before going into full-fledged development. So far, the prototype has been successfully tested by the users, so product development is underway.

SOLUTION

How did you find Faster Than Light?

Referral

Why did you select Faster Than Light over others?

• Pricing fit our budget
• Great culture fit
• Referred to me

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.

The team started with competitive research to shape the app’s UI/UX vision and developed sketches for the primary user testing. After that, they created high-fidelity wireframes with a clickable prototype for more detailed and targeted user testing. Right now, the FTL team is working on a development estimate for me.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The key measurable outcome of this project is, definitely, the fact that we already performed user testing, which allowed us to validate the product idea and move further to the development stage. A clickable prototype, research, and UI/UX part are all contributed to it. 

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

Project management was good on the project – we regularly communicated and synced with the team, discussed next steps, and shared feedback. Their team was engaged in the project and responsive. No issues arose during our work. 

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?

I felt the team was working with me in collaboration and flexible enough to meet my needs, timeline and budget

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

No

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the CEO & Co-Founder of Opsenic

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Organizational Operations Platform

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

• Come up with a minimalist identity for Opsenic
• Design a landing page (website)
• Create a UI for the web app

SOLUTION

How did you find Faster Than Light?

Referral

Why did you select Faster Than Light over others?

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

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.

1. Brand Identity: logo, color palette, font, how the identity looks on web, mobile, t-shirt 
2. New Landing Page: a fresh version of https://opsenic.com using the new brand identity. The landing page should be a bit more flashy than the app. Should be distinct from the app design. It should be easy to construct new landing pages out of it. 
3. Web UI Kit: a Figma file with standard web components, such as buttons, inputs, text areas, alerts, etc. It should be easily exportable into HTML markup with styles. More strict than the landing page. Themable - all customers will be able to customize the look-n-feel, just like Medium allows it. Dark theme is just an extension of the color palette. Nice to have: design system export is automated and syncs Figma components with Web app 
4. UI/UX for MVP: a Figma file with all MVP functionality put together in harmony

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

1. Created Brand Identity 
2. Created New Landing Page 
3. Created Web UI Kit 
4. Created UI/UX for MVP

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

Overall the communication experience was good. Their CEO onboarded us with the project team and made sure we were all set. The expectations were communicated clearly, and we felt understood. The response time was quite fast in a dedicated Slack channel. Feedback was discussed in Hangouts meetings and it was processed in a reasonable time.

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 skills and ability to implement a systemic approach can be definitely highlighted. Their communication process and problem-solving skills are outstanding. When we got some spinning wheels with the deliverables, Denis made sure we'd end up satisfied with the result no matter what happened.

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

I'd bring more Agile into the sensitive types of work like design and UI/UX. Just adding more frequent catch-ups will significantly improve alignment and speed up the delivery. Thanks to Denis (CEO) we could manage to fix this in the middle of the project.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am a Professor at University of Waterloo

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

University of Waterloo is one of the top public universities located in Waterloo, Canada, known for its various programs (e.g., engineering, science)

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

• I hired Faster Than Light to provide the tech support for the research I was working on. Its main goal was to study users’ interactions with chatbots that provide suboptimal recommendations.
• For this study, we had to create one simple eCommerce website that would pretend to sell noise-canceling headphones. We also had to build a chatbot, and establish databases to store all the information gathered.

SOLUTION

How did you find Faster Than Light?

Online Search

Why did you select Faster Than Light over others?

• High ratings
• Pricing fit our budget
• Good value for cost
• Company values aligned

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

1-2

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

For the research project, the Faster Than Light team built an e-Commerce website which made an impression of a real web store that sells headphones and mimicked communication with machine-like and human-like chatbots. They also created a set of pages for users onboarding flow, covered the chatbot development part for the project, and set up two databases to store and process the information gathered during the interactions with research participants.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The best measurable outcome is probably the fact that research is now in the progress thanks to the created website, chatbots and other infrastructure. It’s early to talk about any final results or numbers of the study, as we are still preparing for the final research settings. Yet, the pilot testing is running and getting us insights.

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

Overall, everything went smooth, the project management part and communication were all good during the project. The team communicated with me constantly and responded promptly. We had some slight delays with the delivery and change of estimations, yet everything worked out well in the end.

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?

Responsiveness, and friendliness of team members. They are very easy to work with.

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

I like the way we worked with Faster Than Light, their communication and efforts brought to understand my needs and goals. Although we might have done estimations and planning of the project a little bit differently, I guess it is experience and insights you get only while diving deep into the project and its specifics.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the COO of a chemicals & biotechnology company

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Innovating polymer materials and processes

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

Build user-friendly graphical user interface on top of existing backend

SOLUTION

How did you find Faster Than Light?

• Online Search
• Referral

Why did you select Faster Than Light over others?

• High ratings
• Good fit after initial workshops.Showed great expertise and understanding

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

2-5 Employees

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

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

A graphical user interface was developed on top of a Fortran backend that allows the simulation of a chemical process. Like this end users of the software can easily provide input to simulate their specific chemical process (e.g. polymer synthesis, polymer recycling). Output of these simulations (tables, graphs) are represented in a configurable dashboard.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Total project scope was broken up in 5 large blocks (working packages). Measurable outcomes were based on screens for input, screens for output, a central library for reference data, database and ways of packaging and deploying the solution.

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

Agile rituals with daily standups allowed to closely monitor progress and deliverables. Measurable outcomes were shared in weekly demo meetings. Total project scope was broken up in 5 large blocks (working packages), for which it was possible to track progress in a transparent way.

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

FTL showed great expertise during this project. The team also took ownership of the different topics. The team lead quickly acquired excellent business knowledge about our process, which tremendously improved the quality and speed of delivery of the end product. The internal communication between the different FTL roles was also excellent.

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

No major concerns. Sometimes it was not fully clear what IT components were out of the box and what needed to be customized specifically for the project (e.g. certain screen components).

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the co-founder of Suppli, a vertical fintech software company that builds payment and communications tools for the construction industry. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Faster Than Light?

We were working with our VP of engineering to build out the initial version of our payments and accounts receivable software product. We brought on Faster Than Light to be our outsourced development team. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Faster Than Light functions as our product and engineering team — they’re building out our web-based app with a customer portal using Ruby on Rails. My team has already developed the wireframes in Figma, laid out the backend infrastructure, and chose the development language. Faster Than Light collaborates with our VP of engineering, working on the back- and frontend development using the materials we’ve provided. They’re also providing some feedback on our existing UX/UI design. Their team is building our product from the ground up and is also working on QA and product testing. 

What is the team composition?

We’ve worked with Denis (CEO), a project manager, three frontend developers, and three backend developers. 

How did you come to work with Faster Than Light?

Our VP of engineering had worked with members of Faster Than Light before and had a good experience with them. So, we decided to hire them for this project. 

How much have you invested with them?

By the end of the project, we’ll have invested $150,000–$200,0000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working with Faster Than Light in October 2021, and our partnership is ongoing. However, we didn’t utilize Faster Than Light’s full team until January 2022. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Faster Than Light’s quality of work is unbelievable. Our VP of engineering reviews all of their work — very little of Faster Than Light’s work needs to be redone. They get everything right the first time. Whenever we make corrections, Faster Than Light delivers them quickly. The two senior engineers we work with are more than comparable to the resources we could’ve found in the US. They’ve helped us think through the implementation of the complex logic on the backend. Faster Than Light’s team has provided great insights to improve our product. 

How did Faster Than Light perform from a project management standpoint?

It took a while to develop a workflow with Faster Than Light, but we would’ve had to do that for any new team. My team sets up a weekly agenda for Faster Than Light to follow; we follow their progress through ZenHub. Internally, Faster Than Light also has a daily stand-up call — Faster Than Light manages themselves very effectively. We have weekly all-hands meetings and daily stand-ups on Slack with them. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

I’m impressed with the quality of Faster Than Light’s team and how invested they are in our project. At the start of the partnership, we were concerned about their dedication to our projects, but Faster Than Light has taken ownership of the project. They act as a part of our team. Their resilience and commitment are easy to see — even after they were displaced because of the Russian Invasion of Ukraine, they were eager to continue the project. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

I have nothing for Faster Than Light to improve — we’ve already worked through all of our roadblocks. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I’d advise customers to have a good sense of what types of technical resources they need to leverage for their project. Once that is laid out, it’s important to layout communication channels and deliverable updates with Faster Than Light.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the product marketing manager at a planning platform for off-site companies. We’re also a marketplace for vendors. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Faster Than Light?

We hired Faster Than Light for their custom software development services. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Typically, our projects start with discovery calls on the frontend, and then we talk about the full scope of the projects. Faster Than Light then provides a full estimate of timelines, hours, and costs. 

Moreover, I usually put forward designs and write requirements. I then interface with the person that manages their resources. From there, they build everything from the front- and backend to the full data model. Additionally, Faster Than Light works in our task management system, and we communicate with them as often as we need to keep in touch.

In terms of technology, we predominantly use Ruby on Rails. On the frontend, we primarily use React. Our team does the design tasks on Figma, but Faster Than Light also provides suggestions for UI/UX improvements.

What is the team composition?

We’ve worked with around five engineers, consisting of two junior developers, one senior backend developer, and one senior frontend engineer. We also deal with one system architect, one junior backend engineer, and one junior frontend engineer. Our main point of contact is a project manager. 

How did you come to work with Faster Than Light?

I found Faster Than Light in my previous role as the head of product at another startup. They built our platform there. 

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve invested around $25,000–$30,000 so far; the project total will be around $50,000. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Faster Than Light in February 2021, and the engagement is ongoing. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We measure success based on Faster Than Light’s ability to meet whatever product roadmap and timeline we set. Forecasting is crucial for non-technical people in the business, and communicating timeliness to investors is truly important. 

Against these metrics, Faster Than Light has an impressive ability to stay on the same page in terms of timelines. Whether they’re on schedule or behind schedule, they make sure to communicate that with us. So far, we’ve hit all the interim milestones that we’ve set for our engagement. 

Overall, I’m 100% satisfied with Faster Than Light. Given their circumstances in Kyiv, it’s downright amazing that we’ve only lost a day or two. We’re happy to be in a position to continue to support them in today’s world. 

How did Faster Than Light perform from a project management standpoint?

Faster Than Light’s project management has been good. We use ClickUp for task management and Slack for day-to-day communications. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their strong point is their technical expertise. They can play the role of a technical subject-matter expert that can bounce ideas off us. When we give them product requirements, they can talk us through the best technical approaches we can use to move quickly. For comparison, other development firms need a fairly big overlap to make sure there’s full alignment. By contrast, Faster Than Light can move quite quickly without spending too much time discussing hypotheticals. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, there aren’t any. They’ve been doing a great job so far. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

When you’re looking for a development shop, think about what you truly need, whether that’s product design expertise or technical expertise and actual development manpower. In the engagements that I’ve had with Faster Than Light, they seem to shine when they can focus their technical expertise on the execution of a well-thought-out plan.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm CEO at the Product Development agency, We help startups and companies building their digital products.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We are working on multiple projects, and we were looking for additional hands to help us meet the deadlines. So the main goal is to scale up the dev team quickly.

SOLUTION

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

I met Denis, their CEO, at a conference. We were in touch for a while. Earlier, we started on smaller projects and decided to move on afterward.

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

They are providing us with Front end development resources. We are primarily working on React, and they've provided us with really skilled people for a reasonable price.

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

We had the pleasure to work with different amounts of people during the whole period of our collaboration. They usually provide us with various level developers, depending on the needs.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We were able to hit the deadline without pushing a price a lot for our end customers. Happy customers - the main outcome of our work :)

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

We were able to communicate with the devs via Slack and telegram. If there were a need, we used Google meet. In general, there were no issues with communication at all.

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

I like that they are easy-going guys, the way they communicate matches our own vision. It's really important that they integrated well with our internal team.

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

I wish they would have more senior people available right away. But I would not blame them since the people that they provided were on a really high level.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Our family has proudly produced high quality Table Grapes in Red Cliffs for over thirty years. We grow, harvest, pack and export fresh table grapes and citrus. I am a general manager and director at SJDC Produce.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

I’ve hired Faster Than Light to build an internal sales portal together with a new website. The main goal is to automate the sales process, increase visibility and allow our customers to get all the necessary information easier. I also wanted to create a high quality landing page to professionalise our brand.

SOLUTION

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

When we came up with this idea, we looked for somebody to turn ideas into an actual project. My friend, a founder of another startup, referred to me Faster Than Light and did a small intro to Denis, their CEO. I was new to the website development process - so that word of mouth reference from someone I trust really contributed to my decision.

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

We needed a landing page with information about us, an admin panel and customers sales portal. The idea was to build everything mobile-friendly, automate messaging and make it easier for our clients. I believe the main parts are custom chat functionality, custom design, clients portal and overall management system.

They also handled the deployment part and setup. Project steps included a weekly meeting over zoom, access to a cloud folder for shared documents, files and media, a dedicated slack channel for discussion, and access to prototypes for my continual review. It was an excellent example of how to work asynchronously.

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

The main point of contact was Denis and the tech lead. Also, I had a direct chat with UI/UX person that boosted productivity a lot. The whole team were 3 developers, 1 designer and a project manager.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

It's hard to quantify the financial benefits of this project, as our fresh fruit season hasn't started yet. However, I have already rolled the website and portal out to a number of new cutomers who are very excited about the concept. I have created test listings which have been responded to enthusiastically by customers - it provides me a valuable, controllable way to communicate with fruit buyers around the world.

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

Faster than Light's management style is strongly geared towards working remotely, efficiently. As already mentioned, we utilised several different tools to ideate, develop, communicate and solidify the project. Our weekly meetings were productive, and kept the project flowing steadily without being to burdensome on me as a client. The consistent focus on actionables at each step was very valuable to me - and they made it easy to navigate the technical nuances.

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

The breadth of their capability - my project had so many different aspects: custom chat, graphic elements, video elements, significant user interface for the admins, custom emails, user management and permissions - they were so readily able to take the ideas I had and just make them happen.

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

Though still very good, I felt that Faster Than Light's area for improvement would be their creative and graphic design. I came to the project with brand concepts already developed, and I felt that they could use additional creative design resources in-house to help them to provide a truly full service.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the VP of engineering at a financial services company. We’re one of the leading invoice funding providers in North America.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Faster Than Light?

We had a shortage of staff resources. We were trying to find a company that could work in our development model but was flexible with timing and ramping up and down based on our budget.

On the engineering side, we were looking for senior Ruby on Rails developers and a senior QA.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Faster Than Light has helped us build and enhance our application throughout the year. We have ongoing development, and if we need staff augmentation, we have their people joining our team.

Initially, we did a bunch of training with Faster Than Light. We gave them access to our systems and trained them like any new engineer that joins our team.

What is the team composition?

We’ve worked with four people so far. We initially had three openings, and one person changed halfway through the year.

We started with one senior engineer with the idea that if we trained them, they’d train any additional people. Then, we ramped up to three senior engineers and one senior QA person.

How did you come to work with Faster Than Light?

We went through a pretty rigorous selection process. We looked for different types of software vendors — around ten companies. Faster Than Light had quality senior Ruby on Rails engineers, which was the biggest criteria we had. Then, we got them to give us different senior engineers to do a technical assessment with them. They passed, so we negotiated pricing and more.

Overall, Faster Than Light came out on top in terms of their development process and other things. However, there were other practicalities involved, such as time zone. Since we’re in Toronto, we wanted to have half a day overlapped, and their geographic area was good for that.

How much have you invested in them?

We’ve spent over $80,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in February 2021, and we continue to work with them.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The engineers are really good. When we added them to the team, they integrated really nicely. Also, Denis (CEO & Co-Founder) is always very available and checks in once in a while to make sure things are going well. He takes the relationship very seriously and is definitely invested in it. If there are any changes, they let me know ahead of time and handle them proactively.

Moreover, they’re good at managing the relationship and understanding our needs. They proactively offer people to us when they have new engineers available. Faster Than Light always comes to us first to see if we can find a role for them. Overall, it has been a pretty positive experience.

How did Faster Than Light perform from a project management standpoint?

We manage the project on our side, so it’s been pretty hands-off. However, their engineers join our team, and they’ve been able to deliver different initiatives or features on time. They work with us daily and are essentially part of the team.

We mostly communicate on Slack, and they join our regular team meetings. Denis might talk to us once a month.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They have good Ruby on Rails talent, which was the hardest thing to find. Their prices are pretty reasonable, and Denis is a great guy. He’s easy to work with.

Additionally, our teams match culturally. They feel like they’re part of our team even though they aren’t working in our office.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They proactively deal with things, so I don’t have many complaints.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

They’re an excellent option for people who want staff augmentation.