Finsurfer

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CTO of OpenBusiness, which is a data analytics company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Finsurfer?

We had only worked with banks previously, then an insurance company gave us a proposal to work with their data. There were different kinds of data involved, which meant we needed help to solve the problem in two or three months.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They developed the architecture for our project and the backend for our website. They worked with us and also interacted with our clients. The work included all of the functionalities and modules that work with user data, as well as collect, transform, and validate that data. They used Node.js, MySQL, jQuery, and Java. If we have any problems or bugs, they continue to check them in one or two days.

What is the team composition?

I was in contact with a business analyst, a project manager, and their CTO. There were around five developers.

How did you come to work with Finsurfer?

We sent out some emails and Finsurfer had the best price.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent $100,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together in October–December 2018.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The key metric was time. We had to start the pilot with our clients at the beginning of 2019, which was important to meet. The project was then completed earlier than we expected. For our clients, it’s also important that the backend is very quick, and it is.

How did Finsurfer perform from a project management standpoint?

They have a very logical business process. If we want to check or change something, we don’t have a problem with communication.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They have good knowledge of building platforms with different data sets. The code review they did was on our old projects and fixed any bugs—it made the code much cleaner.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They’re more of a development company than a design one, which they could improve in.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I recommend them if you want to get your work done on time, building a platform or website. However, get a design studio for the frontend.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We’re a Polish company. We provide a personal financial management application called PingFin, which aggregates different bank accounts.  

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Finsurfer?

When we started the company one year ago, we needed some development help for the app. We looked for a partner with good knowledge as well as experience in FinTech. We’re offering the app on the Polish market, but we also have ambitions of going to the US market, so wanted to create a really strong product. Finsurfer has been flexible and open-minded with us, resulting in a good experience.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We developed our product with them over six months and are now using them for upgrades. They’ve worked with us as a strategic partner as well as a development partner. The project started with zero code, so they built the app from scratch. We do have an in-house developer who’s also made some of the functionalities in collaboration with Finsurfer.

The app is mainly an e-payment aggregator—we collect data about payment behaviors, then create user groups and predictions based on that data. Finsurfer helped us with these machine learning functions.

What is the team composition?

We worked with at least three people from their team, connecting directly only with our project manager. They assigned one developer and one data science specialist.

How did you come to work with Finsurfer?

I knew about them from our startup community. We participated in an acceleration program for our first six months, and people there recommended Finsurfer.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent €50,000 (approximately $56,000 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked with Finsurfer from March—August 2018.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The main success metric is the number of integrated open APIs on our system. From a marketing standpoint, it’s a good application that users have liked and used daily. We started with zero, and we now have more than 40,000 users.

How did Finsurfer perform from a project management standpoint?

Everything was great. We liked working with their project manager, and all deadlines and communications were perfect. Given that we were part of an acceleration program, we had very hard deadlines, but Finsurfer helped us maintain those while building the functionalities of our app.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The functionality of the app, as well as the flexibility of their team and their ability to keep to deadlines, impressed me. In my previous experience, deadlines have been hard to keep on top of.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We’ve had some issues with the usability of the application, but they worked with our in-house designer to fix them.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

I would recommend Finsurfer to clients working on FinTech projects.