Foxbox Digital

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the CEO of a consumer internet startup.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Foxbox Digital?

We were looking for a vendor to build a mobile app for us.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We provided Foxbox Digital with full mockups and they executed them, developing a cross-platform app for us and integrating it with SOAP APIs. We use the app as a marketplace in a fitness space and it's available for both iOS and Android. Foxbox Digital used Elixir on the backend and React Native on the frontend. They guided the entire process, providing recommendations and helping us find gaps. They were our partner every step of the way.

What is the team composition?

I’ve worked with Rob (Founder and CEO, Foxbox Digital), Jasmine (Senior Project Manager, Foxbox Digital), a frontend developer, and a backend developer.

How did you come to work with Foxbox Digital?

I found out about Foxbox Digital from a mutual friend.

How much have you invested with them?

We've spent about $150,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in November 2018 and the relationship is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

It was a very solid experience and they gave us an MVP of our app that we can show to our investors.

How did they perform from a project management standpoint?

Their development team is based off-shore, but their leadership is based in the United States. We mostly use Slack to communicate and they've been very responsive.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They've worked with larger companies, but they also understand the startup world. They really have our best interests at heart. They gave us valuable suggestions on how to do things in a more manual process to cut the development costs. We appreciate their proactive approach.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I can't think of anything.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Do as much research as possible upfront in order to minimize the time they'll need to spend on that.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there. 

I’m the revenue manager of a short term rental property management company. We place apartments, houses, and vacation rentals on short term rental websites as well as managing the properties. My primary duties include the booking calendar and tracking the performance of our listings.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Foxbox Digital? 

We're trying to scale our company. We started in Breckenridge and we're up to 70 units there. We have 50 units in Chicago and another 10 units in Denver. That’s a lot of properties that need to be taken care of, watched, and priced.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Foxbox Digital is working on three projects for us. We developed our own pricing tool because we felt current market tools are lacking in certain aspects. We want something that's tailored to our own theories. Foxbox Digital helped us develop a dynamic algorithm for pricing throughout the year. It updates all of our properties for us without us having to go into each rental website and manually set the price. We also want to tackle the issue of availability. For example, the farther out the date is, we want to force longer bookings to fill up the calendar. The tool they created will drop those restrictions and allow people to book shorter stays as the date gets closer. The third project addresses when we have a gap between two bookings. The tool will open the calendar and allow one-day minimum booking. The tools that Foxbox Digital are developing automate all these tasks without us having to do much besides set the correct variables.

In addition, they’re helping us with our financial tracking. Each property has an owner that needs to be paid. We first need to take out the taxes, commission fees for each website, and our management fee. The tool tracks reservations for each individual listing and pulls the appropriate numbers to determine the payout for the owner. Next, they connected it to Stripe so now we have the ability to actually pay the owners from the same tool. This is all web-based right now on the Heroku cloud platform. They also use Python, Django, Docker, and Kubernetes. 

What is the team composition?

Rob (Founder, Foxbox Digital) did a lot of the early work on the tool and looked everything over. Jasmine (Senior Project Manager, Foxbox Digital) is my main point of communication and she has a team of two developers.

How did you come to work with Foxbox Digital? 

I can't answer that because they were hired before my time. Jasmine actually used to be part of our team so I think she was our connection to Foxbox Digital. 

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent between $40,000–$50,000.

What is the status of this engagement? 

This project started in September 2018 and work is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

This new tool results in big time savings for us. Going from manually editing all these calendars to having them automatically update is critical. It allows us time to do a lot of other things and be more productive. Revenue has increased due to our pricing algorithm being better than the other options on the market. 

How did Foxbox Digital perform from a project management standpoint? 

Their team is super responsive. Jasmine and I talk almost every day and I can also reach her on Slack. She's always on top of everything. They’ll develop a feature and she lets us know when it’s live. Then we go in and test it out and report any bugs back to her. They fix bugs quickly along with any other issues come up or anything.  

What did you find most impressive about them? 

This is my first time taking the project manager role. Foxbox Digital’s ability to get things done and never miss a deadline has been really important. They're always on the ball, and always there if we need them. They've do great work for us. 

Are there any areas they could improve? 

Nothing that I can think of, but I don't have anything to compare them to. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers? 

Make sure to communicate and get your part of the work done. You need to put in the effort so you're not slowing them down. I don't think you'll have any issues if you maintain open lines of communication with your project manager.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the CTO at Home Chef, a meal kit subscription service. We send prepackaged, pre-portioned ingredients to your door.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Foxbox?

We needed to upgrade our mobile application and our mobile presence. Our next generation designs were complete, but we needed assistance implementing the technological elements we created into our app. Additionally, we asked Foxbox to train our in-house team in managing the application.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We asked Foxbox to be the technical architect of the mobile app. We wanted the code to be set up in a way that is sustainable and maintainable. Following that, our in-house team would implement our designs, conduct testing, and introduce the app back into the App Store. Along the way, we relied on Foxbox to teach our team the language and the framework that we’re using to build our app.

The app is available for Android and iOS using React Native. Users are able to traverse their accounts, view weekly meal options, and select the meals they’d like delivered. We also included a framework that allows us to do A/B testing within the mobile app so that we can measure the results of certain interactions.

What is the team composition?

I am unsure of the entire team size, but I only worked with their founder.

How did you come to work with Foxbox?

They came as a network referral to our VP of engineering.

How much have you invested with them?

We anticipate spending between $50,000-$60,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our engagement began in July 2018 and is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our work remains ongoing, but we are ahead of schedule in our development. We’re moving at a strong pace, and our team is learning a lot.

How did Foxbox perform from a project management standpoint?

We use GitHub internally and with Foxbox. From a communication perspective, they’ve been great about providing updates through email and noting specific milestones.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their knowledge is extremely deep in a fairly new technology. They have worked well with people, which we valued because of the mentoring aspect. We didn't want an agency that would only come in and code for us. We wanted an agency who would work with our team, and they've done that well. They're a boutique agency, so we get a personalized experience, which has helped us develop a deep partnership.

Any advice for potential customers?

Be very specific about your needs and be transparent about them. That way they can get a strong understanding of if they can help you.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the CEO of Detective.io (formerly Charlie App). Our company briefs users on people and companies before meeting with them.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Foxbox?

Foxbox's leadership led the development phase and delivered our application to the App Store.

What were your goals for this project?

Our objective for this engagement was to build a mobile app that could brief users on their meeting attendees 10 minutes before any calendar appointment listed on their phone.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We interviewed many leading development firms as we considered who to work with. Robert (Founder, Foxbox) proved to be an excellent choice for our needs.

Can you go into detail about the services they provided and the scope of the project?

The founder of Foxbox led the team throughout the project. He helped us formulate the scope and technical requirements and facilitated the entire app’s development.

What was the team composition?

Robert (Founder, Foxbox) was the team member with whom we interfaced.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Thanks to the deliverable Foxbox produced, we raised millions of dollars in funding for our company.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

We managed every aspect of the project via Trello and Github.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Foxbox has an incredibly talented founder.