ISBX Corp

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

‎Soothe delivers massage-on-demand services. We are a technology company working with independent contractors and therapists, delivering massages in 51 cities.

I am the CTO of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with ISBX?

In the early days of our company, when we were still not able to fully scale our in-house development team, we worked with ISBX on development for our existing app.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

ISBX has provided iOS development for our app, as well as SEO [search engine optimization] consulting.

How did you come to work with ISBX?

Our CEO knew ISBX's principal. We considered other agencies, but the main benefit of ISBX was that they were local to our area, offered favorable pricing, as well as help with overall project management.

How much have you invested with ISBX?

The cost of ISBX's work was between $10,000 and $50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our project had a 4-month runtime and has been completed.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

ISBX was able to take a legacy application which had been developed by another group, and iterate it in order to better serve our customers. On the SEO side, they were able to help us go from having no strategy to targeting low-hanging fruit, both on the app store and on the web.

How did ISBX perform from a project management standpoint?

ISBX's team was easy to communicate with and responsive.

What did you find most impressive about ISBX?

ISBX was focused on understanding what our project was, instead of focusing on their sale.

Are there any areas ISBX could improve?

Not off the top of my head.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We develop social media applications with an emphasis on polling and data-gathering. We have under 10 employees. I am the director of marketing and operations for the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with ISBX?

We needed help developing our app.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

ISBX has helped with the development of our mobile application, conceptualizing our rough ideas, discussing feasibility, pricing, and making hard-to-explain concepts easy for users to understand. ISBX has been vital in taking our effort to use social media as a means of better-gathering data and people's opinions and repurposing them. It's a dual-platform product for iOS and Android.

How did you come to work with ISBX?

Both of our companies are based in the Los Angeles area. Proximity has been a huge consideration, but there are a ton of other options available. One of the things that drew us to ISBX was their ranking within our area.

How much have you invested with ISBX?

The cost of ISBX's services has been above $200,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with ISBX 3 years ago. We have recently relaunched our Android app. We were iOS-exclusive for around a year, as we were pivoting and repurposing what the app needed to do. We eliminated some features and put in ones requested by users.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

We took a raw idea to ISBX and turned it into something that has received over 100,000 unique downloads. We have a large imprint which we can track through Google Analytics and Facebook Marketing. We're starting to have an identity within the social media sphere.

How did ISBX perform from a project management standpoint?

ISBX's principal and their team lead have been extremely personable and friendly. When discussing technologies, many concepts can be obtuse and difficult, but ISBX has made this a painless process.

What did you find most impressive about ISBX?

ISBX has stood out in terms of transparency. Whenever we had specific questions which were outside of our contacts' expertise, we were introduced to people in the team who were in charge of marketing, UI/UX [user interface/user experience] design, and so on. We were always able to discuss requirements and get them done.

Are there any areas ISBX could improve?

I don't have too much in the vein of constructive criticism. We have been working with ISBX for 3 years, which should speak to how much we value our partnership.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Live Portrait (formerly Digital Yearbook Page) is a mobile app working like a modern-day cloud space helping people reconnect and stay in touch with high school friends. We are a startup based in Los Angeles, with a 5-person team.

I am a co-founder of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with ISBX?

As an angel-invested company, we needed to find a solid partner in terms of backend development which could make our investors feel comfortable in putting money into the product.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Our project is image-recognition-based. ISBX has experience in this area and was able to understand the integrations that we needed to have. They've also worked well with database management. We were compiling lists of high school names, so ISBX has helped combine this with the image recognition portion of the app.

How did you come to work with ISBX?

We had been using a different programmer, but the project was taking a very long time. Once we realized that we had issues, we started asking around. ISBX came highly recommended by another company we'd worked with. They gave a good presentation, showing an understanding of our vision.

How much have you invested with ISBX?

The cost of ISBX's work has been in the $50,000 to $200,000 range.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with ISBX a year and a half ago. The project has been completed, but we've gone back to ISBX for additional add-ons and upkeep work.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

ISBX was hands-on in wanting our company to succeed. They've referred us to companies that could help us with photography for the yearbooks, as well as to a couple of reporters that featured our app on the homepage of Yahoo.com. ISBX cared about more than a paycheck, giving us tips and going the extra mile.

How did ISBX perform from a project management standpoint?

Our project manager took our general questions, and also provided reports and overviews. One of ISBX's strong points was organization, keeping us in the know on who was working on our project.

What did you find most impressive about ISBX?

ISBX has a variety of resources in different departments. When we had a design or development question, we knew whom we could go to.

Are there any areas ISBX could improve?

ISBX could better manage the small unexpected fees which came up after the project was completed. These were only small cases associated with the startup world.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the Co-Founder of Brass, a Decentralized Autonomous Organization that aims at providing democratized access to the most promising blockchain projects and professionals.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire ISBX?

We worked directly with ISBX to do a full Brand Identity Exercise that included a Logo, with all digital assets. In addition we worked on a follow up engagement where they did the website design and development for our home website.

SOLUTION

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

I originally had found Art's profile on upwork and worked with him with Iinuma Consulting partners. Once we finished the engagement we then discussed different ways we could work together and he referred me to ISBX for design and development needs.

Describe the project in detail and walk through the stages of the project.

The engagement started with an initial kickoff and discovery call where we outlined expectations of everything, met the team. Afterwards we then shared everything we had and went through a branding exercise where we had to think through what we wanted our brand to embody (adjectives, colors, feelings, etc.). Following that we had several calls with the team to further go through our answers and review everything that they had implemented.

All assets were shared in figma with us so we had access to everything and the team provided weekly progress updates. Upon completing anything the team would have a call with us to verify we were on the right track or make in adjustments if necessary. Once we completed the entire engagement we were sent all of the digital assets and began working on the website design and development where the process repeated itself with us working on each page of the website in detail.

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

In total we worked with 3 primary individuals. Arthur was the lead on the project and was the our primary point of contact. We also had Kevin, who was the project manager. Finally we had Veronica, who was the lead designer on the team.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

All of the branding they created was absolutely top notch and was seamlessly integrated into all of our existing assets (pitch deck, tokenomics, whitepaper, one pager, etc). From the work that they did we were able to raise our entire friends and family round and raise the interest from multiple incubator groups for support.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

The entire team was great to communicate with. Art  is a world class expert in his professionalism and expertise and was right there to hold our hand through the entire process unlike other principals that may not be as involved. Kevin kept us up to date with several updates throughout the process and proactively reached out whenever there was a miscommunication about anything or if there were questions that the team had.

Veronica was and still is the best designer that I have ever worked with. Her communication, ability to go above and beyond, along with the skill to take an idea and bring it to life was beyond anything I have ever seen. We constantly communicated in the figma file as well as via email and she was always on top of any last minute changes we threw at them.

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

I was blown away at the diverse experience that the group had as well as their ability particularly in branding and design work. Since working with them I have seen countless other projects and no one was able to compare to them in regards to design, animation, customization, and the ability to integrate several different features altogether seamlessly

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

The only thing I would have asked for would have been for things to have been done quicker however, at the end of the day we ended up with an amazing product and it takes time to produce that level of work.