Makers' Den

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Founder of an information security solutions company. 

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Developers information security solutions.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Makers' Den to accomplish?

• Improved delivery process
• Develop frontend
• Integrate existing APIs

SOLUTION

How did you find Makers' Den?

• Online Search
• Clutch Site

Why did you select Makers' Den over others?

• High ratings
• Great culture fit
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from Makers' Den were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

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

We needed to develop and integrate the frontend for an API that would display millions of records. It was paramount that the development was performant and wary of this. Additionally, as a small team, we don't have anyone dedicated to testing, so it was crucial that the deliveries were tested and proven.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Code quality and amount of features that were integrated.

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

Everything was perfect, from the project management to the actual development. I always felt that the PMs assigned to our project knew exactly what they were talking about and that Makers Den always had the expertise to do even more than what I needed.

What was your primary form of communication with Makers' Den?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

Ease of communication and understanding of the technical challenges. Additionally, the fact that Makers Den also quickly adapted (and improved) our way of working was a big help.

Are there any areas for improvement or something Makers' Den could have done differently?

Nothing. I work with them to this day with 100% satisfaction.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Marketing Director of Kickflip

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Kickflip is a product customization software for ecommerce

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Makers' Den to accomplish?

• Website development

SOLUTION

How did you find Makers' Den?

Online Search

Why did you select Makers' Den over others?

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

How many teammates from Makers' Den were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

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

We needed to migrate our website made with Gatsby to Storyblok, a Headless CMS. Our main goal was to give a full & flexible access to the marketing team to the entire website content management, what we couldn't do with the old Gatsby website. The main deliverables were : 

• Develop entire website with Next.Js and Storyblok 
• Develop blocks that can be used in a flexible way, in order to reused them over multiple pages and for different content needs. 
• Giving advices on how we should develop the blocks to be flexible 
• Developing new footer and blocks design based on Figma files. Giving recommendation when necessary 
• Set up editable SEO tags as : hreflang, title, metadescription, canonical.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

• Time to launch : The project was done faster then expected in the estimated timeline. 
• Number of Back & forth conversation :Only one conversation was needed to explain our needs and the results was exactly as expected. 
• Number of bugs to resolve before launch : Only few minors adjustments were needed. Was much less then expected.

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

Maker's Den create a clear Asana board where Kickflip team could refer to see the advancement of the project. We could also add task directly into this board when we had something new or something to fix quickly. Maker's Den also scheduled a weekly meeting where everyone could communicate what was done, what was needed to continue and what will be done in the next week. they also suggest to have a Slack channel to made communication faster when a quick answer was needed.

What was your primary form of communication with Makers' Den?

Virtual Meeting

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

They understood our needs very quickly and were real expert from who we could get really great advices on how to develop our website in a better way.

Are there any areas for improvement or something Makers' Den could have done differently?

To be honest...nothing!

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Founder of Influencer DNA

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

An Influencer Marketing platform that is The fastest solution for Influencer Tracking, Analytics & Reporting.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Makers' Den to accomplish?

• Build an email module that allowed user to send and receive emails with their own gmail or outlook account
• Build a new campaign module that allowed users to track the post analytics of the content the influencers posted on their social media accounts
• Build an agency module. An env where agencies could add and invite the brands that they are running influencer marketing campaigns for
• Make sure we have a scalable tech stack

SOLUTION

How did you find Makers' Den?

Online Search

Why did you select Makers' Den over others?

Great culture fit, Company values aligned, Other

What was the size of Makers' Den’s team?

6-10 Employees

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

Our platform needed to have3 extra key functionalities:

1. An agency module. Allowed user to add and invite the brands that the agency in running influencer marketing campaign for. This allowed us the add an extra renvue stream to our business
2. A campaign module. Allowed users to track the content that influencers had posted on their social media accounts for that brand/ agency. Makers Den worked on an integration with Instagram Graph API, Youtube API and TikTok API
3. eMail module. Allowed our users to send and receive email to and from influencers in our database

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

• Able to track, likes, comments and views on social media posts
• Happy users
• timeline of delivery

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

Fast and clear communication. Estimates were always spot on. Were always open to run the extra mile for us.

What was your primary form of communication with Makers' Den?

Virtual Meeting, Email or Messaging App

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

I've worked with different (Digital) agencies in the past. Communication for us, is the most important thing. We took a risk to work with an Agency that was based in Berlin instead of close to us (Amsterdam) but it worked out perfectly with Maker's Den. On slack in felt like they are always available. They responded fast to questions. The weekly check ins via teams allowed us to really understand what they were working on.

Are there any areas for improvement or something Makers' Den could have done differently?

Nothing

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Pexip.com - Pexip Engage VP Business management & Member of the CTO Council

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Makers' Den, and what were your goals?

We need a scalable, self-discovery showcase platform for our product integrated in dozens of use-cases for each vertical.

SOLUTION

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

We already worked with Maker's Den for our website, and needed a partner for our project who understand our offering and has the agility to successfully deliver. Most importantly, we needed a partner that can come up with ideas and not only waits for requirements

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

Design of platform User experience and flows of platform Authentication and tracking in showcase platform Scalability in architecture to expand for different usecases and verticals Developed with maintainability for us in mind Build on:

• Storyblok
• Vercel
• Pexip Engage proprietary tech for Customer Engagement

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

3 including technical project lead

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Delivered on budget with a better outcome than expected and on time. Our showcase platform is being praised by both our Sales and CSM team!

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

Weekly project status meetings Daily communication through shared slack with next to instance responses pro-active communication (and to the point) at every step from the vendor clear project board

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

We were impressed by their ability to co-own the project. They feel and act like part of the team

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

None I can think of

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Fyrfeed solves the creation of social media posts by harnessing an efficient Human-in-the-loop approach to AI. Customers subscribe to our service for a monthly fee and enjoy premium-quality posts regularly. Content doesn't get any easier than this.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Makers' Den, and what were your goals?

At the start of the project, we had limited development capacity. Therefore we were looking for support in the design of our frontend.

SOLUTION

How did you select Makers' Den and what were the deciding factors?

We approached many providers in Berlin and abroad. For us, the most important factors were easy communication and a quick understanding of the project. Makers Den stood out because in an extremely short time they had penetrated the project and found errors in the design and logics. This allowed us to hand over the project completely to Makers Den without micromanagement.

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

Conversion of about 50 screen designs into Django templates. Revision of the screen design.

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

Carl-Petter Bertell

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Finished in time

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

Slack, Google Meet. Weekly Meetings. Design revision via Figma.

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

They were 100 % committed to the project.

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

No

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the cofounder of the HealthTech startup Healthzilla. Healthzilla provides consumers a free app for creating healthy habits, and tools for companies to monitor customer/employee wellness data.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Makers' Den, and what were your goals?

We wanted to launch a B2B offering by creating a SaaS dashboard on top of our existing backend platform. Our goal was to release a first MVP in just a month's time using the latest web technologies.

SOLUTION

How did you select Makers' Den and what were the deciding factors?

I've known Kalle to be one of the best developers out of hundreds I've worked with. The team at Makers' Den are very straightforward, they have the experience to turn vague requirements into clean code and functionality. They know the latest tech always and are very fast.

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

We had made a rough static prototype before, and had some high-level descriptions of what kind of data we wanted to present, as well as a styleguide for our brand. From there, Makers' Den guys took over and asked questions to fill any gaps.

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

We worked with Kalle (integration) and Harrison (UI).

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We've been able to soft launch the platform as scheduled, and gotten our first clients to give us valuable feedback. We're now in-process of further refining the dashboard to enable self-service onboarding.

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

We use Slack with the Makers' Den team, and given our own technical knowledge it is very easy to communicate in common language about how requirements should be interpreted and what technical options are available. I can trust that when I need them, the guys are available.

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

In terms of speed & quality versus cost, Makers' Den is offering something unique as a boutique developer studio.

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

I like how well Makers' Den style of working fits with our own, given we're on Slack and Asana the guys just use our tools together with our internal team.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Healthcare IT provider, CEO.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Makers' Den, and what were your goals?

We had a use-case for using healthcare professionals' internet searches for epidemic outbreak surveillance (such as influenza). We had previously demonstrated the capabilities of these kinds of surveillance methods and wanted to capitalize this.

SOLUTION

How did you select Makers' Den and what were the deciding factors?

We got in contact with Makers' Den through referral. We were looking for a flexible and trustworthy partner with the suitable technical background and possibility to provide services rapidly.

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

Makers’ Den provided advice and implementation on service design, frontend and backend code, cloud infrastructure and ML processes; adjusting bits as the project went along. The technologies used were Javascript, ReactJS and NodeJS, PostgreSQL.

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

3 people: 1 lead developer, 1 full stack developer, 1 data scientist-

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The original project was finished early which left space for extending and developing the service further within the original timeframe. The project resulted in the CEO receiving a national award for most provident digital healthcare influencer of 2019.

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

They were very agile and flexible. The communication tools used were Asana, Slack and video calls. We had bimonthly meetings to assess progress and could follow updates constantly through Slack. It was important to us that they can answer any questions we had any time.

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

The work we had originally asked them to do included technical development, but we received additional value from the team's participation in the whole product design.

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

Nothing comes to mind.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We’re a fintech company working in the payment service provider segment. I’m a product manager and team lead in the company, in charge of building an internal software.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Makers’ Den?

We need to have a really strong UI in order to help users interact with our product. We target people without development backgrounds, so the user interface needs to be really user-friendly. We had a frontend engineer, but he was quite junior, and we needed help from Makers' Den in order to achieve our goal in a shorter time.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We had wireframes of the UI and its functionality at the start, and Makers' Den helped us develop and enrich it with features. They had a constant feedback loop with our customers, and they asked for our direction and feedback at various stages of the work.

They strictly worked on the frontend of our product.

What is the team composition?

We worked with one person from Makers' Den.

How did you come to work with Makers’ Den?

They’d had a previous contract with our company. The same engineer we had on this project had worked for a different department of our company as a consultant. We heard really good feedback from the team working with him. That project was about to end, and it was the perfect timing for us to extend the collaboration with him.

How much have you invested with them?

The project cost is $100,000–$150,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

This project started in early-November 2019, and the contract will end in late-September 2020.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

It was pretty nice overall to work with Makers' Den. They’re very skilled at what they’re doing, and they found solutions for every problem we gave them. They were also able to guide and teach our junior in-house engineer, which helped us a lot.

It’s hard to measure the impact because our product is really new. Everyone on our team is really happy to have worked with the engineer from Makers' Den. We would’ve extended the project even more, but the budget is tight. Our colleagues and users have always given us awesome feedback on how easy to use the UI is. We’ve also gotten recognition from our domain leads.

How did Makers’ Den perform from a project management standpoint?

They were able to onboard quickly, which is important when working with an expensive consultant. We simply explained to them what the overall architecture of our system was and how users needed to interact with it, and they were quick to assimilate that and start the work.

There was a lot of investigation work to be done in the beginning, and I didn’t have a lot of time to prepare requirements. I was able to just quickly describe what features I wanted to have, and Makers' Den planned ahead and made tickets based on that.

The communication was really strong, and it wouldn’t have been possible otherwise. Many of the features they were working on were tied to the backend, so they were in a constant communication loop with our team.

We integrated Makers' Den into our Jira.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The best part of working with them is definitely their flexibility. We had a tight budget toward the end and had to shift around. We asked them to vary the amount of work they did each week, and they planned according to that.

I also appreciated their ability to guide our frontend engineer. This isn’t usually a part of the contract, and it would’ve been expected that they just deliver the results, but Makers' Den also trained our frontend engineer.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I didn’t have detailed requirements from my side, and, because we were just getting to know each other, there was some miscommunication. It was a mistake on both our parts not to write down and summarize our initial discussions, so that Makers' Den could review the requirements later on. This was nothing critical. There were just some minor issues here and there.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

The more the client invests in planning ahead and specifying the tasks, the more Makers' Den can dish out. They have the necessary skills and knowledge to deliver fast.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the global head of product at OLX Group. We’re an online classifieds company that offers a marketplace where people can sell basically anything. In my role, I’m over customer safety and security, making sure nothing inappropriate is sold and ensuring the users are behaving well towards one another.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Makers’ Den?

We’re building an internal tool for the review of ads and listings. We needed a company that could help us build the frontend of this tool — that’s why we brought Makers’ Den on.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Makers’ Den is handling the frontend development of the platform. Their team wrote the code and built the frontend with our product specifications and they’ve also done the entire engineering for it. They designed the architecture for the frontend and worked closely with our design and user research teams to make sure the frontend fit the requirements.

What is the team composition?

I work with two people from their team.

How did you come to work with Makers’ Den?

They previously worked on a different project with another department. We were recommended to them by that team and decided to go ahead with the engagement.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve invested somewhere in the $100,000 range

What is the status of this engagement?

Our ongoing partnership began in February 2019.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We’re tracking the completion of work as one of the success metrics because they’re contractors. Their work has been well-received by our internal team.

How did Makers’ Den perform from a project management standpoint?

They work well toward deadlines and are really good at giving realistic expectations of how long things will take. Makers’ Den has fully integrated onto our development team so it doesn’t feel like they’re a separate unit. Their team works closely with ours.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re extremely easy to work with and that’s always super important.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, it’s been a really good collaboration. We started out with one person and then brought on a second once we realized the scope of work was larger. All of this worked very well.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Working with them is a lot of fun but also productive.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

We are FRIDAY. Our aim is to offer an insurance that actually benefits our customers’ lives. We are building an entirely stress-free digital insurance - without loads of paperwork, annoying bureaucracy and lengthy contract duration. As a Head of Product I lead product management for our tech platform.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Makers' Den?

We had a website that already consumed content from the Prismic CMS but most important pages had been hardcoded and pages automatically generated from CMS content were limited in functionality. All development is usually done in-house at FRIDAY, we hired Makers' Den to give us a head start with a more flexible and complete set up of the website.

What were your goals for this project?

The new architecture should create the entire site dynamically based on content from the CMS, so that content creators have full control and do not require engineering to create or change pages or change page elements. All components should be available in the CMS and component rendering should be based on a design system to further separate content from presentation.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We have worked with people from Makers' Den before (before they even started Makers' Den) so we knew that they understand our requirements, our development conventions and that they would deliver great work.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

Makers' Den rebuild the website architecture from the ground up and helped to integrate the new stack into the existing infrastructure so that we could migrate from the old site step by step.

The core of the architecture is a static site generator using Gatsby, Prismic.io and a design system. Fetching content at build time only makes us independent from CMS availability. Different template types are available in the CMS with a wide range of components to choose from.

Page paths and meta data can be configured in the CMS as well. For the migration we made use of a reverse proxy to serve individual pages or folders from the new application while keeping the old site up and running.

What was the team composition?

The project team most of the time included two engineers who were capable to work on all the different components of the architecture, from site generation backend, to Prismic configuration to design system.

They were mostly working with our internal designers and content editors and they also discussed the proposed architecture with our internal engineering and included all of the required measures to ensure code quality into their process. They had been flexible enough to switch between on site and remote work as needed.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The entire project is considered a big success that gives our content editors the freedom to create and publish content without development effort while having full control of the technical setup of the site. We went live with the first pages after halfway through the project and then migrated the remaining content step by step. The application is running smoothly ever since and is the foundation for our internal teams to build additional functionality on top of it.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

We discussed the scope and the expected timeline of the project in an initial service offer and then later used Asana for tracking individual stories. Stories were prioritized and results were presented to the internal stakeholders in weekly iterations. We had dedicated Slack channel and Gitlab repo for the project.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

In light of the many different aspects of the project and the small number of people involved it was impressive to see that they always knew exactly what they were doing and had previous experience in all of the areas that were necessary to deliver the solution end to end. Also communication was great. Any upcoming issue could be discussed and resolved in no time.

Are there any areas for improvement?

For the work that was commissioned, there's nothing that comes to my mind in terms of improvements. We intentionally took care of most of the overarching project management, so I cannot judge how well that would have been handled.