Ministry of Product

BACKGROUND

Could you describe your company and what you do?

We are a company called ActiveBuilding. We build software to let residents living in a community or in a large building consume services from the building, and have a social connection to other residents to interact and engage.

What is your role at the organization?

I’m the COO, but I should say that five months ago, we were acquired. Now, we’re part of a bigger organization called RealPage. Our software is part of a bigger solution that they provide to let managing companies and apartment complexes utilize a comprehensive suite of tools to manage the building and the residents. The project that PugetWorks completed was for ActiveBuilding before we were acquired.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

When you approached PugetWorks, what was the business challenge that you were trying to address?

Essentially, we were a startup. We were limited in our resources. We had a core set of products, and we had a lot of side of initiatives that we were hoping to explore. PugetWorks was involved in that part of the business, helping us to develop non-core pieces of our business solution. We didn’t take them as a contract just to code. They were responsible for the entire product.

As part of living in the community, one of the goals we had was letting residents engage with their immediate neighborhood, with businesses around the building. We wanted to give those merchants or businesses around the building the ability to offer the residents living in that building special promotions. The idea was to develop a portal, a destination where businesses can register and create special coupons for buildings that are around their business. That’s what PugetWorks was responsible for. They’re responsible for the whole project for development, deployment, maintenance, and support. They built it from the ground up, and they maintained it and fixed it when fixes were needed. They continue developing and adding more features.

I played the role of the product manager, closing the gap between the market and the product. So, I figured what clients were expecting the next features would be. From my feedback to them, they played the role of testing, production, deployment, and maintenance.

Do the merchants access a mobile application or a website? What kind of development work was involved in that?

They access an online website. These merchants are micro merchants. They’re very small mom and pop shops. We have a verification process for merchants. PugetWorks did a very good job there. We would connect with Yelp to verify that business for quality control. Once validated and authenticated, they would create coupons that would automatically appear in buildings around them. Then, we would report to these merchants with metrics and data on how many people saw their listing, how many people clicked it, and how many people actually used the coupon. 

SOLUTION

What type of framework or content management system was used for the website?

They used PHP Zend.

What was your process for selecting PugetWorks to work with?

We’re here in Seattle. We wanted to work with a local shop because we wanted a very intimate relationship and to see them on an ongoing basis. Because we’re a startup and we’re small, we were very sensitive to budgets. Out of all the software development shops here in Seattle, we worked with two, and they were the ones we chose. We were referred to them by other local companies.

Can you give a sense of the size of the initiative, in a cost figure or a personnel work-hour figure?

The project was small. It never went above $10,000 or $15,000 per month. On average, it was in the low thousands per month.

How long did the project take?

The project is ongoing. They have been involved in it for about a year and a half to two years.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

In terms of results, do you have any metrics or feedback to indicate the effectiveness of their work?

There are thousands of merchants that use it. There are thousands of local offers or coupons in the system. We have thousands of buildings that utilize the system. The servers that PugetWorks built for us get hit a lot of times. There’s no comparable project like that I know of, so it’s hard to say what a success metric is. They did a good job by delivering on time and on budget. They were good at predicting and projecting accurately enough.

The product was successful. It was one of those projects where you had a few goals, and you didn’t know at the start whether it would work. It was more of an experiment. We did a lot of experiments and a lot of them disappeared over time because they weren’t generating enough dollars or value. This actually blew up to a full-blown product that generated enough value to be maintained until we were acquired. For a company that’s bootstrapping, that means a lot.

How would you describe their performance?

They did a fantastic job. We were very pleased with how they handled things. I personally met with them once every few weeks. We would do a review of what happened the last couple of weeks, what we want to do further, and how things are progressing. They would also challenge me from a business side, ask the right questions, and want to know more. They had good ideas. It was more than just a company that codes.

Is there anything you would consider special or unique about PugetWorks compared to other companies with which you may have worked?

They’re very technical, which we liked. They can talk to you in very deep and technical language. They don’t lack that like other companies sometimes do. They are very straightforward, honest, and upfront about what they can do and what they can’t.

Is there any area that you think on which they could improve?

They’re not so strong on the marketing and the sales side. They don’t sell themselves well. Their strong suit is technology, products, and delivery. That’s what we like. We gave them a shot, and we were delightfully surprised about how approached things, delivered, and performed. We kept them onboard, and they’ve lasted for two years.

BACKGROUND

Please give a brief description of your company.

Rover is a dog boarding marketplace. We facilitate connecting dog owners to dog sitters. We have tens of thousands of dog sitters around the United States and, at any given time, you can go on our website and find the dog sitter near you that will sit your dog while you go out of town.

What is your role at Rover?

I’m one of the founders.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

When you approached PugetWorks, what was the business challenge that you were trying to address?

We had done some iOS development out-of-house, managing contractors from an outsourcing website called oDesk. We were moderately happy with the outcome there, but it took us longer than expected, and it was a little bit buggy, so we wanted to bring that development back to Seattle. The group we were [originally] working with was based in the Ukraine. PugetWorks came highly recommended, so we ultimately brought our business there. It’s ongoing expansion and maintenance of our application.

Did you have any specific business goals for the project?

They really are owning our entire iOS development. It’s really quite a broad set of business goals we’re trying to accomplish with that.  

SOLUTION

Can you tell us more about the scope of the work that they did for you?

The main thing our app is focused on is messaging between sitters and dog owners. They built out the majority of that messaging functionality and built out search capabilities in the app. Essentially, they both designed and implemented large chunks of the functionality of our app, for both search and messaging experiences.

What was your process for selecting PugetWorks to work with in the first place?

We evaluated a couple agencies, but the main criteria were that they came highly recommended by somebody else who works at Rover and had worked with them in the past. It was more of a personal referral.

Can you give us a sense of the size of the initiative, either in a cost range or personnel work-hour figure?

Somewhere between two and three full-time heads.

How long have they been doing this work for you?

At this point, it’s probably been about nine months.

Was your app already launched before you started working with them?

Yes. We’d already launched the app, but it was very feature limited. They’ve taken that and basically done a rewrite because one of the unfortunate side effects of outsourcing that first process, where we didn’t have anybody on our side who is an expert at iOS development, is that we ended up with what might generously be termed “code soup.” They largely rewrote what was already there. They were working with the existing app.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

In terms of the results of the project, can you share any metrics or feedback to indicate the success of their work?

Yes. We’ve seen something like two to three times improvement in usage. A lot of that is just the side effect of the business growing, but some of it is certainly attributable to the improvements in the app over time. 

How would you describe PugetWorks’ performance?

We’re very satisfied with it.

Is there anything unique or special about them compared to other companies that you may have worked with in the past?

I think they’re relatively small, which means that you get a lot of focus from them. We’ve been very happy with them. The design work especially has been very top-notch.

In terms of things that make them stand out, they have some deep expertise that we actually haven’t used them for around crowd-sourced survey data. One of their project managers, I believe, was an early Amazon product manager. But, we haven’t really taken advantage of that to date. 

Looking back on the project, is there any area that you think that they could improve on or that you would do differently?

I think there are quite a few areas, but it’s not on their side; it’s really on our side. We had some employee turnover where the person who was initially managing the relationship is no longer with our company. In that kind of scenario, doing a better hand-off for that relationship is a lesson learned for me personally. I don’t think that in any way is reflective of their performance in that period, just that we should have done a better job handing off the relationship.