Old.St Labs

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO and founder of rXperius, a market analysis company focusing on the pharmaceutical industry. We use technology to reach our prescription drug users directly.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Old.St Labs?

We were looking to derive and develop our novel technology as a direct way to reach consumers. Our main challenge was finding someone who understood our problem and whom we could trust.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

When we started this project, we had an understanding of the wireframe, layout, and design that we were looking for. Additionally, our CTO was very instrumental in helping us define the technical specifications, identifying key players to get input and advice from in terms of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) compliance requirements and the security features needed.

With the technology laid out, we communicated with Rob (Co-Founder), who ran many of the projects in Old.St Labs. We started talking regularly to look through all of the information that we provided. We also had several calls to go over our thoughts, direction, and timeline expectations around producing our product.

Rob reasonably scoped the project based on the number of people he had on his staff, their expertise, and other factors that weighed into building it out. It was clear that we would need other people to provide input for us, but Old.St Labs was very amenable to working with other groups and teams throughout our partnership. 

What is the team composition?

We worked with 7–8 people from Old.St Labs over our engagement. Rob’s team included a software developer who helped manage all the staff and a team leader who was developing our technology. We also worked on and off with three other programmers to build out some of the Microsoft services and test the whole layout.

Additionally, we worked with a designer who was in charge of the design and layout of our product, including its colors and appearance on mobile devices. We had a program on our computer where we could go in and make changes to the layout. Then, they could go in and implement the changes requested.

How did you come to work with Old.St Labs?

We had worked with various freelancers and development shops, but we didn’t feel that any of them understood the nuances of developing a HIPAA compliant mobile platform. Those developers neither understood a lot of the government regulations that we needed to fulfill to ensure that our data remained secure and avoid issues if the government ever audited us.

We reached out to Old.St Labs and felt that they were transparent in the services that they provided and in their pricing structure. They also were open to interact on a regular basis and accommodate their schedule to meet our needs.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We’re extremely satisfied with the overall function flow of the pages going through the app. Old.St Labs was great at pulling together and highlighting some of the structures that we needed to be part of our system so that our users could understand where they were in the process. They worked very well.

How did Old.St Labs perform from a project management standpoint?

Old.St Labs’ project management was great. We never had problems with our communication, and we met with them once or twice a week. Every week, we went through the project and defined the timelines of the tasks that we needed to complete, both from our side and Old.St Labs’ side. They also provided us with regular updates and clarifications.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Old.St Labs’ responsiveness to their customer requests was impressive. They did their best to implement our requirements in a cost-effective and timely manner. Since we started talking to Rob about this development, it was clear that he would deliver our product in a much more timely manner and at a better cost than other providers.

Are there any areas they could improve?

As we went further into the project, we wanted things to go faster. However, Rob was managing other clients, and we were demanding more of his staff. It would have been great if Old.St Labs hired more people so that the process went even faster.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Develop a rapport with Old.St Labs team up front, and communicate with them in a way that makes you feel more productive. Rob’s ability to pull together their team has a big impact and adds a lot of value to your final product.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the production director at Pixel Artworks, which is primarily a live event production company. Now, we also specialize in digital and virtual events.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Old.St Labs?

We needed to build a virtual event platform because the live, in-person events industry has taken a downturn. We brought in Old.St Labs to help us with this project.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Old.St Labs helps us design a registration and login system that will be able to cater to tens of thousands of event participants. Along with that, they’ve built a user management system so that we could manage multiple events concurrently in-house.

We usually get a brief from various clients about what virtual event they want to hold and how they want the consumers to access the site. Going by that, we would then explain to them how the registration and login system should be set up. Old.St Labs would provide us with a WildFly document and a set of user stories with corresponding estimates. 

When we’ve agreed on the final scope and have provided Old.St Labs with all the creative assets, their team then goes to build the platform. Before the site goes live, we go through a process of client reviews until we’re happy with the outcome. Old.St Labs has shown us how to set up various environments so we could test the builds before presenting them to the clients and, eventually, pushing them to production. 

Old.St Labs also helps us with the AWS architecture and provides us IT security consultancy. 

What is the team composition?

I work primarily with Rob W. (Co-Founder) and Dennis (Senior Lead Developer). Robin (Senior Technical Advisor) is our security consultant. 

How did you come to work with Old.St Labs?

They were recommended to us by my managing director, so we ended up working with them.

How much have you invested with them?

In total, we’ve spent about £30,000 (approximately $41,000 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Old.St Labs in September 2020. We’ve completed three major projects and are in the talks to work on more over the coming months.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We’ve managed to successfully put on a virtual event for 50,000 concurrent users on the event site, even though virtual events are a new area for us and each event is bespoke. We have the capacity to host even more than 50,000 participants since everything that Old.St Labs has built for us has been solid and robust. So far, we haven’t had any issues with the works they’ve completed.

It’s been a really great experience working with their team. They are extremely personable, friendly, and open to all sorts of last-minute requests, which happen quite regularly in our brand of work. Old.St Labs is very flexible and adaptive to the varying demands of the industry. 

How did Old.St Labs perform from a project management standpoint?

They perform well in the sense that they provide us with good oversight of their capacity and schedule. They’ve stuck to timelines and provided very good project management. We tend to use our own tools that are more geared towards live events. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

I don’t have a huge amount of experience with development houses, but the difference between Old.St Labs and other developers is that they are ready and willing to adapt. They make themselves available at my request. In our industry, things change quite rapidly and we weren’t always able to give them a full and detailed scope. Despite that, though, changes are always well-received and they act on it quickly.

They also have a really good end-to-end process of receiving the brief, understanding it, and then executing it.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don’t see anything that they can improve on.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Make sure that you have all the information required for Old.St Labs to carry out the work efficiently. Have a very well-defined brief to get the most out of them.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director and co-founder of a startup in the health industry. We are focused on emerging evidence surrounding the reduction of risks to neurodegenerative conditions, like dementia. What we do is two-fold: information and business, or products and services. 

Our online platform is like a one-stop-shop for helping people understand what brain health is, why it’s important, and the simple steps they can take to keep the brain healthy. We’re focusing on sustainable lifestyle changes that can affect the physiological aspects of the brain, like blood flow, oxidative protection, and neuronal structure.

We’ve had an incredible engagement with the academic community across Europe and North America and we’ve worked with specialists to produce content, like blogs and videos, about how nutrition, exercise, and sleep can affect brain health. The goal is to make brain health take off the way mental health and gut health have in the past years.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Old St. Labs?

When we were starting out, we didn’t have a huge amount of experience and didn’t go down the right path. We were working with a different group that would build our website on a relatively high source requirement platform, which didn’t really suit our needs. We recognized the problem and asked Old.St Labs to rebuild the site using the content and general branding that we already had.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

For this project, we’ve set parameters for Old.St Labs, but at the same time, we’ve left them some room to maneuver. 

They have helped us shift from our old CMS to WordPress, keeping the menu structure on our website, as well as some icons that the previous company had created. We’ve also briefed their team to use and tweak our existing branding, logo, and color palette to make them look slick. 

What is the team composition?

Rob W. (Co-Founder) is our main point of contact, but he was on paternity leave at the start of the project so we worked with Rob L. (Co-Founder) for a brief period. On a day-to-day basis, we interact with Joyce (Designer) and Louie (Developer).

How did you come to work with Old St. Labs?

We came to work with Old.St Labs through a personal connection. I had been introduced to their co-founder and started talking with him about a completely different topic, like early user engagement and gathering insights from early users of platforms. Later on, we got back in touch with him and asked for his help on this project. 

How much have you invested with them?

Up to this point in the engagement, our spend has been around £10,000 (approximately $14,000 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

The rebuilding of the website occurred between September–November 2020, but we now have them on retainer to develop more web pages. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

All around, there has been overwhelmingly positive feedback. Early users and people we’ve engaged with in the brain health network say that our revamped site looks 100 times better than the old version. Since the rebuild, we’ve also added a number of pages that Old.St Labs is designing. 

We’re still working on our different channels for audience growth, which hasn’t progressed due to COVID-19, but Old.St Labs nailed it in terms of efficiently delivering what we wanted and more. They’ve got a really good design team and we’re delighted with what they’ve done. 

What I really wanted was a group that could give input and not just take direction, since the previous company we worked with was highly prescriptive and showed no initiative. We can give Old.St Labs our ideas and they help make them better. 

How did Old St. Labs perform from a project management standpoint?

Their project management is excellent. They’ve set up a Trello board where we’ve got different cards for tasks to do, tasks in progress, finished tasks, and outcomes to review. They also use the tool to monitor what we want to test and tweak.  It’s an excellent way of managing lots of little ideas from a small company like ours and helps in terms of delivery and timelines. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

The highlight of their service is the transformation that they’ve delivered on the website. We’ve got excellent content coming from the professors and academics who work with us, but all of these are pointless with a rubbish site and UX. Having a good UX is important as it helps pages to rank and allows us to show our content. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

It’s hard to name anything that they could improve on. We’ve been very happy with them.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

From our experience, really take the time on defining the scope to understand what you want, how much bandwidth they have to operate, and what different options they can give you. I would encourage potential customers to give Old.St Labs room to maneuver because they’re good at what they do.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO and one of the co-founders of a social enterprise focusing on developing a new community-building software platform, linked to mental and physical well-being.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Old.St Labs?

The work we did with Old.St Labs was prototyping, to visualize and represent our ideas for a mobile app.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Old.St Labs iterated our ideas and concepts into a designed prototype. The brief was to take our ideas and formulate them into something visual and clickable. The scope didn’t really involve the functionalities, as it was more on just wireframe prototyping. We collaborated on the process from a design perspective.

From a structure and functionality point of view, they only provided us with their design input. However, they definitely led the frontend aspect of the project. The platform they used for the development was InVision.

What is the team composition?

We communicated primarily with Rob L. and Rob W. (Managing Partners). They also had a couple of other people working on the email traffic, as well as the conference school discussions.    

How did you come to work with Old.St Labs?

There are two Robs in that company, and one of them I had known previously. He talked to me about some sort of project or concept in the IT sector.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve invested about ￡2,000 (about $2,700 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

The specific deliverable took about 4–5 weeks and it lasted from June-July 2020.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

There were no real metrics for the project as it was not that type of delivery, but in terms of our experience, the partnership was first class. They were knowledgeable and very constructive in the process.

They brought their experience without being overpowering. They were able to take our strict, rigid, and sometimes loose concepts, and interpret them well and cut through the gaps. This resulted in an end product that far exceeded our expectations.

How did Old.St Labs perform from a project management standpoint?

They performed really well. It wasn’t a huge project time-wise, but they were able to submit four iterations of the deliverables on the date. They also responded and took on the feedback in the same timeframe. Everything was clear, but also not onerous. There are a lot of project management overheads that can be generated by companies — that’s not the case for them. They were just highly focused on delivering the results rather than the process.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They simplified the process for us. They don’t get sucked into the technology speak, and they were highly focused on the deliverables. They brought a depth of knowledge to the process, and they were able to solve the problems effectively. They took a relatively poorly specified concept, and brought it all together to present something beyond our expectations.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I think we were really pleased to the point where I immediately recommended them to other people. My only feedback would be I wish they weren’t so effective, because then they’d have more time.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Pick up the phone and speak to them. They’re really decent people who are doing a good job. They’re not the kind of aggressive sales-type organization, they really put in the work. Don’t hesitate to strike up a conversation because you’re going to be talking to the people who will always get the work done.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the founder and CEO of a mental health technology and media company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Old.St Labs?

I have a CTO who provides a high technical background, but we were looking for a team to actually work on developing the web app, so we hired Old.St Labs to handle that.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Old.St Labs has been involved with building the web app from the very beginning. The team uses Java and has dedicated coders for front- and backend development, but they’re collaborating with another person that we’ve hired to take over the design work. Their backend developer is also working closely with the DevOps team that is handling the web app’s AWS deployment.

What is the team composition?

There are three developers and two owners on the team. Rob (Co-Founder) is my go-to point person and is also in charge of project management and estimation.

I’ve also had the most time to work with the backend developer since the frontend development came in much later.

How did you come to work with Old.St Labs?

Our CTO had done some work for the person who started Old.St Labs, so they had a connection already. It all just kind of worked out because they were looking for work and we were in need of developers.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent about $50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started the development around August 2020. The work is still ongoing and we’re looking to launch the first version of the web app in a month or two. I anticipate that we’ll be working with them afterward as well.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Old.St Labs’ backend developer has been great. He understands our needs and is very reliable. Rob, on the other hand, is very organized and good at communicating expectations, which is important with a project like this where there’s always some uncertainty. We have a very good relationship and I’ve been very happy with the experience of working with them.

How did Old.St Labs perform from a project management standpoint?

Besides corresponding through email, we meet twice a week to check in on the project and bring up any blockers in the development. Rob facilitates the meeting and usually starts out by summarizing the progress that’s been made. 

My background is in psychology so I don’t have any comparable experience in software development, but I feel very satisfied with the team’s level of communication, availability, and responsiveness. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

One thing I appreciate is that Old.St Labs is very motivated. I don’t feel like I’m just one of the hundreds of clients. They were really engaged in the project, and even the owner understands what’s going on on a fairly in-depth level, which I imagine does not happen in other development companies. The team is really eager to produce the technology and satisfy their client. 

One could also think that being a small company, they might be less experienced, but I didn’t find this to be true because this team was well put together. They’ve probably worked on other projects together before, so it hasn’t felt disjointed. 

Another highlight for me is that Rob, who has a background in building apps, has been very helpful as an informal consultant who we can bounce ideas off of. He can draw from his experience, successes, and mistakes and provide valuable guidance. As someone who has never worked on a project like this before, I really appreciate his counsel. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

As we dove into the project, I realized that we needed to add more features. I think that through working with me as well as with other clients, they will get better at estimating and foreseeing what additional features are going to be involved. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I think Old.St Labs will be very well suited to anyone who has no background in development, as they’ve done a good job of helping me. The team can definitely help bring anything you want into reality.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Founder of WealthWritr

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

WealthTech

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Old.St Labs to accomplish?

• Software Development

SOLUTION

How did you find Old.St Labs?

Referral

Why did you select Old.St Labs over others?

• High ratings
• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost
• Referred to me

How many teammates from Old.St Labs were assigned to this project?

6-10 Employees

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

The full scope builing of a wealthtech platform.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

OSLs created an extremely profesional wealthtech platform that I was very pleased with.

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

The team were very professional with exceptional attention to detail throughout the whole project.

What was your primary form of communication with Old.St Labs?

Email or Messaging App

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

The depth of understanding and expertise was outstanding. They knew exactly what I wanted and delivered it.

Are there any areas for improvement or something Old.St Labs could have done differently?

No.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Founder of Flux HQ

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Office brokerage

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Old.St Labs to accomplish?

• Simplify corporate real estate distribution and discovery into a centralised platform.
• Provide up-to-date property availability from as many provider as possible

SOLUTION

How did you find Old.St Labs?

Old client

Why did you select Old.St Labs over others?

• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost

How many teammates from Old.St Labs were assigned to this project?

6-10 Employees

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

A complete build of a bespoke platform and AI filtering system for all of the office spaces in London, so that we can filter results and build bespoke reports for clients

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

A working platform with all of our various feature requests

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

They were incredibly responsive and attentive to all of our asks. Certain things were slightly delayed, due to things outside of anyone's control

What was your primary form of communication with Old.St Labs?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

They were very forward-thinking, had a great friendly team on the project, and had lots of good ideas and iterations. All at a reasonable cost.

Are there any areas for improvement or something Old.St Labs could have done differently?

None

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Epidemiologist of Estima Scientific

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

HEOR technology company

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Old.St Labs to accomplish?

• screen using AI
• build an SLR app to enable study identification from Pubmed searches.
• Build a UI to allow non technical people to use the app

SOLUTION

How did you find Old.St Labs?

• Referral
• Other

Why did you select Old.St Labs over others?

High ratings

How many teammates from Old.St Labs were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

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

Build application to construct the PubMed search strings and then sends this to the PubMed API, extracting the PubMed IDs and Abstracts.I.
Using the t(most up to date LLM) model, OpenAI then analyzes this summary prompt and generates the summary accordingly and the inclusion/exclusion prompts 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

tasks, progress against each task. demonstrated weekly

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

Yes, delivered on time.  incredibly responsive to needs, critical at app testing time

What was your primary form of communication with Old.St Labs?

Virtual Meeting

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

The team is very responsive to the requirements of the project, proactive about finding solutions creatively, strong project managers 

Are there any areas for improvement or something Old.St Labs could have done differently?

No improvements are needed.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am an executive at Awesomenicity

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Awesomenicity is an online Maths learning platform for primary year children (ages 7-11).

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Old.St Labs to accomplish?

• Design and build a fully functioning web app that can be used by teachers and students.
• Create an admin panel so that lessons can be uploaded and edited.

SOLUTION

How did you find Old.St Labs?

• Referral
• Other

Why did you select Old.St Labs over others?

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

How many teammates from Old.St Labs were assigned to this project?

6-10 Employees

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

Old St created our website from the ground up. They were super organised and laid out a potential plan in Figma. We met several times to go over ideas and possible friction points. Once our team had signed off on Old St's plans, they built our website. Once it was built, they continued to work out any bugs and changes that needed to be made.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Every week we would meet to discuss what had been done since the last meeting. At the end of 'sprints', Old St. modelled what had been made and how it worked. Once we had a physical project, we were given a chance to 'have a play' with what they had constructed.

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

Gene was awesome! He was readily available to talk us through any difficulties or to respond to any questions that we had.

What was your primary form of communication with Old.St Labs?

• Virtual Meeting

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

Old St. was incredibly organised, had clear lines of communication and was willing to talk us through every step of our project. They identified possible friction points and offered potential solutions. They were very transparent as far as where they were in our project and had specific goals for each week's work. We are so glad we trusted Old St.Labs with building our website!

Are there any areas for improvement or something Old.St Labs could have done differently?

None that come to mind.