SaaS Partners

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of OurTribe, a social collaboration platform for network marketing sales teams. Our platform gives them the alternative to run their businesses through Facebook or other social media pages. It allows teams to collaborate, communicate, and celebrate.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Thoroughbred Solutions, LLC?

We hired Thoroughbred Solutions for their development services.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

The team built us a native social media app for iOS and Android. They also built a web application. They provided marketing support through video and web content.

What is the team composition?

We primarily work with three people, including Piyush (CTO), Patrick (CEO), and a marketer.

How did you come to work with Thoroughbred Solutions, LLC?

I had participated in a nutritional training program. When I was in the program, I saw how the woman used an app to run her business. I reached out to the CEO to see who they were using, and she gave me their name.

We had interviewed about 10–20 different developers for this project. We found that they were the most knowledgeable in the network marketing sector. We also felt that they were the easiest to communicate with. We felt comfortable from the start that we would stay on the same page as them.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our ongoing engagement with their team started in May 2019.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

It’s been a great partnership with their team. The ease of working with them is amazing. To be honest, my background isn’t in tech. Coming into this, I was hesitant about speaking to developers because I felt that it was a totally different language. It was hard to communicate what we were looking for, and I never felt that Thoroughbred Solutions.

Their team understood how to make the tech relatable to me. They wanted to hear our ideas while providing excellent guidance.

Everything they’ve delivered has been on time. With any enhancements or bugs, they’ve been responsive during each phase of the project. We’re working on moving the product into the app stores.

How did Thoroughbred Solutions, LLC perform from a project management standpoint?

Trello and Jira are our main project management tools.

We meet twice a week with a 30-minute Zoom call. Those are our opportunities to connect about the project. We can also chat with them through email or text. Their communication is always spot on. The team is responsive with turnaround times.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their team has done a fantastic job building an application for me, a non-tech customer. They’ve created a viable product that I’ve felt comfortable with every step of the way. Their team has helped me understand the technical part of that, which I’m thankful for. They’re also a nice and fun group to work with.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Not really. I don’t believe we’ve had any issues with them so far.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

If you are looking for a mobile app for your business, take a look at Thoroughbred Solutions for custom development services.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Bear Box is a startup I founded two years ago through seed funding. The company builds out mobile data centers for TensorFlow applications and ASIC devices used for mining digital currencies. I’ve since sold the solution and most of the intellectual property and now work with the company who bought it on a contract basis.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Thoroughbred Solutions?

In my industry, people can buy third-party vendor software like ASICseer or Awesome Miner to manage their data-mining farms. Those use a SaaS and recurring-payment model, where someone might pay $250 plus a given amount per managed machine per month. 

I didn’t want to pay that, so I reached out to Patrick (CEO, Thoroughbred Solutions) to help me build my own management suite.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Thoroughbred Solutions developed my management suite from the ground up. I wanted a lightweight, Python-based solution that can run on a Raspberry Pi or an NVIDIA Jetson Nano machine using local networks. I’d put together a bare-bones version, but I needed to turn around the app and most of its features as a turnkey solution within a short time.

The suite is a standalone application that runs locally on networks, which allows users to automate the management of an entire datacenter. It facilitates everything from rebooting to physically restarting machines and offers a whole reporting suite. I don’t have to have a technician on-site to triage any machine or software malfunctions within the network.

The solution can scale to anything, but I built my containers to about 2 megawatts a piece. Depending on the machine load, it can handle up to 1,200 machines. Each container runs almost like a node. A single driver runs the application within a set range of IPs and scrapes over them.

Thoroughbred Solutions built the app using Python—both on the front- and backend—and a PostgreSQL database. They made the UI with Qt.

What is the team composition?

The Thoroughbred Solutions dev team is less than 10 people, probably. I’ve worked with Patrick, Derrell (CIO and Lead Business Analyst, Thoroughbred Solutions), Piyush (CTO, Thoroughbred Solutions), and a handful of other developers. Patrick did most of the project management while Piyush acted as the technical lead, in a sense.

How did you come to work with Thoroughbred Solutions?

I reached out through a friend who’d heard about Thoroughbred Solutions. I needed someone who could do development work fast and didn’t want to pay through the nose for it. I used to do a lot of work with freelancers, either through Upwork or through Fiverr, for graphic design work. Most of them were US-based and relatively expensive for projects. With non-US-based vendors, we faced a significant language barrier.

I felt like I’d found a good fit with Thoroughbred Solutions after my initial phone call with Patrick. Thoroughbred Solutions seemed to have enough technical expertise to carry out my requirements, set out a roadmap that I thought was workable, and cost less than some of the other people I reached out to. As a result, I went with them.

How much have you invested with them?

I spent $50,000 for the entire project.

What is the status of this engagement?

The project ran from May until June 2019.  

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Most of the user feedback I’ve gotten has said that the suite can be set up quickly. Users can set an IP range, and because the deployment’s already known and everything is uniform, it’s good to go from the start. 

The setup’s efficiency is the most important thing—it saves a significant amount of time on the frontend during the initial configuration and any operation in the field. We don’t have to mess with anything because it’s almost entirely automated.

Bitcoin mining, in particular, requires a lot of machines crammed into small spaces, making it difficult for technicians to work in. Our system not only manages it from a software perspective, essentially acting as a network watchdog, but it also integrates with the power distribution units. After a certain number of attempts to restart the software side, it manually triggers a low-voltage relay on the hardware side and physically reboots the machine at the power-supply level. The technicians no longer need to check which device might’ve hung up and restart everything.

The suite also kicks off reports hourly and daily, depending on the configuration, so there’s no intraday maintenance. Our users love that aspect. It cuts down on the labor operational expenditure and the headaches for technicians that handle menial tasks.

How did Thoroughbred Solutions perform from a project management standpoint?

I had a call with Patrick and Piyush every Friday to go over the roadmap, any questions they might’ve had, or any feature prototypes they might’ve built out. They were excellent communicators. Patrick stayed on top of the ball and tracked the entire team, while Piyush took care of the technical side.

We spoke either over the phone or through Zoom conferences, where they’d share screens and walk me through the functionalities they’d built. We used email to some extent, but I preferred to talk and see things for myself. I felt that things could get lost in translation in constant emailing, especially from a technical perspective.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Thoroughbred Solutions’ communication impressed me the most compared to that of other freelancers I’ve worked with. Patrick, Piyush, and the rest of the team stayed on the ball the entire time, letting me know where they were in the timeline and communicating any changes that came up. We felt like our project was in good hands. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

We sometimes used a lot of different platforms to stay in touch. I prefer more uniformity when it comes to scheduling and communication technologies. 

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

I appreciated being able to sit down and talk with Thoroughbred Solutions about what I specifically needed from the application (from both a business and a technical side). Being on a Zoom or phone call with someone is entirely different to sitting in a room with them, especially at the inception of a deal. It can reveal if our teams’ personalities align and if they’re competent enough from a technical and business perspective to build what we need. 

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am a registered dietitian and I work in the field of online weight loss. I run a virtual nutrition wellness and weight loss program.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Thoroughbred Solutions, LLC?

Prior to working with them, I was running my group on social media sites like Facebook. I felt that their platform was unprofessional, and it presented a lot of challenges and limitations to my business. I was looking to create my own app that I would be able to run my programs on.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They developed a mobile app and a website option that allows them to interact with the same information. The app works on both iPhone and Android, and we are continuing to work together on testing, updates, and added features for the program.

We got the foundation of the application down fairly quickly and launched it to a small group of clients to see what they thought. As we’ve received feedback, we’ve been able to fine-tune what we had, as well as to add features like progress tracking and before-after surveys to help people visualize how far they’ve come.

What is the team composition?

I interact with three members of their team, one who is more hands-on with the code and another who is more of a project planner, and then one person who works to support both of them. They have several other teammates supporting their work on the technical aspects behind the scenes.

How did you come to work with Thoroughbred Solutions, LLC?

Two of the owners’ wives actually went through my program, and they suggested that their husbands help me out, so they came to me with the offer. I wasn’t in a place to accept it right away but as my business developed, I began to realize the need was there, so I eventually took them up on the idea.

How much have you invested with them?

I think we’re about $75,000 in and are planning to reach closer to $100,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked on the initial development from October 2018–January 2019. We add features and fixes to the platform on an ongoing, as-needed basis. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

My business has been growing steadily every month, and I constantly have people who are canceling the program on Facebook to make the switch to the app. My clients overwhelmingly love the app, to the point where I’m basically losing out on customers every day the app isn’t finished because its enrollment rate is already so much higher.

I’ve also had at least six people reach out to me to ask who made my app because they loved the design so much. I’ve been able to refer people in other industries to them who see the platform as something they could modify and utilize in their own role.

How did Thoroughbred Solutions, LLC perform from a project management standpoint?

They were phenomenal. They set precise deadlines for each step in the process, and everything was completed on time. We had clear communication the whole time, and I really didn’t have to worry about whether any of it would get done.

We meet once a month in person, I tell them what I need, and a month later I get it. There’s not a lot of back and forth around the details of the features, which is important because it gives me way more time to focus on my own business. I could not be any happier with their service.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I think the level of attention to detail on their team is really impressive, just getting everything exactly right and on time and within budget are huge achievements that can be easy to overlook.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don’t think there’s anything they could improve.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Have a clear vision of what your end goal for the project is. It’s easy to think it would be great if your platform did everything you could ever want, and you can end up with either a random assortment of features or a huge amount of debt.

Even if you can’t immediately afford your dream house in terms of the app you want, knowing what you don’t need it to do will allow you to get the foundation in place and then build features that make sense from there.