STRV

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a manager at an identity management company. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with STRV?

We needed to update our Android and iOS mobile applications.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We had previously worked with STRV on another project and contacted them again to update our mobile apps. The apps are native applications already developed, and STRV has updated them with our requirements. STRV has created the appropriate framework and has a backend server we communicate with. 

What is the team composition?

I work with two developers and one part-time project manager from STRV. 

How did you come to work with STRV?

STRV was referred to us by a mutual acquaintance. I chose them based on the personal connection we had. 

What is the status of this engagement?

Our ongoing partnership with STRV started in September 2022. We have a contract for a nine-month engagement. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

STRV has consistently met our projected release dates, and our team is happy with the results. I’m pleased with STRV’s work. 

How did STRV perform from a project management standpoint?

STRV meets deadlines and stays on budget. We use Jira for project management and communicate through daily and weekly meetings in Microsoft Teams. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

I’m most impressed with STRV’s excellent communication. Moreover, STRV’s developers are well-trained and can ramp up quickly — they make significant contributions.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I can’t think of anything for STRV to improve. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I recommend to show respect and appreciation for STRV’s highly skilled developers. 

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m an executive at Kindred. We’re a home-swapping company that’s focused on getting people to live a travel-rich lifestyle for just a fraction of the cost.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with STRV?

We hired them for their custom software development services. We needed to build out our product capabilities.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

STRV provided development services. We worked collaboratively with their software engineers to develop our internal tooling systems, as well as a mobile application that’s compatible with iOS.

What is the team composition?

We worked with 5–6 people from their company, including software and quality engineers.

How did you come to work with STRV?

We found them through a recommendation from one of our company’s co-founders.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent about $600,000–$1.2 million on their services.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked with STRV from November 2021–2022.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

STRV exceeded our expectations — they did a great job of helping us build our first mobile application. Needless to say, we couldn’t have done this without them.

How did STRV perform from a project management standpoint?

They always met our deadlines and stayed within budget. They were also very responsive. For communication, we used Slack and held daily meetings via Google Meet.

What did you find most impressive about them?

STRV’s biggest strength was their team, which consisted of very smart and skilled people who were easy to work with. They also followed best practices for development and made sure each output aligned with our company’s vision.

Are there any areas they could improve on?

I can’t think of anything that STRV could’ve improved on. They were a pleasure to work with.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I recommend hiring STRV early so that you have time to work together on building initial prototypes of your product.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the chief people officer for a consumer sports stock market. We’re a licensed gambling product in New Jersey, but people can download the app throughout the US.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with STRV?

We needed someone to build our marketing tools from the ground up for our website and application.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Initially, we tried STRV for a month to see if they were able to build a piece of marketing tech stack. Then, we expanded the engagement and kept their team to build the rest of the marketing tools, such as referral programs and marketing promotions. Our team has provided specific design parameters, but STRV builds the code and tech stack from scratch. We’ve allowed them to determine the best way to build the tools we want, and they’ve used Go, Swift, and Kotlin.

STRV continues to build additional marketing tools. Every time we come up with a new idea, promotion, or referral program, they develop it. They’re currently in the process of building our referral program.

What is the team composition?

They operate as a squad; we’ve worked with about six people. The squad includes a product manager, a backend engineer, an iOS frontend engineer, and a QA engineer. We recently added an Android engineer.

How did you come to work with STRV?

A fellow entrepreneur used them to build out his consumer app. When we said we needed to find good engineers at an affordable rate, he recommended STRV. He introduced us to the founder, and we enjoyed our conversation with him, so we signed up. The founder mentioned that they also worked in squads, so it was clear that they’d be a good fit. We liked that they took the same approach as us, so there wouldn’t be disruptions in the workflow.

How much have you invested with them?

So far, we’ve spent $250,000. We expect to spend another $100,000 between now and the end of January.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in June 2022, and our relationship is ongoing. We expect the project to run through the end of January 2023.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our company started from scratch, so the outcome is the marketing website that we’re currently using. When we launch the referral program, we hope to see an uptick in the number of new users and deposits on our site.

How did STRV perform from a project management standpoint?

They always complete the work on time, and we communicate well via Slack and email.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Overseas companies are often more affordable, but the quality of the engineering work is significantly less. However, STRV has struck a nice balance; they’re not the cheapest option, but their work is high-quality and significantly better.

Are there any areas they could improve?

The only painpoint has been their work hours; we’d like more flexibility with their work schedule. Since we have engineers on the East Coast and the West Coast in the US, there’s only a two-three hour window where everybody works simultaneously which isn't the most efficient way to work.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

We’ve had to be a bit more directive than anticipated, but it’s probably because they work with clients who aren’t as empowering as we are. We’d be okay with what they do as long as they stay with our guardrails.  We want them to tell us how best to build the product vs. wait for us to give instructions on every single step.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m an engineer at an educational technology company. We connect teachers, partners, and students to communicate with each other.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with STRV?

We needed to increase our mobile engineering capacities.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We’ve been working with STRV to augment our developing resources. To jumpstart every sprint, we tell them how we work and our expectations, and they start working independently but also contribute to the overall codebase improvements. For our most recent project, STRV has been helping us upgrade our messaging system on the iOS front, which involves updating the data model, implementing the UI, ensuring performance, and adding collateral features like reactions and scheduled messages. 

Regarding tools and technologies, their team has used Swift, SwiftUI, and Core Data.

What is the team composition?

We’ve worked with Martin (CTO) and their engineering and project management teams throughout the partnership.

How did you come to work with STRV?

Someone referred them to us.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in September 2015, and the engagement is still ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Thanks to their work on developing core features, our app has been around the top 10 most downloaded apps in August and September, contributing to our app’s revenue and putting us in the top 20 paid subscriptions on the iOS App Store as well.

How did STRV perform from a project management standpoint?

Martin has been great in delivering our requests within deadlines and budgets, giving input, and providing helpful feedback. Regarding communication, we use Zoom, email, and in-person meetings — they’re very responsive.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their high-quality engineering team is their best attribute; they’re responsive, flexible to our education season schedule, and easy to work with. In addition, STRV also responds to our requests to change the engineering resources they provide.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don’t think there’s anything they can improve on — STRV leads a straightforward process and is a quality partner with strong engineers.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the asset manager for a private fund that invests in various assets. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with STRV?

My responsibilities include project management of any assets we’re working on, one of which involves STRV. I work with them on web design and development for one of our projects.  

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We’ve been working with STRV on creating a website and its backend. The team has done all engineering and advising for the website. For documentation, we’ve provided them with legal documents necessary for the site, such as the site’s terms and conditions and privacy policy. Our team has also shared with them some ideas of what we want to do. 

In terms of features, the site is similar to LinkedIn. Users can create profiles for their careers, specifically in the entertainment business — we’re focusing on women's representation in film and television media in Hollywood. 

Moreover, users can create profiles as someone providing film services or as a hiring manager. The idea behind it is to create a one-stop portal for people in the industry — specifically women and those who identify as women — to find jobs that would otherwise be unavailable to them.

What is the team composition?

We’ve worked with two teams from STRV. Each team consists of five people. I mainly communicate with the project manager of each team. The other members are engineers and QA specialists. 

How did you come to work with STRV?

I wasn’t the one who contacted STRV; my higher-ups did that, so I didn’t know who referred them to the team.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve invested between $50,000–$100,000. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in January 2021, and the engagement is ongoing. We’ve started the project from scratch, but we’re almost done now. We’re only wrapping up a couple of loose ends. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

STRV’s work has helped bring our vision to life. This is a dear project to us as we work in the entertainment industry, and we hope to bring change to the hiring process of women and those who represent women in the industry. 

How did STRV perform from a project management standpoint?

The team has delivered everything on time and within our budget. When delays happen, the STRV resources are fantastic at communicating those things to us and helping us sort everything out. To communicate, we use emails; we connect through Zoom or our personal dialers and phone calls.

What did you find most impressive about them?

STRV provides great support in guiding us through the process. We’ve never created a website before, so we had no idea about the field. Their team provides robust explanations of how everything works, what’s the process like, and how long things will take. Whenever we can’t understand something, they always explain things to us well. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, there aren’t any. We’ve had such a great experience with them and never had any hiccups or misunderstandings. If we’re not on the same page, it’s quickly cleared up. Whenever there’s any miscommunication, it’s simply because we don’t know what we’re doing, and we rely on them to tell us how to complete our project — they’re great at it. 

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a product owner for the My Porsche App, which is the central app for Porsche customers who want to connect their smartphones with their vehicles.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with STRV?

Back in the day, Porsche had several mobile apps for customers. STRV was hired as part of a team to combine these several apps' most important features and bring them together into one.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

STRV staffs one of several product teams. They serve all required domains of a fully self-empowered team: Design, Android, iOS and Backend development plus QA. Those members closely work together with Porsche's product management.

What is the team composition?

We have designers and seven developers overall.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent between €1–€1.5 million (approximately $1.2–$2 million USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working with them in January 2020, and our relationship is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The app went live in the summer of 2021; we now have 150,000 active users. From a company perspective, that's a tremendous success. There’s always room to improve, but we’re really happy so far.

How did STRV perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re from Prague, so they’re an offshore partner. They’re comparably cheaper than all the other vendors we work with, so there’s nothing to complain about in terms of budget.

Moreover, we constantly work with them. STRV is busy with our daily work, and it’s an ongoing process. We meet daily, and there’s a prototype once a week. We mainly communicate through Slack, and each morning we have a video call.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I’ve worked in software development for eight years, and I’d never experienced a provider that always delivers such high quality on time. Usually, if you have a large provider that bring all types of people to the table, you can have someone who isn’t that good. However, we have nothing to complain about STRV. They’re excellent in their work. It’s a bold statement, but these people are currently one of the best people we’ve worked with so far.

Are there any areas they could improve?

The only thing they weren’t able to provide was additional backend support at short notice. We tried to get more people, which is currently impossible because the whole market in Europe has a shortage of backend developers. Other than that, there isn’t anything in particular.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

If it’s possible, visit their office in Prague.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We provide blockchain services to B2B clients and are building a cryptocurrency exchange for B2C clients. We also have some cryptocurrency mining operations that help companies invest. I’m the chief product officer.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with STRV?

They provided me with design services.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We described our challenges, and they came up with possible solutions. Brainstorming took place with both us and the designer, but we didn’t have any specific requirements. We had some preferred colors, but we were rebranding as well, so we were basically starting from scratch. It was more of a collaboration on the creative part, and they executed on the design.

What is the team composition?

We worked with one designer and one project manager.

How did you come to work with STRV?

Their reputation preceded them. I knew about them in general and that they were successful in providing services to clients like design and development. I was hoping that they would provide high-quality service.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from July 2021–April 2022.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We’re still working on implementation, so we don’t have any metrics yet, but the general feedback has been that it was a great cooperation with STRV. They were very professional and got straight to the point. There was no time wasted on meaningless tasks, and the designer we were working with was very talented and knowledgeable about our industry. We didn’t have to educate him, as he was doing his own research very thoroughly. They handed over the files in great condition. We were 100% satisfied.

How did STRV perform from a project management standpoint?

This is difficult for me to say, as we introduced a number of changes; there wasn’t a set timeline. Their initial estimate was correct, however, and they built a campaign around it.

Our communication was over Slack and Figma. We didn’t use any sort of management tool like Jira because my team was very hands-on. They were as well. We already knew who was working on what.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I really appreciated the research that they did themselves, including looking at the competition and comparable projects, as well as our product from the user perspective. They were able to take the best parts of everything and combine them into nice designs for us.  

Are there any areas they could improve?

At some point, they could have been stricter with us. STRV was very polite about everything, but there were some points when the developer could have let us know that an idea wasn’t going to be profitable. This may not be applicable to other clients, and it could just be a personal preference.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Prepare what you want to achieve and don’t try to micromanage them.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the digital product and technology leader at Philz Coffee.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with STRV?

We have an in-store pickup app written in React Native and a display app for our mobile orders in-store written in Swift for iOS. We had a Swift engineer on our staff but needed to scale our team with another developer who could carry over the app’s maintenance and iOS product enhancements.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

STRV helped scale our Swift development team and provided maintenance for our display app. Our customer-facing app depends on our display app, and the team helped us stabilize and ensure the quality of our mobile display unit. Additionally, they helped drive the development of innovative products and then maintained in-production support. When it came to new product lines, we worked with their product team and then passed work over to the development team. 

What is the team composition?

I worked with the CEO and an account representative. At a certain point, we had two iOS engineers and one QA specialist. My main point of contact was an account engineer. 

How did you come to work with STRV?

We had gone through a couple of different engineer shops, and we were vetting a provider because the quality of some of their engineers' work wasn’t great. Then, STRV came to us through our CEO’s contacts at LinkedIn because they worked on the LinkedIn app. When we met them, we vetted them with the same scores we used of all third-party engineers, and they were great on multiple scales; they were easy to work with and very personable. 

How much have you invested with them?

We spent over $200,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from September 2019–March 2022. We had to scale back our teams as we continued to focus on and redefine our product offerings, so we ended the contract with STRV due to internal budgets and realignments.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our customer-facing app depends on our display app; if the display app doesn’t work for the employee, the in-store pickup app doesn’t work for the customer. The quality of STRV’s engineering team was reflected in how they supported our mobile display unit, ensuring the success of our customer-facing app. STRV was more of a strategic partner for us than just a contractor. They helped support our development shop in ways that I would never have expected and weren’t even part of their scope.

How did STRV perform from a project management standpoint?

They were amazing, great communicators, and incredibly organized. In fact, they brought some centers of excellence and best-in-class performance to us. We had a very small engineering team when we started, and they helped us build practices and processes to ensure everyone stayed on track. STRV had more engineers than us, and they brought over best practices that we worked together to implement. They had a big part in helping us mature our internal development process in terms of sprints, working with Jira, and burndown rate. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

I was most impressed with the quality of the people in STRV’s team. Every person I worked with brought a level of humility and was incredibly smart, and they were also friendly. One of their engineers became like family to us; he was as much a part of our team as our full-time engineers. 

When faced with a challenge, the team was very solution-oriented and collaborative. Working with STRV didn't feel transactional, which was a big part of their success and had a lot to do with what the CEO brought to the table. They weren't just competent at their skills — they were also people-smart. STRV was dependable, and I’ll take them wherever I go. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

Some of the design challenges could have been done a bit better. However, that was more of our problem than theirs. In terms of improvements, STRV could have driven more strategy in the process and worked through the pros and cons of something before diving into the development of the solution itself. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

My advice is that they know a lot more than you do. Sometimes as a business owner, you feel like you know everything, but STRV will get to know your business well — they’re incredibly smart. They have an excellent shop with mature processes; they write statements of work, follow up, and make sure to negotiate on price. I’ve worked with many contractors in my career, and STRV is one of the best ones I’ve partnered with.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the VP of New Product Strategy for a high growth, venture backed fintech company specializing in providing digital products for small businesses in the US.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire STRV, and what were your goals?

I was brought on to rapidly innovate with new products for our business customers. Having worked in the past with STRV, I knew that they were the right company to partner with. My needs were a full-service design and development engagement for a banking web app. They didn't have to start from scratch but it was pretty close.

SOLUTION

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

I was previously a founder of a fintech startup and utilized STRV for their design and development services of a website for my company. Having had a delightful experience working with them in the past, I knew that I wanted to give them a crack at this new project which was much more complex. I put the bid out to a few different vendors but in the end, owing to their excellent track record, I ended up selecting STRV.

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

We started with a sales and project engagement laying out the desired outcomes and goals. STRV assigned an excellent project manager to coordinate between myself and their team.

We settled on using NodeJS as a backend language because of the third party APIs were were integrating with (they had a NodeJS SDK). We also went with react for frontend work since my company already had a react environment. We moved into the design phase using Figma to go back and forth on mapping out the user stories to UI/UX work.

Eventually we moved to coding and pushing to staging/production environments (Kubernetes, Gitlab, AWS). Third party APIs used were: Auth0 for authentication, Unit for Banking as a Service and Plaid for bank account aggregation. Finally we set up the customer data platform using Tealium, Heap for Analytics, and Salesforce Marketing Cloud for transactional/marketing emails.

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

• 1 salesperson
• 1 project manager
• 1 UI/UX designer
• 2 backend developers
• 2 frontend developers
• 1 QA engineer.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

STRV hit all of their milestones including the desired delivery date for the MVP. We were able to execute a phased approach so that we could conduct the necessary compliance and information security deliverables while continuing to iterate on product features. All expectations for product functionality have been met thus far and we signed a contract extension to continue working with them for ongoing maintenance and feature iteration.

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

We had regular weekly check-ins with project and design in the beginning and were able to communicate asynchronously using Slack. Initial product requirements were provided in Jira and we also used Google Cloud products to continue the interaction (Hangouts, Docs, Mail, etc.). As my company was able to eventually bring on our own UX designer, STRV was able to quickly iterate on our enhancements without causing unnecessary delays in the overall project timeline.

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

Most impressive was how quickly the project manager came up to speed on the project; especially the complexity with deploying a highly regulated product in a banking service and the subsequent information security components. He quickly went from project manager to thought partner when it came to scoping out additional features including investigating additional solutions / APIs for product iteration. Also impressive is how quickly their developers work and while the time zone difference was 9 hours, you really couldn't tell based on their ability to work and communicate no matter the time.

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

I can't think of anything else at the moment. We will look to evolve some of the visibility into sprint planning but that was purely a choice given the bandwidth constraints on our side.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the co-founder & CEO of a consumer internet startup. We currently have nine full-time employees.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with STRV?

We were prototyping a consumer internet application to see if it could become a company.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We brought STRV on to build the prototype. Then, we expanded the team's size to continue building features and developing the application.

At one point, we were building web, iOS, and Android versions, but we narrowed our focus to iOS. We use a mixture of software languages, including Swift for backend, Node.js, and Render for infrastructure. For the admin tool and frontend, we use the React admin library.

What is the team composition?

Throughout the project, we’ve probably worked with 20 people. At one point, we were working with around 12. Now, we’re primarily working with three. As we proved the concept for the company with a survey, we’ve built our in-house team, which we discussed with them from the beginning.

How did you come to work with STRV?

My co-founder found them.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent $2 million.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in December 2019, and our relationship is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our goal is to iterate on features until we have a working application to accommodate thousands of daily active users. Although we’re not there yet, STRV has helped us build the app. Also, we’ve worked on developing a process where we can quickly experiment and learn more from our inaugural user base and the agile development culture we’ve built.

How did STRV perform from a project management standpoint?

They’ve been solid in their project management. We always develop accurate forecasts, and they’ve partnered well with us. As we built our team, the partnership was healthy, productive, bilateral, and honest. Overall, it’s been a good performance.

We have multiple meetings per week, and a lot of time, we communicate on Slack. We used Jira and GitHub initially, but we’ve moved from Jira to Notion.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re good at designing and engineering the product, which is rare. They have outstanding technical expertise on iOS and Android and are really collaborative, strong partners, particularly for building a consumer app. Overall, it’s hard to find a group that’s good at all of that.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I think there’s an opportunity for them to shuffle team members less.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

The optimal team size is around 4–6 people when you're starting. At one point, we had six team members, but we revved it up to 10, and it was too big. In fact, STRV warned us that adding engineers doesn’t always increase velocity.

Also, having an internal product manager to pair with their project manager can help. It depends a bit on if you’re trying to build a hybrid engineering team, but I think it’s rare to be able to recruit and outsource developers, and they’ve been successful at that. They’ve stayed up and sat down as we’ve built our team.