Very Good Ventures

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

At the time I was the Squad Member of E-commerce team at AB InBev.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

Having our own e-commerce site was in our plans but for the long term. It wasn't a priority for us. When the pandemic hit, it instantly became a top priority because the market was changing very fast and we needed to be fast too. We needed to have this channel open for our consumers.

SOLUTION

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

We selected this vendor after a direct recommendation from an outsider of ABI.

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

In the first meeting we told them exactly what are needs were. They made a plan and lots of recommendations to get all done very fast but without compromising quality or customer's experience. They recommended using Shopify, which we didn't know, and showed us all the options that were available. After we chose the best option, they took care of the development and worked together with our creative agency to have all the look and feel of the website just as we needed it.

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

Two people worked with us: a project manager and the CTO.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

At the first week we reached the monthly objective. Also, the NPS score was very high (80%), showing the good experience our customers were having with the website.

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

We talked on a daily basis and they were with us along the whole process. We didn't know what it took to develop an e-commerce website and they showed us everything that was necessary for us to know. We had a Slack group with them and another one with them and the creative agency, which made the communication very fluent and things were being handled inmediately.

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

The compromise and how fast they were on everything they did for the project. They were able to deliver a great product in a very short amount of time.

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

Everything was done very professionally. I can't think of anything better for the process.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO and founder of SCS Cloud. We’re a consulting partner for NetSuite and Salesforce. We offer implementation, custom development, and consulting services for both products.

We have 35 people working full time and 15 additional administrative people and contractors that we bring into various projects. We’ve been around for seven years, and we’ve been a five-star NetSuite partner for the last four years in a row.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with CreateThrive?

We had some resource constraints on our consulting team and wanted to expand our potential to deliver on NetSuite SuiteCommerce, the NetSuite e-commerce platform. We hired CreateThrive’s services to increase our capability.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We had one customer who was upgrading from an old version of NetSuite SuiteCommerce to a new version of it. This upgrading required a total rewrite of their site because the code had changed. CreateThrive assisted us in meeting that customer’s delivery timelines and objectives during the upgrade.

We had another customer that wanted to build out a custom microsite within the e-commerce platform where final customers could log in and see their own logo, view specific products applicable to them, and only see the specific pricing for them. CreateThrive’s team helped us take on that project, build out the functionality, and bring it into reality.

For those projects, we provided them with our approach and details, and they executed on them. They were mostly involved in the backend coding. Currently, they have a support role for those clients.

What is the team composition?

We’ve worked with an account manager, an architect, and two developers. We’ve interacted mostly with the developers, but we’ve also had a couple of questions for the architect as well.

How did you come to work with CreateThrive?

I believe I originally found CreateThrive on LinkedIn. When we interviewed them, we realized that their best attribute was their great experience with NetSuite. Their background was closely tied to that system, and they understood it really well — I believe that they were one of the original teams that helped to work on the platform.

CreateThrive also showed a really good attitude towards how they could approach the projects. They were very reachable and easy to communicate with, and they understood what we were talking about and what we desired and needed from them.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent around $50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together around February 2020, and our engagement is ongoing. However, their involvement is more limited now since completing those projects.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The NetSuite SuiteCommerce old versions were difficult to work with, and not many people understood them. CreateThrive was able to come in, bring their knowledge, and unstick that situation.

Now, the solution that we delivered for the client is live, and the client is processing tens of thousands of dollars from orders per week. CreateThrive was able to provide our client with a product that was stable and worked well.

How did CreateThrive perform from a project management standpoint?

From a project management perspective, they’re good. Most of our interaction has been with their developers, so we’re managing them and their time. However, when it came to it, CreateThrive was clear with us about how much time their developers had, and they informed us when they were too busy to work on the project at hand.

We ended up striking a balance to be able to do the work. We don’t have a full-time project manager, but CreateThrive does a good job managing their resources. We mostly use Slack to communicate, but we’ve also exchanged emails and had some Zoom calls.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The best part about working with CreateThrive is that their people are really great to communicate with. They’re very competent and know what they’re doing.

Are there any areas they could improve?

The only issue that we’ve run into once or twice while working with CreateThrive has been around resource constraints. On occasions, they didn’t have enough people to deliver everything that we needed at the time. However, they were pretty clear about it and communicated it pretty well.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

To get the most out of the engagement, be clear about the requirements and work closely with their resources.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a business solution sales consultant at NoBlue. We’re a SaaS company that implements and customizes ERP solutions for our clients across the UK, Europe, and the US.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with CreateThrive?

We needed them to develop an online B2B marketplace for our client.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

CreateThrive was involved in both the design and development stages of our client’s product. They started by doing extensive research that determined the design and content that they should integrate into the platform, going through the products of our competitors and filtering concepts that they could put together to build the e-commerce site.

Their team was then involved in designing the site’s backend, implementing back-office system solutions, and conducting app testing before the product went live. We then made a few configuration changes before sending it over to our client for their approval.

What is the team composition?

We’ve worked with at least three resources from their team, including a project manager and two developers.

How did you come to work with CreateThrive?

Their team was recommended to us by a colleague.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent about $60,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

The project ran from January–October 2020.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

CreateThrive managed to generate an informative and user-friendly platform that was highly favored by our client. It’s always challenging to make B2B agencies understand the difference between B2B and B2C operations, but CreateThrive’s team managed to supply the same level of high-quality service to our client.

In a span of six months, our client’s site reach grew rapidly from 0–5%. While it seems like a small number, that’s already highly impressive in this business sphere.

How did CreateThrive perform from a project management standpoint?

We mainly conducted our meetings via Google Meets. CreateThrive communicated excellently with our team — I never found the need to chase any information or deliverable that I needed from them.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re a team of effective communicators, and their technical capacity was unmatched.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I didn’t encounter any areas that needed improvement. While our timezone difference was challenging, it’s something that we conquered well together.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Remember to engage many resources from your internal team as well. It takes a lot of time and energy to create a web platform, and CreateThrive will appreciate the support that your team can provide throughout the engagement.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a project leader at Homethrive. We’re a technology-enabled services company that helps families navigate elder care and supports them as they work to have their loved ones age at home.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Very Good Ventures?

We work with caregivers and their aging loved ones, and we wanted to build a new in-home tablet experience and a mobile application for them that could work on Android and iOS. We had developed a set of capabilities and features for this tool, and we were looking for a partner to help us bring it to life in a cost-effective and timely manner.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

The first phase of the project was research and problem validation. Our team worked to understand what our members wanted out of this new tablet and app experience. That allowed us to solidify the feature set that we wanted to build.

For the second phase, we engaged with Very Good Ventures and another one of our partners to work on the UI and UX front. We started the design process and worked on the technology, architecture, and general framework since the final product needed to integrate with our internal care management platform.

The third phase was development. Very Good Ventures used a platform called Flutter to write the code in a single repository and then compile it into native apps for iOS and Android. We launched three apps simultaneously: a caregiver mobile app for iOS and Android and a tablet Android app for older adults. We’ve also provided those tablets as part of our service.

Currently, we’re working on adding new features and functionalities to the apps, and Very Good Ventures helps us with this.

What is the team composition?

When we started, our day-to-day contact person was Tom (Principal Program Manager) who led the whole group. As things got up and running, we moved to Erin (Program Manager) who’s our main contact to this day. Additionally, four core engineers work with us on an ongoing basis. We’ve occasionally brought in a couple of extra people to speed up the process.

How did you come to work with Very Good Ventures?

We knew that we wanted to build the apps on Flutter, which was a relatively new technology. We set out to look for organizations that had expertise in it, and Very Good Ventures stood out. Flutter emerged from Google, and several engineers at Very Good Ventures were involved in its creation.

While we found some firms that had 1–2 engineers who had the expertise, we didn’t find anyone else who was as focused and experienced with it as Very Good Ventures. That set them apart and made it an easy choice for us.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent somewhere between $250,000–$1 million.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our partnership began in September 2020, and it’s ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Early users of the apps have been very satisfied with their reliability and functionality. We’ve talked to our clients about the availability of the apps, and it has attracted new members to join the service.

We’re pleased with the stability of the apps. If an issue emerges, Very Good Ventures addresses it quickly.

How did Very Good Ventures perform from a project management standpoint?

We use Jira as our product and engineering development tool. We also communicate through Slack and have regular video calls and check-ins. Additionally, we have phone calls and video calls on an ad-hoc basis. Very Good Ventures is very communicative, which is great.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Very Good Ventures’ expertise with Flutter sets them apart. They’ve treated this project as a partnership — it feels like we’re one big team and not just a vendor and a client. We’ve gotten to know each other well, and it feels collaborative. They’ve been extremely responsible and receptive to all of our requests. Additionally, they’ve been adaptive and flexible whenever our needs change.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I’m not sure I have anything specific to point out. We continue to work with Very Good Ventures, and they’ve been great at adapting to our requests.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I’d encourage people to lean on Very Good Ventures as thought leaders and partners. Don’t go to them with just a series of features that you want to build; instead, work with them to align to the problem and the goals that you’re trying to achieve. Also, draw on their expertise as you decide which features to build out. They’ve done this for many clients across many different industries, so take advantage of these aspects as you work with them.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am founder and CEO of a marketing company in Germany. Traxas specializes in inStore Analytics and smart ---- ad placement. Our customers include retailers like MediaSaturn, sOliver, REWE, HIT as well as exhibition companies. Our solution provides deeper insight into customer and visitor behavior and increases store revenue through targeted advertising placement.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, we commissioned CreateThrive to develop a system capable of visualizing real-time occupancy data live to the customer and to support our retailers in this difficult situation.

SOLUTION

How did you select CreateThrive and what were the deciding factors?

We chose CreateThrive because they had already developed a basic backend on a real-time technology and it had to be adapted and developed to our needs.

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

Unfortunately, everything had to go very quickly and there the team around Tomas was very committed and ready. We have had 2-3 appointments to our requirements. The setup went quickly and the team seemed very tuned in and professional. In the first step we needed a prototype and an MVP to show this to our existing customers in advance. The next step was to set up meetings 3 times a week to compare the development status and possibly incorporate new requirements. The workflow with the CreateThrive team is excellent and we all felt well taken care of.

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

Our main contact was Tomas Piaggio directly, because in the run-up the contact was made directly through him. After longer development phases, we were introduced to further employees from different areas, who took over individual points of the project. For direct queries we could always approach the employees directly. Organization and piplining was done by Tomas.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

It was a component of a completely new product. We have received great feedback from our customers and are currently selling the product very successfully in several countries in Europe.

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

We had short update calls 3x a week which were used to give us an insight into the current development cycles. Furthermore, the communication ran via Slack from CreateThrive. The team was always reachable and available for us.

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

The team spirit and the will to deliver the best possible product together with the customers

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

Not what we currently noticed, we are very satisfied with CreateThrive

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Head of Engineering with an innovative financial services company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Very Good Ventures?

We collaborated with Very Good Ventures to implement a brand new fully featured cross-platform mobile application using Flutter on a very aggressive timeframe. The project began as a parallel track project rebuilding independently developed native apps into a unified code base with a small focused team as a prototyping exercise which was accelerated and solidified as a primary development methodology for building high-performance feature-rich applications for our end-users.

What were your goals for this project?

Time-to-market was a critical driver for this project. The experience that Very Good Ventures brought to this project created exceptional levels of productivity out of a very small team.

SOLUTION

How did you select Very Good Ventures?

We completed an exhaustive process identifying Flutter expertise across a variety of dimensions including experience and activity within the Flutter community, previous client and industry experience, testimonials and customer references, as well as costs and timing. Very Good Ventures clearly stood out as a leader in the Flutter Ecosystem and literally has a team composed of some of the most active and engaged members within the Flutter community.

Describe the project in detail.

Very Good Ventures was both a training and implementation partner on this project. The internal project team had no prior experience with Flutter beyond basic prototyping. Very Good Ventures led the initial training and coaching of the team and built a level of confidence and competency that allowed our core team to become proficient in a very short time frame. Not only did we develop internal proficiency, we built mastery in best practices in building mobile applications using Flutter.

What was the team composition?

The project team was cross-functional and consisted of designers, full-stack developers, back-end developer and devops team members. The internal project team was completed with 4 FTE equivalent mobile application engineers from the VGV team.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

The Very Good Ventures team delivered above and beyond on all of their commitments. After a very successful training experience, the VGV team was critical in contributing to every milestone being met and exceeded, even with changing business requirements and timelines. In addition, every member of our evaluation team was impressed with the ability of the Very Good Ventures team to engage personally with humility and curiosity and genuine interest in our project. This is a rare talent not often found in senior team members with advanced technical experience.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Across 30 years of engaging with implementation partners in many different spaces and with many different technologies, I can honestly say that Very Good Ventures has been the most effective partner I have ever worked with. The members of our team from Very Good Ventures were fully a part of our team - there were no lines that divided us and we were all working towards the same goals as one team. The camaraderie and connection along with the coaching, teaching, advisement and trust that the Very Good Ventures team brought to our project made our experience working together absolutely delightful. In addition, the leadership and involvement of David DeRemer, the Founder and President of Very Good Ventures represented a significant investment and commitment to our project. David was flexible in accommodating our changing project needs and was committed to the success of our project.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Very Good Ventures is not simply a consulting company or even a technology delivery organization. Very Good Ventures is about creating exceptional experiences in helping people and organizations to succeed. You have only to look at their activity in the Flutter space and the many opportunities that they create for people to learn and support one another to see that they are driven not out of self-interest but out of genuine interest in doing the exceptional. I actively look forward to working with Very Good Ventures in the future, and this is not something I have often been able to say about implementation partners I have worked with in the past.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Keep doing what you are doing - building a great culture with a great team and delivering exceptional support to your partners!

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder and director of a nonprofit. We combine visual arts, music, and movement to enhance positive energy, healing, and self-esteem in children and adults.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Very Good Ventures?

We wanted to expand a pilot iPad program we had.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They created a Flutter app for us, which enabled our program to go on multiple devices. They did the backend development in Firebase. They were able to take our initial iPad pilot and finish it with a third-party designer.

They even completed the design for us and had it ready for the launch. The app has a drawing function they were able to expand upon. They continue to help with the app launch and the its ongoing management.

What is the team composition?

I work with David (CEO), one project manager, and three Flutter developers.

How did you come to work with Very Good Ventures?

Very Good Ventures was highly recommended by one of the key people at Google. I met with David in New York. He had a lot of great ideas and creativity.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent $125,000–$200,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in November 2019, and our work is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

They were great at being able to step in and seamlessly and see ahead. They were really easy to work with, especially for a non-technical person like myself; after talking to other coders, that skill isn’t common.

The app is very smoothly operated. We’re ready to do some projects with hospitals and the team has set up tracking metrics to see how the app is doing. They offer detailed information as far as downloads, usage, and other analytics, which is nice.

How did Very Good Ventures perform from a project management standpoint?

After dealing with firms that only work a certain way, I appreciate how they accommodate my creative style of managing the project. They’re always responsive to any immediate call, text, or email. They’re also willing to get on a Zoom call to show me how things are working face-to-face.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their flexibility to making the communication effective is very impressive.  It’s much more efficient for everybody.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I have no complaints because we’ve had such a great working relationship. I feel like they’re really part of my dedicated team.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I was fortunate enough to meet with David before COVID-19 hit. We had some really good dialogue and I felt very free to communicate my needs. They’re very understanding and it was very helpful. They’re a team of versatile and flexible team players.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CTO of Aura Financial, a small-dollar lender to underserved communities.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Very Good Ventures?

We were trying to build a mobile application that would provide feedback on sales agents for the companies we were partnered with. It would help them know how their sales agents were doing with selling the product, and it would also serve as a collaboration platform where they could communicate with each other.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We evaluated what kind of technologies we wanted, and we decided on Flutter. The project itself was a tool to help our agents collaborate and get feedback on their performance, but the goal was to expand beyond that into our customer base – the people who borrow loans.

We wanted a platform that could eventually scale beyond its initial scope to other use cases.

What is the team composition?

David (Founder & President) played the role of a project manager. We also worked with a product manager and 3–4 engineers. For the design side, we actually collaborated with another company in their office.

How did you come to work with Very Good Ventures?

We chose Very Good Ventures because of their expertise in Flutter. They also seemed to have a high-quality team.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent roughly under $100,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in August 2019. Because of the pandemic, we wrapped up in early 2020.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Unfortunately, the project was cut off before we completed it. The progress we did make was good. I thought that they produced high-quality work. Their team is full of top-notch people, and our team really enjoyed working with them.

How did Very Good Ventures perform from a project management standpoint?

We used GitHub for that.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We reached out to them because of their in-depth knowledge of Flutter and mobile app development. Their team is at the forefront of that.

Are there any areas they could improve?

If I had to bring up one hiccup, there wasn’t a lot of communication during the project's first phase. There was a directional shift in one of the design codes that wasn’t properly communicated. After that, David was open and transparent.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I would work with them again, so I would say go ahead and hire them.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am Principal Engineer of a personal financial services company in NYC. We offer a web and mobile app to help people manage their money for everyday spending, general saving, and retirement saving. I oversee large technology projects.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Very Good Ventures?

Our mobile apps have been under active development for 7+ years and have generally lagged behind our web app. We also struggled to build large enough android and ios development teams to keep up with the pace at which we wanted to deliver features. Over the years, our codebases became hard to maintain and it became ever slower to deliver new features to our customers. We decided it was time to explore cross-platform mobile development solutions.

We did enough research on our own to figure out that we wanted to do a pilot project with Flutter. We brought VGV in to help us figure out how to get started, to guide us in proving out the value of migrating our mobile apps to Flutter, and to train our team on how to use Flutter.

What were your goals for this project?

Our goals for this project were to evaluate Flutter through a pilot project, figure out how we would migrate from our current native development approach to Flutter, train our team on how to use Dart/Flutter effectively, and in the end deliver a higher quality software product to our customers with more frequent feature releases.

SOLUTION

How did you select Very Good Ventures?

We researched consulting companies with experience with Flutter. We reached out to our network to see if anyone had worked with a company on Flutter work. We found a small number of companies, but in the end, recommendations from our network and chatting with VGV gave us the answers we needed to pick them.

Given how young the Flutter consulting space is, it was important that the team we worked with have connections to Google and have the maximum experience possible with Flutter. Also, it was important that they had some experience with "add-to-app" which was a newer approach to adding Flutter to an existing app -- exactly what we needed to do. Given that VGV checked all those boxes, that sealed the deal.

Describe the project in detail.

The project consisted of 3 phases: pilot, training, fan-out / migration. The pilot was a tightly scoped rebuild of an existing feature. We folded VGV developers into our squad and worked how we normally would to build the feature out. We spent a good deal of time whiteboarding how concepts work in Flutter and generally exploring all sorts of architectural choices and approaches.

VGV was there to help surface options, guide us in making choices, and when the time came, help us crank through the project tasks. After the pilot was successful, we moved into a dual-track phase: planning a training program for our team and building out some more of the core capabilities we'd need to support more complex features within our app.

VGV developed a dart/flutter basic training with our input. VGV also provided 2 resources to us to help build out the core functionality we needed to have done for everyone post-training. Both the training development and the core functionality work were highly collaborative. We had many conversations throughout, divided up the work, pair programmed, etc. It was a lot of fun and very effective.

VGV also performed the training for our team. We had planned to do it all in-person, but when the pandemic struck, we had no choice but to shift it all remote. That required some speedy adjustments on VGV's part, but they figured it all out and in the end we had a great zoom-based 3-day training experience. After training, we moved into the final phase of the work: staggered onboarding for each squad to everyday Flutter development.

We took our 4 VGV resources and kicked off a project with our first squad. Each squad got 2-3 weeks of dedicated, full-time access to their 2 new VGV teammates. After the 2-3 weeks for one squad, we kicked off the next squad until all 3 squads were working on Flutter features concurrently. At that point, VGV resources were floating around between squads providing support, code review, pair programming, and anything else folks needed to build their features.

What was the team composition?

For the pilot project, it was 2 VGV developers and 3 of our developers. We worked as a single squad for 2 months to deliver the pilot project. After that, we did a training with VGV which included 4 or so of their people and our entire team of 15. After training, we shifted into full team Flutter execution.

For that we had 4 VGV developers working with us across our 15 developers broken into 3 squads. VGV navigated the whole process with us seamlessly.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

At this point, we're building all our new features with Flutter. So, after about 4 months, we've got our entire team and even a bunch of new team members building with Flutter full-time. That means that every feature we've built has been built only once for Flutter instead of twice, once on android and another time on ios.

The time savings in initial development, but also in maintenance is huge. Also, having resources that can confidently fix bugs in a feature and see it fixed on both platforms is huge. It's a fundamentally different place to be in than where we were this time last year. VGV provided us everything we needed, at each step of the way, to successfully evaluate Flutter, learn Flutter, and transform our team and our app to use Flutter.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

The interactions between VGV and our team were smooth. We got the whole team into our Slack workspace and our GitHub organization. That allowed us to fold VGV developers into our normal workflows with ease.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

I was really impressed by the depth and breadth of knowledge that VGV has of Flutter. There was really nothing that we ran into or could ask about that VGV didn't know or have a really clear understanding of how to find out. It was also great and impressive how much they knew of ios and android development.

That was critical for us in relating concepts to Flutter effectively, especially as we had to figure out a durable way to integrate Flutter features into our native codebases.

Are there any areas for improvement?

We had a few hiccups early on when it came to scheduling and how to best use VGV's time on the pilot. We wanted to write most of the code, but we also wanted to move faster. We had a few conversations about the issues and we easily resolved it.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I was the CTO of a same-day delivery pharmacy. We had brick and mortar pharmacies serving NYC and the surrounding tri-state area and were rapidly growing in existing and new markets.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Very Good Ventures, and what were your goals?

I inherited an unscalable operational process, with an over reliance on aging manual processes and suboptimal visibility due to lack of data and siloing of data. We engaged VGV to come into the business with us, understand the processes, and implement a solution to give us a quick win as well as a foundation upon which we could build.

I was building out our own engineering teams and it was very important that the deliverables would become something we owned through shared responsibility and handoff.

SOLUTION

How did you select Very Good Ventures and what were the deciding factors?

We had a startup mentality. And we needed a partner who understood what that meant. Launch quickly, learn from live code, observe, iterate, and repeat. VGVs background, team, and history with us uniquely positioned them. They had proven themselves before and it was clear they could take on this new challenge.

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

VGV designed a Slack-based operations workflow management tool. They worked with key stakeholders in many of our departments to develop the concepts, then quickly launch and iterate a live product in production. The backend was serverless with a modern architecture that would allow us to readily scale and enhance the tools.

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

We worked directly with the CEO, David, from beginning to end. He understood our business deeply and co-developed many of the concepts with us. He brought in a number of engineers from his team as well as recommended a top tier designer - who we ended hiring to be our Head of Design.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our team was able to take ownership of the tool without any trouble. We have enhanced the tool directly and through the micro services architecture. It continues to power fundamental parts of operations.

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

The project management style was fast, open, and iterative. We utilized high bandwidth in-person meetings, especially at the onset, and maintained visibility primarily through email, Zoom, Slack, and phone (text and voice).

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

One of the key factors in choosing VGV is what I find most impressive - they take the time to really understand your business and your challenges, then tailor a solution with you. They do not show up with pre-planned options and treat you like an undifferentiated client. This is particularly important in software development, a technical and creative endeavor.

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

I honestly had no issues working with VGV! Personally, I prefer more updates, even if that update is just a quick "status quo - we good." They could have done a bit more of that. But I never communicated that desire to them, and do not fault them. Their communication was great.