ADG

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am Regional Director of Startup Programs for the EMEA region at 500 Startups. As part of my role, I manage the 500Georgia Acceleration Program, where I was responsible for managing the program and bettering the overall startup experience. 500Georgia can be seen as an exchange between Silicon Valley and Georgia: an acceleration program situated in Georgia that gives the country’s tech startups the opportunity to get a taste of big-time business growth and development through professional training and advice.

For what projects/services did your company hire ADG?

ADG was invited to be a part of 500Georgia so they can provide some insight and consulting for the startups' design, product, and growth strategies.

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

While I wasn’t personally responsible for selecting ADG, I believe they were chosen to be a part of 500Georgia due to their insight and value that shines through in their work. ADG is a great and proactive collaborative partner that continues to accomplish not only their goal of bettering startups, but also to guide these growing tech companies to make large-scale societal impacts. Since then, I’ve already been part of the decision to personally select ADG to be a part of future business endeavors.

Describe the project in detail and walk through the stages of the project.

With the collaboration of Georgia's Innovation & Technology Agency and the Bank of Georgia, 500Georgia selected 30 startups from Georgia and the Black Sea-Caucasus region. The goal in 500Georgia was to help the chosen technological startups become even better by teaching them valuable business techniques and skills in areas such as product management and design.

ADG was specifically asked to work with every single startup in both four-month long cohorts to advise the founders, leaders, and teams on their product and growth strategy. ADG and their consulting was given consistent positive feedback from the program’s leaders and the startups' teams because they delivered above and beyond at every phase in both batches.

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

I worked with ADG’s founder Noteh Krauss and a Business/Design Analyst.

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

ADG’s involvement throughout the acceleration program helped contribute to a very high score in founder NPS in both batches. Noteh received consistent positive feedback for his sessions and one-on-one mentorship. Apart from the measurable progress, ADG’s collaboration and connection with the 500Georgia startups was definitely noteworthy, as they were always mentioned and highlighted for their input in each startup’s journey in the program. I have no doubt that everything that ADG taught and showed the startups will stick with them beyond the program.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

ADG’s Design and Society approach included lectures, one-on-one sessions with startups’ founders and teams, and workshops. With these methods, ADG was able to help the startups deal with difficult business challenges and grow financially and strategically. I can confidently say that the workflow between ADG and the startups was outstanding on many occasions. Towards the end of the Batch 2, each startup made a presentation to demonstrate their progress. It was noteworthy how effective ADG and their work strategy was with all of the startups that participated in 500Georgia.

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

The fact that all of the startups voiced how much they loved working with ADG was outstanding and extremely impressive. Not only did ADG provide an enjoyable experience for each startup involved, but also a valuable one where they all garnered new skill sets and lessons that result in successful business outcomes. Everyone involved was satisfied with ADG’s superb work in advising startups on their product and growth strategies — the startups, stakeholders, and myself included took note of ADG’s involvement that propelled this program to immense success.

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

I'm having a really great experience working with ADG. Watching them work with the 500Georgia startups, not to mention witnessing how much positive impact they had on the startups’ teams and founders. Over the course of this program, ADG’s professionalism and consistency in quality was really impressive. Even when we had to abruptly change the program from in-person to remote due to the pandemic, ADG was very adaptable and collaborative in the process.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of research and design of Bayer, in charge of creating new revenue streams to diversify the innovation efforts of the west coast team. We report to the higher organization in Berlin, but we operate independently at the San Francisco Innovation Center.

What challenge were you trying to address with ADG?

Every once in a while, when we run a couple of ethics and sprints, we do a review of our playbook and try to update our process and practices. Based on our success and opportunities for improvement, we evaluate what can be changed and what needs a little bit more time and effort.

We are a horizontal team so everybody’s priorities — whether these are on business, research, design, or engineering — are aligned to balance how a product serves both the end users and the business. When we do this, we bring in an external partner to take some weight off our department. We hired ADG to be our neutral voice and to help us make an objective review.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Our unit creates investable concepts that we present to our venture board and, later on, build. Our objective was not to come up with new features but rather to come up with tools and methods to make our process more efficient when creating these concepts. In that sense, our engagement with ADG is a little different from a typical UX development.

They conducted robust facilitation and consulting for us. We started with initial workshops and a presentation to guide them. They then conducted edits and further iterations based on our feedback.

What is the team composition?

We brought in a facilitator from their team along with a visual recorder who did the documentation and synthesized all of our input.

How did you come to work with ADG?

Our company is mandated to work with an RFP process, so we selected a few vendors close to our environment based on recommendations and based on our knowledge of their existence. We’re active in the community, so we’ve seen and liked some of their process and methodologies through a private conference and workshop. 

ADG was one of the companies included in our RFP. They ended up putting together a proposal that was most aligned with our expectations, so we chose them.

How much have you invested with them?

We invested an amount within the $250,000–$500,000 range.

What is the status of this engagement?

The RFP up until the project completion lasted from March–September 2020.

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

Our satisfaction was entirely dependent on the workshops being undertaken and facilitated by ADG. They made sure that every participant from my team had a strong voice and that their points were taken into account, especially regarding what processes worked in the past and what we felt were opportunities for improvement. In that regard, we were very satisfied.

In addition, ADG not only heard us out but also proposed new tools and processes to elevate the way we work. Since then, we’ve had a definite improvement in our processes, in the amount of time that we allocate to tasks, and in the investable concept that we produce. 

The biggest success is that we were able to produce two concepts that the board was enthusiastic about. They would normally just choose one concept and park the other. We had two concepts rolled into production, which is a great distinction from what we used to do.

How did ADG perform from a project management standpoint?

Due to the nature of the project, we didn’t necessarily use any tools or launch any products, but we did use Trello. It offered a simple way to list tasks for different stakeholders who may not be design-centered. 

Their project management was more about making sure that every person in our team had time to unpack what they knew and what they thought needed improvement. ADG extracted our ideas, managed the tasks according to our expectations, and maintained tremendous attention to detail.

What did you find most impressive about them?

One thing that really attracted us from the get-go was that they pushed the human-centered design framework into a design and society framework. The common mistake we had before was that we focused on individuals and failed to address the societal impact of our products and services. ADG helped us understand how any product or service has an impact on everything, from consumer access to health policies.

What most impressed us is the way they did not sit on everybody’s preconception of the human-centric design but rather pushed us out of the box to look beyond our narrow lens. The team had some interesting ways of thinking and even addressed object actors as a vital factor to consider when developing any product.

Are there any areas they could improve?

In our profession, we love to pressure test new things and learn from the findings. When something breaks, it is usually a good sign that we are pushing sufficiently, so I wouldn’t criticize that some parts of the process broke. After all, that was the purpose of our playbook, and no good playbook survives its first contact with a sprint.

On that note, there is nothing for them to improve on. They were able to work with us on the fringe and were willing to take risks.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Do not be deceived by the fact that they are a small and agile team. Some agencies have a lot of players but will often provide a rotation of specialists who are working with 2–3 clients at any given time. The advantage of working with ADG is that you get a very dedicated and focused team.