Arcanium Ventures

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Founder & CEO of Keyspan

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

We are a direct to consumer preventative wellness and longevity business. We test biomarkers and provide truly custom nutrition, exercise, lifestyle and supplement programs designed to help you optimize your health in order to live healthy for longer.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Arcanium Ventures to accomplish?

• Build our tech stack
• Website
• Recommendation Engine

SOLUTION

How did you find Arcanium Ventures?

Referral

Why did you select Arcanium Ventures over others?

• Close to my geographic location
• Pricing fit our budget
• Referred to me
• Miles became personally involved in Keyspan as a fractional CTO

How many teammates from Arcanium Ventures were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

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

Arcanium has helped us pull together APIs from multiple partners into a wheel and spoke model with our Recommendation Engine in the center. This has allowed us to combine multiple services and data inputs to create a unique consumer offering. 
Some of the deliverables have included: Website development API integrations and on-going management Algorithm implementation and management Customer Communication workflow implementation

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

• Website Recommendation 
• Engine API integrations 
• Ability to accept payments 
• Delivering a customer experience that delights

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

They have been very involved and responsive with our project. We have weekly stand up meetings with the tech team and they are quick to respond to urgent matters. They have delivered product on time and have endeavored to double check their work to ensure quality is not impacted by speed.

What was your primary form of communication with Arcanium Ventures?

Virtual Meeting

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

I found their ability to adapt to unique situations with insight and prudent recommendations to be very helpful in making key product decisions. Having Miles personally involved in our business gives me comfort in knowing that we are getting the best possible service and outcomes from Arcanium. Their ability to be sensitive to budget constraints is also an important factor in our success up to this point.

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

I would like to see more use of AI for coding purposes to reduce overall costs and increase speed. I would also like to see more complete testing before pushing updates live to reduce the risk of bugs or errors in the code base

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the CEO of an AI media company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We needed to scale up out capacity to run AI models in the cloud. Our loads are bursty and tolerated some latency. We needed custom control of python scripts, and wanted some expertise on cloud infrastructure.

SOLUTION

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

We had already made contact with the company, and they seemed credible, but this was our first project with them.

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

Arcanium identified developer talent that was capable of working with us for the project at about 1/4 time per month. Through a qualified external contractor, they helped to set up a Kubernetes cluster with GPU access for each workload. We coordinated to create an PubSub API interface between our front end application and the AI backend.

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

I primarily worked with the external contractor. Occasionally, I met with the CEO Miles at key phases of project start / completion.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We were able to release a first testable version on our development server. We then swapped out the AI model twice, and through internal testing elected for the third option. We now have a framework to validate AI models in our development server, and with a few changes in variables, push them out (or roll them back) on our production server.

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

We worked directly with the contractor iteratively on small tasks, loosely a scrum format with meetings 1/week. Billing seemed accurate and fair, handled by Arcanium, for hours logged by the contractor.

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

I found the CEO, Miles to be very smart and reasonable. We established a baseline of trust that made other interactions and projects smooth.

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

I like that they were very open to provide a range of services and didn't push sales too hard. We have a shared slack channel, and it approximates having an internal team that you can request for additional specialized help on a project.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CTO of a data company focused on clothing and fashion.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Arcanium?

We’d just gone through a Series A funding round and were looking to expand our team. Arcanium came on board to help us hire additional engineers and staff members.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They sourced candidates for us, providing email descriptions of the candidates and allowing us to review their resumes. We selected the candidates that best fit our needs and culture. To date, we’ve hired one candidate and are currently searching for a second.

The job descriptions were our own doing; we posted them on our side, but they may have posted them on their site as well. They also performed a brief technical screening for us. These were basic tests regarding proficiency with the required programming languages, but they ensured that the candidates they passed on to us would be able to perform the role’s necessary functions if we selected them.

What is the team composition?

We’re working with one person on their side — Brandon (Co-Founder & Head of Recruiting). There are other recruiters helping out behind the scenes to screen and interview people before they make it to us.

How did you come to work with Arcanium?

They reached out to our CEO, and, after meeting with them, she passed them along to me. I talked to quite a few recruitment firms, and none of them stood out to me like Arcanium did. They were thoughtful and spent a lot of time with us to ensure they knew what we needed.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent just under $20,000 with them.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve been working together since March 2022, and our relationship will continue to grow, depending on our needs.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The technical screening they provided was particularly valuable, as it prevented us from investing 2–3 interviews in a candidate, only to find out that they couldn’t perform the necessary job duties.

I don’t have specific numbers, but they saved us a ton of time with the technical screening they performed. Finding appropriate candidates is quite time-consuming, and they took it off our hands, ensuring we only saw people who had the technical knowledge we needed.

How did Arcanium perform from a project management standpoint?

They use Greenhouse to keep track of the recruiting process. We didn’t use this during the first round of recruitment, but I know they have their own platforms that they use internally. Communication typically happens over email and phone calls.

What did you find most impressive about them?

If we don’t like a candidate, we tell them exactly why, and they work that information into their continued search. They definitely learn from everything we feed them, and we’ve certainly learned more about the type of people we’re looking for. Both of us have been able to pivot and adjust our strategy.

They’ve also been great at working within our time constraints and listening to what we need.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I don’t think there are.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Do your best to understand exactly who you want to hire upfront because the more information you give them, the quicker and easier the hiring process will be. You’ll certainly learn more as you go through the hiring process, but you’ll get their quicker if you provide them with plenty of information.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Local It is a company that is committed to helping small and locally owned business reach customers via new channels. Specifically helping them reach new customers on the exploding real time mobile platform.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

Local It partnered with Arcanium to build out a new Admin site for our business customer to manage their information. We needed a very clean, efficient way for a small business owner to keep their content fresh and timely. We wanted to put the power of just in time discounts and listing in the owners hands.

Our existing infrastructure didn't support a mobile responsive solutions, so Arcanium had to stand up new infrastructure to meet the need, without breaking or forcing a rebuild of the existing mobile application infrastructure.

The goals of the project were to standup this new platform, and integrate it into the existing infrastructure of databases, services, and mobile applications.

SOLUTION

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

Probably the biggest differentiator with Arcanium, was they did the requirements write up based on a conversation. Being able to take a business conversation and come up with the technical requirements to meet the goals of that business is a lost art.

Arcanium did a great job of recording our goals, and then designing a solution that would meet our needs.

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

The team at Arcanium created a complete CI/CD solution from GIT repositories, to AWS deployment. the web based, mobile-responsive application was built in React, with a NodeJS back end, on top of a AWS RDS implementation of MySql.

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

Arcanium had 4 resources assigned to work on our project. Their main architect, an extremely smart AWS infrastructure resource that did all the CI/CD configuration, plus two developers.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

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

Arcanium was great at communication. We used Jira to track tasks, and that generally works just fine.  But Arcanium also made sure to have touchbases to provide a forum for back and forth discussion.

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

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

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the CFO and co-owner of Taylor Made Cuisine, a meal delivery and full service catering company in Irvine, CA.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We hired Arcanium software to build a version 2.0 of our menu writing software. Our goals were to:

1. debug our current software
2. streamline our UX
3. Establish a cleaner workflow
4. Redo data tables
5. Automate our menu writing process

SOLUTION

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

We selected Arcanium through the original developer of our software version 1.0. He took a freelance job working for Arcanium and said that Miles (the owner of Arcanium) would be the man to get the job done!

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

I'm not too sure of the technologies used as I'm not a developer myself, but our software is a web based software. Our scope of work was dictated through an original walkthrough, several meetings over Skype and email communications. Our scope of work came out of the project goals and deliverables, while influenced by Mile's and Arcanium's developer expertise.

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

Three people total 

• developer
• CEO
• Director of Operations

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We have developed a truly custom software that will allow our wellness team to write over 300 menus per week. As a result, we will be able to grow our meal delivery subscription business accordingly. Without the software, we were worried about how fast we could grow which was a huge issue. Working with Arcanium has been great!!

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

Arcanium's project management style is calm, communicative, detail oriented, and responsive. They use tools such as Jira, Google meet, and email communication as well. We also communicated via phone as well.

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

I found Arcanium's ideas, attention to detail, and communication style to be the most impressive.

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

Overall the experience was great! The only thing I would have changed/they could have improved was if they educated us a bit more about the software building process. That way, we could have aligned both of our expectations better at the start. This was a minor set back, mostly due to the fact that it was our first time building a custom software

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

TripsTrade is a web3 short term lettings platform where people can search and book a place to stay or resell their bookings. I am the CTO

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

Initially, we wanted a PoC to send to investors for seed, which Arcanium delivered on time and helped us achieve our goals. Afterwards we hired them to act as an attachment to our team and help us scale. They helped us with recruiting and sourced a great UX agency.

SOLUTION

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

I think communication was key and the professionalism they displayed. They are very understanding of our problems. They managed to offer suggestions where we missed some issues. They also helped us scale fast.

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

For technologies we used standard full stack with a database and caching. AWS is our cloud provider and we do use caching tools. They were and are part of the full scope of the work within all our verticals.

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

We have one Tech Lead. UX team DevOps on and off and we hired one Smart contract dev through their recruiting pipeline

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Generally, very happy and I want to see us moving forward. I have worked with multiple consulting firms but I can say Arcanium is a natural attachment to our team both culturally and technically.

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

We use discord and emails. They are always available

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

The speed of finding someone for us and their professionalism about this.

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

Maybe a bit more visibility to their processes but I feel I don't personally need that.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the executive assistant at an Investment bank that focuses primarily on sports, media, entertainment and technology.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Arcanium?

We needed to rebuild our website from scratch with minimal materials while maintaining a current page online.

SOLUTION

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

We heard about arcanium from a colleague.

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

We had minimal materials available so they were able to take our scraps and create exactly what we wanted. After our first initial meeting they were able to take everything and walk us through their steps. We had about 1 meeting every week to discuss changes and progress which was helpful to distinguish any and all changes to the site.

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

We worked with about 3 people who assisted us in all of our needs. Miles who I believe is one of the founders, Sarah who is the CFO and Sam who is a brilliant web designer. Miles spearheaded our vision, Sam made our vision come to life and Sarah has been nothing less than amazing at providing us with all invoicing details on multiple occasions.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We were able to see much more traffic to our website and our interface is so much more user friendly both on a visitor perspective and internally.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Miles was our dedicated project manager and the workflow was great. Everything kept moving at a great pace and there was never any lag.

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

We were impressed by their hands-on approach and just how responsive they are.

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

I think the whole process from start to finish is perfect!! The attention to detail is my biggest thing and they were absolutely fantastic.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Founder of spiky.ai

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Spiky empowers revenue teams with real-time, AI-driven customer insights for enhanced selling effectiveness.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Arcanium Ventures to accomplish?
Helped us meet really good mentors from the field

SOLUTION

How did you find Arcanium Ventures?

• Online Search
• Referral

Why did you select Arcanium Ventures over others?

• High ratings
• Pricing fit our budget
• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from Arcanium Ventures were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

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

Finding business leaders, networking with experts, connecting with VCs

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We wanted to connect with sales leaders in the space and establish relationships with these people. We were very pleased with the connections established and even added a senior sales leader to our advisory team.

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

Yes, very timely and always responsive.

What was your primary form of communication with Arcanium Ventures?

Virtual Meeting

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

What I find most impressive and unique about Arcanium is their comprehensive, one-stop solution for product development and business growth. The ability to access a wide array of services - from expert coaching and advisory to on-demand projects, staffing, and even software development - all within a single mobile app is remarkable.

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

So far, everything has been great!

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Founder and CEO of Musical

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Operating system for the new music industry, empowering Artists to crowdfund, collaborate and build community directly with their fans.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Arcanium Ventures to accomplish?

• Integrate wallets, smart contracts and a token marketplace
• Reorient architecture to be project based
• Build a token gated fan experience

SOLUTION

How did you find Arcanium Ventures?

Linkedin

Why did you select Arcanium Ventures over others?

• Close to my geographic location
• Great culture fit
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from Arcanium Ventures were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

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

Build jobs to be done framework focused on multi use case project centrality, allowing us to deliver fan clubs, artist collaborations and song contests. Integrated with thirdweb to manage wallets, smart contracts and token sales/gating. Developed a fan checkout and ongoing experiences starting with custom UX design.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We have built a highly scalable, low friction platform to usher in web3 in the music industry, and the platform is far beyond comps in the market across the board

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

We managed priorities well in an agile environment. They were always incredibly responsive.

What was your primary form of communication with Arcanium Ventures?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

World class academic research, engineering and music background

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

not at this time

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the CEO of Matchday Health

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Jobs marketplace for doctors.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Arcanium Ventures to accomplish?

• Front end and back end development

SOLUTION

How did you find Arcanium Ventures?

Referral

Why did you select Arcanium Ventures over others?

• High ratings
• Close to my geographic location
• Pricing fit our budget
• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost
• Referred to me
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from Arcanium Ventures were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

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

1. Build MVP 
2. Work with Chief Product Officer on objectives

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Functioning product MVP

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

They have been making great progress and, overall, great to work with.

What was your primary form of communication with Arcanium Ventures?

• In-Person Meeting
• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

Their speed and ability to go above and beyond on delivering what was needed based on our objectives.

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

n/a