Astarios Labs

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

As the Engineering Lead of Innerspace, I am responsible for the technical development of our VR-Simulators and its Services. We create high-fidelity VR-Training Applications for the pharmaceutical industry.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

Astarios helps us to expand our growing development team. Together, we identified and hired high qualified Unity Developers, that are today an integral part of our teams - solving the challenge of creating the next level VR-Training applications.

SOLUTION

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

When working with partners, we often rely on gut feeling in our first calls. With astarios, and its managing directors, we immediately felt that this is going to work - transparency and professionality from day one. Fair pricing and a great service make the package complete.

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

We create VR-Simulators for the pharmaceutical industry. As development framework we rely on the Unity game engine. That's where 3D, audio, and software comes together.

The development teams (hence also the developers from astarios) are responsible to create VR-Trainings from the initial idea to the final visual effects tweaking - from architecture, over build pipeline to the frontend code.

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

So far we work with two experienced unity developers. Both of them are in different development teams.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Creating VR-software for the enterprise sector needs high quality talent. That's what we get from astarios.

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

The developers from astarios are integrated in our scrum framework as regular team members and of course we communicate on a daily basis. Additionally we have monthly meetings with management to check in how it is going.

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

We got a lot of different profiles for unity developers with a high talent. After selecting the once, that fit our challenges and culture the best, the onboarding was very smooth as the new team members have been very good prepared.

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

As we have our own contracts, it took some time to get the details sorted and all paper work done. We established a very solid contract in the end, where both parties are happy.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the CTO of a venture studio that specialises in building companies in various industries in frontier markets.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire astarios?

Astarios has helped us build an off-shore team of engineers and designers that speeds up the development of our online platforms considerably.

What were your goals for this project?

Our projects require speed and stability. The team that Astarios helped us build achieves this at a very high standard.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

After reviewing a number of vendors in the same field, we decided that Astarios was the most professional and cost effective partner for us.

Describe the project in detail.

We work on various different projects, what they all have in common is that they are only platforms that help our users access products and services that they wouldn't have access to otherwise.

What was the team composition?

Our ever-growing team is currently composed of 2 front-end developers, 3 back-end developers, 1 android developer and 1 UI/UX designer. Although we are currently in the process of hiring 2 extra back-end developers.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Most of our projects are ongoing, Astarios helped us lunch and maintain/improve these projects on a daily basis. Thanks to their effort our sales and exposure continue to improve.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Our teams communicate online on a daily basis in the form of stand-ups, sprint meetings and Q&A's. The Astarios team is always available and ready to help.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

The speed at which Astarios is able to source new hires, as well as the quality of them, is impressive.

Are there any areas for improvement?

We are pretty happy with their service at the moment.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Aleacta is building an AI-based investment management application for VCs. Our tool is used to acquire, analyze and manage new investment opportunities. I'm the CTO of Aleacta.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire astarios?

We needed developers to speed up and improve development of our product. Astarios helped us finding engineers and manage the offshore development.

What were your goals for this project?

Develop a self-learning analytics and data acquisition infrastructure to enable automated processing of business plans using reinforcement learning.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

I met one of their partners at a Meetup. Having some experience with offshore development myself (running a team in Ukraine in a previous job) they made a very competitive offer which we accepted.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

• Processing pipeline for enriching data (e.g. text analytics, identification of people, news & social media analysis)
• Supporting us in developing a self learing algorithm based on Grakn/Tensorflow
• Backend/Frontend integration (APIs)

What was the team composition?

The project team has three developers, we're looking to expand this in the near future. The development process is managed directly by us, with Astarios providing a project manager to support us.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

The product is now ready to go to market. As a startup, reaching this milestone within a short time was very crucial to be able to build up a sales channel and generate revenue.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

We used clubhouse (moving away from Jira) to manage our project. Once we got our processes working, milestones were delivered in time and according to our specifications.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

• Very uncomplicated and easy communication
• Direct access to the development team
• Their ability to find exactly the right people for the project

Hiring "by proxy" is not always an easy process, they managed to make this very easy and efficient

Are there any areas for improvement?

They delivered what we needed within the time we needed it - so I think in our case there is very little improvement to be done.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Hallo Welt! GmbH develops BlueSpice, an enterprise-level wiki based on MediaWiki. I am head of technology and co-owner.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire astarios?

Development of BlueSpice extensions, reduce technical debt and fix bugs in the existing code.

What were your goals for this project?

BlueSpice is in continuous development. We needed additional resources, especially for our upcoming cloud launch.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

Astarios contacted us via email. By then, we had already skimmed several other vendors. What we liked was the well formulated and specifically targeted approach. The contact is personal and friendly, yet professional.

Astarios showed a lot of flexibility, so we could tailor the services to our needs. In particular, we were looking for a company that could provide us with a long-term team, since building up the relevant knowledge for BlueSpice development takes some time.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

They started a recruiting process based on our requirement profiles and were able to produce a short-list in no time. After the selection process, Astarios hired the team, provides a work environment and manages HR related tasks. The team is included in our workflows and reveives their tasks on a ticket basis.

What was the team composition?

The team consists of two developers, a senior and a middle. We plan to extend the team in the future.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

By adding extra ressources to our project, we are now more flexible and can deliver faster.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Project management is in the hands of Hallo Welt!. Astarios manages the organisational side.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

I am impressed by the excellent service. We have frequent coordination calls, and my customer satisfaction is valued very highly. Also, they proved to be very flexible when we changed the team composition.

Are there any areas for improvement?

I am happy as is.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

flowpilot is a Fintech Startup, based in Berlin. Our Software helps SMEs to analyze, manage and forecast their Cashflow, using AI and other State of the Art features. I'm the Co-Founder and CEO.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire astarios?

We were looking for reinforcement for our highly specialized developer team.

SOLUTION

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

astarios has proven to be a highly flexible solution provider. The company quickly and straightforwardly recognized our needs in frontend development and was able to introduce us to qualified team members.

Describe the project in detail and walk through their service package.

With several E-Mails and calls astarios was able to analyze our needs and suggested qualified candidates. The interviews with the candidates went really effective and we were able to find new team members in a very short time.

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

Mainly we worked with Andreas ans Alex from astarios.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Thanks to astarios we were able to find qualified staff, integrating them seemlessly with our existing team of developers.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

We were extremely happy how quick we were able to find qualified new team members.

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

astarios' support and help during the whole hiring process was very impressive. They cared for our needs and were always open for feedback.

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

No