Bardo

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the founder of a cultural magazine.

What challenges were you trying to address with Bardo?

We were looking to develop our website and a branding strategy.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Bardo managed all the branding strategy including the design and development of concepts around the brand. The team was also responsible for the website’s development and UI/UX design.

What is the team composition?

We worked with a designer, a developer, and someone in charge of branding and project management.

How did you come to work with Bardo?

We did extensive research online and found them on LinkedIn. We checked out their portfolio and social networks, along with other companies’. We contacted Bardo, had a couple of meetings, and found they had a very fast and complete understanding of our needs.

How much have you invested in them?

We spent around $10,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started in March of this year and the project finished around June.

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

We are very happy with the results; our brand and website are very solid. We haven’t launched the site yet, but we have had some tests and our user’s response is always excellent. The website is very stable, the design is great, and as for the branding, we found that Bardo was able to translate our needs very accurately. 

How did Bardo perform from a project management standpoint?

They performed very well. Before starting the project we established a calendar and during the project, we had completely fluid communication via Slack. There was great flexibility but also great professionalism regarding deadlines that allowed the great results we had. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

We’re most impressed by Bardo’s capacity to understand our ideas and translate them into a solid brand. Also, the website’s UI/UX was flawless.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I couldn’t say anything. We had a great experience.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the founder of a human resources platform that specializes in teaching jobs. 

What challenges were you trying to address with Bardo?

I needed UI/UX design support.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They worked on the branding and web UI/UX design for our platform using webflow and design software. They helped me shape my idea from scratch.

What is the team composition?

We worked with about three people.

How did you come to work with Bardo?

They were referred to be my someone who had worked with them before. I met up with them and realized they were a good match for this project. 

How much have you invested in them?

We spent between $10,000–$14,000 on the work.

What is the status of this engagement?

I started working with them in March and finished the project a few days ago. 

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

It was a great experience. Bardo helped me shape and materialize my ideas. The project went very smoothly and the communication was great. Even though we worked together during very uncertain and complicated times everything worked perfectly fine. 

How did Bardo perform from a project management standpoint?

We divided the project into brand and design workshops, which was a very interesting experience. This process allowed me to get to know the team and to make it easier for them to understand my ideas. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

The execution was flawless. I felt like I was working with someone inside my team more than with an external service provider.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I couldn’t say anything. 

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the co-founder and CEO of Period Gold Inc.

What challenge were you trying to address with Bardo?

I had an idea to reinvent our period tracking app and evolve into a self-awareness/wellness iOS app for women. We needed to build an MVP to show investors what we had envisioned.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Bardo built the app from initial design to release. They started with an exploratory design process and they helped workshop and add more ideas to the product. Importantly, their team added Contentful, a content management system, so that I could easily upload content to the app and have it go live immediately. We also had them do the design work.

What is the team composition?

In total, we worked with about six.

How did you come to work with Bardo?

A friend recommended Bardo to us. We interviewed a few people around the same time, but they got our concept the best and wanted to raise the bar in the space. They were also Mac/iOS purists, which helped because others wanted me to do a web application. They were the only ones to say “this makes sense for what you’re trying to do”.

How much have you invested with them?

We invested $14,800.

What is the status of this engagement?

The project began in January 2019 and the app launched in May 2019. The team continued to make fixes until a few weeks ago.

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

We’ve had great feedback. At fundraising and pitch events, our MVP is definitely much higher quality than the others we see.

How did Bardo perform from a project management standpoint?

Deadlines were an issue and there were some challenges with communication. The project took four months instead of two because some aspects were more complicated than they initially accounted for. We are in Los Angeles and they were in Spain, so if there was an issue after 10 a.m., I would have to wait until the next morning. We also weren’t quite as technical, and they made some assumptions of stuff that we didn’t know that created some friction.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We worked really well together. Maria (Product Designer, Bardo) was great. We’ve always felt very comfortable telling her what we were thinking. She was quick to empathize and address any miscommunications. The engineers may not have been as excited to work on such a feminine product, but I think they were open-minded and gave some of the best ideas. Getting men involved in brainstorming solutions for a period tracking app was exciting.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Not too many things; I think the quality is great. I would’ve wanted them to take a step back and adapt to the client’s level of understanding or lack thereof and contain them in different ways.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am a digital business partner for a large pharmaceutical company in Argentina. In my position, I lead projects and digital initiatives in cardiology and respiratory franchises space. I also manage relations among the franchise, national, and international suppliers that develop digital solutions according to specific companies’ needs.

What challenge were you trying to address with Lateral View?

Innovation week is one of the firm’s most important events of the year at a regional level. Managers from several regions are all present. We wanted to develop a mobile app with features for everyone who attended and hired Lateral View to build it. Since the event was for the company as a whole rather than aimed at any of its specific area branches, this was a significant project.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Lateral View developed our app for Android and iOS. It shows attendees the event schedule, relevant information about each speaker, and details about every talk. It includes links to surveys and for streaming. The map it contains features geolocation to help our guests find important locations within the event.  Lastly, a notable functionality it includes is a live event follow-up for attendants.

What is the team composition?

We were in direct contact with two developers. They were each in charge of content and design, respectively. I'm not sure how many members their in-house team included.

How did you come to work with Lateral View?

Being familiar with Lateral View’s work, we were interested in what they could accomplish in partnership with our company. We decided to work with them and contacted them when the opportunity came up. 

Another critical factor in our hiring decision was my excellent experience using the app they developed for an event I attended last year Having directly used the type of product we wanted them to produce for us, I felt confident about working together.  

How much have you invested in them?

Confidential cost.

What is the status of this engagement?

We contacted them in August 2018, started the project the next month, and finished it in November 2018.

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

The results Lateral View produced were excellent. I don’t have any quantitative metrics or reports right now. We did, however, conduct user satisfaction surveys and our guests all left exclusively positive comments. They enjoyed the UX, accessibility, clarity. Users also noted how easy the app was to download, which was a valuable criterion of ours.

The app delivered 100% of the notifications we sent and hasn’t had a single functional issue.  Internally, everyone was similarly very satisfied with the app. If we host any other event in the future we’re the most likely to work with Lateral View again.

How did Lateral View perform from a project management standpoint?

If there were any delays, they were mostly due to internal factors. Our communication was great. We mostly used email. Lateral View always sent us an immediate response.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Lateral View maintained impressively efficient communication. They built us a product with a high caliber UX. It’s much better than any other apps we have used before. I found these two strengths and achievements the most remarkable things about them.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Honestly, we don’t have any complaints. Lateral View’s work was flawless.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of a creative digital agency that partners with Lateral View on some projects.

What challenge were you trying to address with Lateral View?

We’ve worked together on several developments. Two of our key projects were for a third-party client, an agency in Chicago working on a project for a big hotel company.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Lateral View designed and developed a web-based and a mobile platform and the backend. The platforms allow users to redeem loyalty points for products that would be delivered to their homes. The technologies used were MongoDB, Ruby on Rails, CSS, HTML, JavaScript, and WordPress.

What is the team composition?

We worked with two developers supported by a project manager. They also assigned a designer to one of the projects.

How did you come to work with them?

We have known them for a while. We tend to collaborate between agencies here in Argentina, and they are one of our partners. They meet the requirements in a fantastically professional way. Their communications and relationships with clients are what we value the most.

How much have you invested in Lateral View’s services?

We’ve spent between $20,000–$30,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve been working together since 2015 and it’s an ongoing collaboration. We are actively developing with them for another client.

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

The results are positive. Projects were developed without a problem, and the third-party clients are happy with the results. We trust their services and adaptability. They’ve shown us that they’re able to adapt to the context and deliver the best possible results.

How did they perform from a project management standpoint?

They meet deadlines, and they’re organized. They use project management tools that make it feasible to work with clients at a distance.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The most important factor is that they generate a good balance in a relationship. Their processes are well balanced and they deliver beyond expectations. This is why we keep working with them.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Their staff speaks and writes English well in general. One of them wasn’t as great with the language, but the others helped out to make it an effective collaboration.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the head of product and marketing at Naked Labs. We're a small startup that makes 3D body scanning hardware. The scanner is composed of a mirror and a scale, so the user can step on it and get a 3D model as well as key health metrics and measurements. That helps them track their health and fitness progress over time.

What challenge were you trying to address with Lateral View?

We needed a company to help us develop a mobile app for iOS and Android.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They're in full charge of the development process, educating us along the way. The app itself is the only means of communication between our hardware, software, and our Cloud. The app allows users to do a scan by connecting their phone and the scanner over Bluetooth. Then, users can download their scan from the Cloud and see all the metrics and measurements. Two big capabilities of the app are IoT connectivity and rendering.

They delivered the MVP of the iOS app at the beginning of August and we're now working with them to do the same for the Android app, which should be completed by the end of September. After that, we'll continue working with Lateral View on building additional features.

What is the team composition?

We work with a project manager, a part-time designer, and six other members of their team.

How did you come to work with them?

They were highly recommended to us by a former colleague. They had expertise in building apps with IoT capabilities, which was important to us. Also, they had worked in the healthcare space previously. They were resourceful and their rates were affordable, so we chose them.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in September 2017 and the relationship is ongoing.

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

They're flexible and easy to work with. When we ask them to come to California and stay for two weeks, they do this with smiles on their faces. We're building an app for the first time, but they've been very patient with us. In addition, they're excellent problem solvers and feel comfortable pushing back on us, which helps us be more efficient and make better decisions. They produce high-quality work, even though it depends on the developer who is working on a given feature.

How did they perform from a project management standpoint?

They've become part of our team. Our project manager is great at seeing potential problems and getting us to think about architectural challenges. I'm the first-time product owner, so I learnt a lot from them. One of the challenges is that we're in different time zones and have to communicate via video and phone calls.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They're very committed, even when we ask them to travel or work long hours. They've become real thought partners to us, instead of being just developers who execute what they're told. Also, they're all critical thinkers, which we found very valuable.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They could benefit from pushing back a little bit more. Also, their communication skills could probably be a little better.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO and founder of Tenacity, a software company for call centers. We sell wellness products in a call center.

What challenge were you trying to address with Lateral View?

I needed someone to help me with web and mobile app development.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They built a top-to-bottom web-based application that involved using third-party trackers. There was some API work. They used a Ruby on Rails framework, JavaScript, MySQL database, and Amazon Web Services. It was mobile-optimized. They also a built complementary app for iOS and Android.

We’re in the process of shutting down the company for business-related reasons and working on an acquisition. We’re in discussions regarding continued work with Lateral View if possible.

What is the team composition?

There were up to six people on the team. It was mainly developers, but there was a project management team lead from the beginning to end. Occasionally, we utilized one of their frontend developers who had some user interface design expertise. Their operations leader and CTO were our primary sources of communication.

How did you come to work with Lateral View?

I was a tech startup and there was another tech startup company that had been working with them. They flew their primary developer up for the 12-week program, building a personal connection between us. We reviewed several firms. We’d seen their work and heard other testimonials. We figured if they’re 70% as good as domestic developers, at this price, we’d do really well.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent $300,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in 2015 and worked together for 32 months.

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

They created a beautiful, easy user experience. There are dynamic components to it that were reliable and highly secure for the environment we were in. The product is fantastic. The app turned out to be more reliable than any other fitness app we were able to partner with before that. Their app worked better in terms of accuracy and particularly better in terms of reliability. Our CTO is very senior and high quality, and he was very happy with their work.

They built an app that was extremely sticky with users. A few hundred of the 5,000 users talked about it changing their lives.

Their uptimes were fantastic and nearly flawless. Any downtimes we had were almost always the result of an outside vendor. In the one or two instances where a user discovered a problem, I called them Saturday night and they went in and worked all night and fixed it. They did outstanding work and stood by it in the rare instance that it needed any sort of help.

How did Lateral View perform from a project management standpoint?

Their estimates were always accurate on time and under or meeting budget. They stuck to their deadlines and costs. If we expanded the scope, they told us what it would cost. They always delivered exactly what we asked for and often pointed out ways they could improve it. Their English was very good.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They did everything we asked them to do extremely well. It turned out that they were every bit as good as domestic developers. We considered them part of our team. If I’m ever building anything again, I’ll contact them.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of engineering of a game software company. I manage several software teams and help ensure timely delivery of our products.

What challenge were you trying to address with Lateral View?

We needed help with Android application development in a short timeframe.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They’ve used Android Studio, Crashlytics, and Jenkins. It’s all fairly standard Android development on our end.

What is the team composition?

We’ve rotated through about five people from their team. We only use developers, but their leads step in to assist with scheduling and coordination on their end.

How did you come to work with Lateral View?

I’d worked with them briefly in the past and had a very good experience.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in 2016 and the relationship is ongoing.

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

We’ve used them to augment our manpower and they’ve integrated with our teams. We go through tasks and get estimates from them. They hit their deadlines and their work is good. They also give feedback and provide exceptional communication, especially for remote workers. They put in the extra effort to make sure they meet their deadlines.

How did Lateral View perform from a project management standpoint?

They have their own project management tools, but they’ve adapted to our methods since they’re integrating with our team. This made it much simpler for us to work with them. We keep an open channel of communication. We respond quickly when they ask questions or get stuck on something so they that they can keep moving. They’ve followed the timeline they provided to us well, which is exactly what we needed.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Communication is an outstanding strength for them. It’s easy for communication to be mediocre with outsourced workers, but they’re consistently very good with it. They join our team stand-ups and make themselves available to coordinate with us even during their off hours if needed.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There were a few things when we got started but they fixed them as soon as we brought them up. They’re very open to feedback and have made every adjustment we’ve asked for.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Treat them as a member of your team and it will go really well. A lot of times, you work with outsourcing groups and you need to treat like them like so. We’ve treated Lateral View like they’re a part of our team and it’s worked out really well. We much prefer that when augmenting our software engineering.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Our company is an IT development firm.

What challenge were you trying to address with Lateral View?

We needed a company to be an extension of our engineering team for mobile and web development.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They worked on a variety of projects. The last was building a web-based media portal for a large broadcaster. We worked with them on native iOS, native Android, React, and Node.

What is the team composition?

There were seven developers and one product manager. They have offices in Barcelona and Argentina. We worked with one web developer in Barcelona, but most of the interactions were with the Argentina team.

How did you come to work with Lateral View?

We did quite a lot of research. We wanted an agency that was in our time zone and had an equivalent level of talent to us. We were impressed by the quality of their staff, their English-language skills, and time zone accessibility.

How much have you invested with them?

Over $200,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in April 2017 and the work is ongoing.

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

They have a very high caliber of work check-ins and data. They’re tremendously accessible and have fitted into our team with ease. That was very positive. When asked to hit a certain deadline, they’ve shown a very strong work ethic and a willingness to go above and beyond when asked.

How did Lateral View perform from a project management standpoint?

We used Slack and Google Drive. They’re very competent in every way, shape, and form. It’s been just like having additional team members down the hall.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They have a strong work ethic and don’t fluster easily. Things might happen that are unexpected and they’re capable of taking that in their stride. They’re a good partner to have.

Are there any areas they could improve?

You have to explicitly ask them to go the extra mile. They absolutely will, with no complaints, but you have to ask. If there’s a big milestone coming up and you’re feeling behind, you have to specifically tell them that and that you need them to work over the weekend. They won’t offer it proactively.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am a founder of Mentor Day.

What challenge were you trying to address with Lateral View?

We started an organization around mentorship, pairing mentors and mentees based on problems specific to their businesses. We went from doing everything manually to creating a platform that would help us not only do the pairing, but also the session scheduling, and getting everyone to create and manage their own profiles.

What was the scope of their involvement?

My experience has mainly been in working with a project lead from Lateral View’s side. I don’t have a deep product background, so I wasn’t involved too much with the specifics around the technology and what was being done. I’ve tried to drive the vision, while Lateral View has been creating the product itself.

How did you come to work with Lateral View?

I had known their founder from a past experience when we were both involved in an accelerator. We shared a history of being backed by the same investor. Ever since then, we’ve been collaborating in different ways.

How much have you invested with Lateral View?

As a non-profit, we cannot disclose those numbers.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Lateral View in 2016. The platform is completed, but we continue to have development iterations every two weeks.

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

The collaboration has been fantastic in every way. We’ve managed to double our productivity already through the use of the platform. We measure success by the number of people whom we manage to match, and I can already say that we’ve more than doubled those results by using Lateral View’s technology. This is only going to get better and better, since we’re still adding features, and creating better solutions on both sides of the equation, including our marketplace.

How did Lateral View perform from a project management standpoint?

They have their own solution for project management, which includes JIRA. I’m not a very technical person, so I’ve tried to stay away and let Lateral View’s team drive. Being able to work with business people has been one of their strengths. Lateral View has acted almost like a CTO in being able to handle the technology aspects around solutions for the concrete business problems we’re having.

What did you find most impressive about Lateral View?

What really stands out about Lateral View is that they understand the business part; they are not just a development shop which can deliver technical solutions. There is a willingness to go the extra mile to understand the business problem and provide a technical solution which is at the core of what is being solved.

Are there any areas Lateral View could improve?

We tend to address every single thing which can be improved, as a core part of our relationship. We have continued to evolve through this process, and whatever seems to need improvement was always addressed by Lateral View.