Brain Stars Technology

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the head of software development and VP of software engineering at Paysafe Group, a digital payment solution provider.

What challenge were you trying to address with Brain Star Technology?

We had to reengineer a legacy system that pertains to our affiliate marketing tracking software.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Brain Star Technology incorporated new components into all of our legacy white label management system as well as our new product version, which we’re soon to deploy. One of these features as a sophisticated single sign-on functionality.

The new merchant portal is able to authenticate merchants and authorize their transactions. It allows merchants to manage their integrations and examine their digital traffic.

What is the team composition?

There were initially two teams, which grew to three. There were around 15 people total.

How did you come to work with Brain Star Technology?

We’d worked with several larger providers for that particular product. Our business leadership had not been happy with their work. I had to look for another provider, and had had some previous professional contact with them in other settings. I found their talent, size,  and prices to be perfect for us.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent somewhere around $1.7 million.

What is the status of this engagement?

The engagement lasted between May of 2019 and June 2020.

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

Their work has been great. There was relatively little rework required since their output was fairly bug-free. Overall, I’m quite satisfied.

How did Brain Star Technology perform from a project management standpoint?

We managed the project on our side, but they were very responsive and transparent. They were proactive in reporting their progress. Work logs and progress reports were all very detailed. We didn’t have to remind them of anything, because they were very on top of things and adhered to timelines without issue.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They were extremely collaborative and receptive to feedback, which was a highlight of the engagement.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They could improve their onboarding processes. They took a little while on that front, but it wasn’t a major issue.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Make sure to have a preliminary conversation. They’re a small company, so make sure that they have the resources available to comprehensively address your needs. 

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a principal at Kwartile. We’re a big data services company.

What challenge were you trying to address with Brain Stars Technology?

I have engaged Brain Stars two times, once at Kwartile and once at my previous company, which was a social media marketing platform. With Kwartile, Brian Stars helped us develop a web application, among other things.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We were trying to build a platform to analyze big jobs that you run on big data technologies like Hadoop, Spark, and Kafka. Their responsibility was to write an application to analyze the logs and then give a graphical representation of how the job has behaved and suggest recommendations for improvement in either performance tuning or the code. They worked in Java and Escala and a little bit of Python. The frontend end was Java, React.js, and other JavaScript libraries.

The other project, for my social media marketing platform, helped us engage prospects on social platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to create more leads. Brain Stars helped us build part of a platform that collected data from various social media platforms. There was also an application top of that to manage the data. Finally, they built a whole marketing automation platform where we could create promotional tweets, messages, or emails to prospects and leads.

What is the team composition?

On the Brain Stars project, there were 3-4 people involved, including Ivan, one of the lead engineers. He helped us write the code and define some of the platform’s architecture.

On the other project, we started with two people and went up as high as six people. That company ended up being sold but Brain Stars continued to help the acquiring company.

How did you come to work with Brain Stars Technology?

They were introduced to us through another company that helped us develop the UX/UI for our social media marketing platform. We went through an interview process with a couple of companies and we liked what Brain Stars had done in the past. We engaged with them on a small project and then fully engaged when we were happy with the results.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent around $200,000 with them.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together on the big data project from January until June 2018.

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

They did a phenomenal job on all the work we gave them. Now, I’m working with another startup and I’m looking forward to engaging with them again.

How did Brain Stars Technology perform from a project management standpoint?

I’m really happy and satisfied. They’re not only strong technically, but also with daily communication. We had scrum meetings and talked thoroughly about design and architecture. Jira worked for our task management, and we used Epic Story, too. Our sprints started at four weeks but then came down to two. Confluence helped with documentation as well.

What did you find most impressive about them?

There are two things: they’re technically sound and their communication was excellent. We’ve never had any issues. Their willingness to learn also sounds out. Spark was pretty new to them, but they picked up on it pretty quickly.

Are there any areas they could improve?

All the teams I’ve worked with are among the top I’ve worked with. I don’t see anything I can point out at this time.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

You may need to spend some time with them to explain your problem, but once it’s done they’ll take ownership of the project.