Brainhub

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the engineering manager for the mobile and desktop applications of an e-health platform.

What challenge were you trying to address with Brainhub?

We needed help with the development of our desktop application. We didn’t have any knowledge about it.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Brainhub has helped with the development of our desktop application. They’ve used the Electron framework. They initially took the legacy project to improve it.

What is the team composition?

We have a project manager as the bridge between two developers and us.

How did you come to work with Brainhub?

They were already working with us when I started working here.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent €100,000 (approximately $104,000 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in March 2022, and our relationship is ongoing.

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

The engagement has been great. They onboard quickly and are efficient. Moreover, they’ve improved the legacy code.

How did Brainhub perform from a project management standpoint?

Project management is good. We give them tasks every week, and they complete them seamlessly. We communicate via Slack and Google Meet and use Jira for project management.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They know Electron. It’s hard to find developers who do, and their developers are excellent.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They could be more involved in the project.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

You can work with them without any problems.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the head of delivery for DACH and Italy for a wealth management platform solution. We’re a utility provider and provide services to banks, insurances and asset managers.

What challenge were you trying to address with Brainhub?

We hired them to do frontend development for projects in Germany and Italy.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Brainhub did frontend development on a website using React, Redux, and TypeScript. We had created the wireframes with the design team and had our own developers. About 8 developers from Brainhub joined our individual Scrum teams. They participated in planning meetings, daily calls, retrospectives, and development.  

Additionally, they supported us in implementing a test automation framework called Cypress, helping us set it up. After the initial setup, the project team took over the framework.

What is the team composition?

We worked with an account manager and about eight frontend developers from Brainhub.

How did you come to work with Brainhub?

I found them on Google while looking for a company who provides staff augmentation for top notch React developers. When searching on Google, Brainhub showed up in the top 10 results and through the entire vendor selection process. they presented themselves very professional. Although we issued an RFP to look at alternatives, Brainhub was the clear winner.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent roughly £500,000 (approximately $613,000 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

The project lasted from May 2021–April 2022.

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

Brainhub was very engaged and provided the best service possible.

How did Brainhub perform from a project management standpoint?

We had weekly check-ins through Google Meet, and they addressed any performance issues we found. They also shared very good feedback when they felt we were missing something or that something could be improved. I could raise issues with them when needed, too. Overall, the experience was very positive. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

Brainhub was very proactive and acted as a cohesive company instead of a group of individual contractors. They worked together and really took care of their people. Additionally, we appreciated that they had a key person managing the project who wanted to ensure they were providing the best results possible. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, they were excellent. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

My advice is to be really clear in regards to what you want. Brainhub will tell you if you’re not explaining what you need with enough clarity because they want to be successful.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of a B2B SaaS company.

What challenge were you trying to address with Brainhub?

We needed fast and flexible scaling for our engineering department.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We initially described our requirements and needs, and Brainhub was quite fast in delivering a project proposal with a framework on how we could work together. Their proposal addressed all of our concerns, questions, and needs. Based on that, we started the collaboration.

Now, we continuously ramp up and extend the work.

What is the team composition?

We work with around eight people from Brainhub. The most significant part of the team is the software engineers, but we also have business analysts and UX designers.

How did you come to work with Brainhub?

We found them online, through my network, and a referral. We got to know them and started with the collaboration.

How much have you invested in them?

We’ve spent about €150,000 (approximately $158,000 USD) so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

The partnership began in January 2022, and it’s still ongoing.

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

The best metric we can give is that we just finalized our funding rounds and a company evaluation of $12 million based on their work, and we don’t have any internal engineers. We have product management and engineering managers, but no one is writing the code internally.

How did Brainhub perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re professionally set up. Also, they’re flexible in how we can work with them. 

They have multiple clients with different working modes, so they’ve adjusted to our preferred way of collaborating. Overall, it’s working quite well.

We use Jira, Notion, and GitHub as tools and Slack and email for communication. We also have video calls on Google Meet.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Brainhub can build up a high level of trust, and they continue to earn it. The quality of their work is based on our internal stakeholders, and it’s good. In the end, it all comes down to trust, the way we work together, and the quality and speed of work — all of which have earned our trust over time.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They can improve the availability of resources. It’s a scarce market, so that’s probably where everybody could improve.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Trust their experience and best practices in consulting and building the product.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder and CEO of a stealth startup.

What challenge were you trying to address with Brainhub?

We were building our first beta product, so we needed extra help in a short period of time. We already had an internal team, but our hiring was slow, so we hired them to help us hire engineers.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Brainhub supported us in building a complex website. We already had an existing product built and Brainhub’s engineers served as additional support to our team. They joined our meetings and learned about our processes and existing codebase.

What is the team composition?

We worked with two software engineers.

How did you come to work with Brainhub?

Their team was recommended to us by another startup.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent €250,000 (approximately $275,000 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked with Brainhub from January 2020–March 2021.

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

We only had a pre-launch, so we didn’t have any metrics yet.

How did Brainhub perform from a project management standpoint?

They didn’t do any project management because they only supplemented our existing team. We communicate through our weekly sprints and on Slack.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The Brainhub team was known for their JavaScript expertise.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No. They tried their best during our engagement.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Treat them as experts who would teach your team about JavaScript's best practices.

Please describe your company and your position there.

Chief Brand Strategy and Community Partner. Our company simplifies international education via connecting students, universities and a community all in one platform.

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

We hired Brainhub to help us scale our engineering teams to enhance and deliver solutions for students and universities. The goal was to do a significant tech upgrade and simplify our existing architecture of web portals and several mobile applications, which manages the journeys for our key stakeholders.

We looked for the React and React Native specialists, able to transfer one of the platforms to React, with a deep understanding of the technology stack, our business vision, and goals.

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

Through researching and talking to a range of companies we found on Clutch.

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

Brainhub took responsibility for a huge development part and for organizing their developers' pipelines. Business Analyst, Delivery Manager and Technical Advisor from Brainhub were working closely with us especially in the early stages of development and were responsible for adjusting tech decisions to meet our business needs.

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

Brainhub provided 5 skilled, knowledgeable fullstack developers. The Delivery Manager was focused on making sure everything is going in the right direction, and the Business Analyst took care of the backlog and results. The team was also composed of a Technical Advisor who combined technical and business points of view to make sure technology decisions are made with the business goals in mind.

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

The project ended with the production version of the Client Portal and the Account Manager Portal, and a beta version of a mobile app that had a few thousand users at the end of our cooperation.

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

The project was organized with Scrum sprints. Business Analyst and Delivery Manager from Brainhub made sure the team was working on the right priorities from the business perspective. In terms of tools we used Jira for tasks management, and Slack for communication, which was very convenient.

We had daily meetings, and every two weeks there was a planning session where we discussed what should be delivered next to meet the business goals. Once for two weeks, we had a review when Brainhub showed the results of a sprint and progress toward the product goal. The whole process was flexible, and the team was ready to make changes and adjustments when possible.

The sprints were short so no time was wasted and together we were able to quickly spot when something was going in the wrong direction. The Business Analyst was immediately ready to adjust the tasks allocation and Backlog.

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

We were impressed by the technical knowledge of Brainhub developers and the quality of the code they delivered. We loved the ability to contact developers directly, it facilitated communication and removed possible obstacles. Brainhub team members were very proactive.

The company was able to compose such a team that was focused on aligning tech with business needs and making the right decisions swiftly.

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

Nothing significant to add.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder and CEO of Collegial. We’re an educational technology provider.

What challenge were you trying to address with Brainhub?

We brought them on to support us in the development of our platform.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Our engagement is based on a strategic, tactical, and operational level when it comes to design and engineering. We work with Brainhub. They provide a strategic perspective to ensure that the development and design are aligned with the business objectives connected to what they’re involved and engaged with. Our stack is primarily built on TypeScript, React, and Go. Our cloud environment is AWS.

What our platform delivers is a content aggregation ability. We have an open content catalog that allows for integration with various digital learning providers, whether those may be digital natives or it may be a university or other educational provider that offers virtual interactive programs or on-demand content. We provide those types of integrations that enable our product to deliver a single point of access to a multitude of different learning providers.

Another aspect is that we aggregate data from all of our providers in order to give a holistic view of an individual’s, team’s, and organization’s learning and development activity.

What is the team composition?

Our team consists of six developers, a UX designer, and a team lead.

How did you come to work with Brainhub?

We came to engage with them through a recommendation. One of our own developers had worked with Brainhub at a previous company. I was impressed with both the technical skill of their developers and the cultural aspect of how they worked — both within their own teams and with the organizations they service.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve invested between $200,000–$1 million.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our ongoing engagement started around September 2020.

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

The impact was seen as early as two weeks in. They immediately produced a very high quality of work. Everyone we have worked with on the Brainhub team has been curious, self-driven, and structured. They have a clear sense of how they work.

After two weeks of onboarding the first three developers, they proposed doing a weekend hackathon in order to accelerate a particular feature they were involved in. This was completely on their own initiative. This showed the commitment that these three individuals had for our company and the product. This was a phenomenal start to our partnership.

Brainhub is fully integrated with our team. They’re an extension of our organization and are valuable members of our team. We don’t see them as external consultants, they’re very much a partner. We have every intention of making this a long-term partnership.

How did Brainhub perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re experts on project management tools. We utilize Jira, and Brainhub is proficient with it. We do regular check-ins. Their team has very good processes for how they work and have been an inspiration to us. For context, we’re a relatively young company and have had our product in the market for about 18 months.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Brainhub brings a lot to the table. They provide quality of work and interest in what they do. What’s more, they’re nice people who are fun to work with. We enjoy having them on the team.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, there aren’t any areas that need improvement. We’re successively increasing our commitment because we’re so happy with how the relationship is evolving.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Articulate the value that you’re trying to provide for your customers. The idea of working with something that has a higher purpose really gets your team fired up. Secondly, make sure your organization’s culture matches with that of Brainhub. There needs to be a focus on inclusion, transparency, communication, and care for each other.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the product manager and senior developer for a telecommunications company that specializes in vanity and toll-free phone numbers.

What challenge were you trying to address with Brainhub?

When I first joined, they did product management for us. Since then, our partnership has grown and they’ve provided design and development support on a variety of different projects.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They’ve developed a React Native website and are hosting it on AWS. They also have worked on our Android and iOS app. They generally use Atlassian tools such as Bitbucket and Jira.

When we begin a new project, I usually sit down with the CEO and stakeholders to go over our vision, define what features need to be implemented, and prioritize bugs. Then I sit down with their team to go over the requirements and they help me divide everything into Trello cards.

From there, they go through a few rounds of designs. Once they’re finalized, they help us divide the development work into milestones. Then developers then start working on those deliverables with feedback from us.

What is the team composition?

We have two frontend developers, one designer, a project manager, and a scrum master.

How did you come to work with Brainhub?

They were partners with my company before I joined the company.

How much have you invested with them?

We spend between $15,000–$20,000 a month (approximately $180,000–$240,000 in total).

What is the status of this engagement?

I started working with them in February 2020 and our partnership is ongoing.

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

I’m very pleased with their designs for both our website and mobile apps. Even though our Android and iOS app share a code base, they seem to be very native. Additionally, they’re quick to act upon and feedback I give them.

How did Brainhub perform from a project management standpoint?

We work hand-in-hand with them. They’re basically members of our team. We have at least three video calls a week. Usually, they send us links to review their designs. Then, during our meetings, they use a variety of tools to facilitate brainstorming and create a vision board. They also use Trello and G Suite to manage tasks and share their work with us.

I was also really happy with how quickly they worked. They were able to develop our iOS and Android apps in a pretty short timeframe. They’ve never failed to deliver on time or within the expected range.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re more proactive than other development teams I’ve worked with in the past. They constantly try to communicate with us and ask for feedback.

They emphasize the importance of communication and clearly prioritize our weekly meetings. They insist on hosting regular calls and meetings. They seem to be fluent in our language, so we haven’t had any miscommunications.

They’re also very team-oriented. Even though there has been some turnover on our team, they’ve been able to quickly fill any void with another developer.

Are there any areas they could improve?

At this point, nothing springs to mind. Mostly because we communicate so often that I can openly give them feedback when things come up.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

They have a lot of experience in software development, so new clients should trust their methods.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am a Business Developer. We offer an API for residential IP and proxy services and specialize in data-center and residential proxies. Our solution helps independent search engines to index the web.

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

As a consequence of the increasing number of new clients, we wanted to expand our platform, make it more scalable, take care of the highest performance, and extend the range of our services. We needed an expert who could augment our team quickly and work closely with our developers. We cared about the profound knowledge and understanding of the technology stack we use, to spend as little time on onboarding as possible. Brainhub supplemented our team with a knowledgeable developer who could start right away and fitted the team perfectly.

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

We had seen their work on other projects and decided to use them.

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

We needed Brainhub to help us with the platform’s expansion in terms of development. The technology stack of the project was fancy and included Node.js, Golang, React, Kubernetes, and Prometheus, among others. Brainhub helped us with creating fault-tolerant, distributed, and scalable crawlers.

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

We hired one developer to supplement the team. He was very proactive, responsible, and fitted our team perfectly from the very beginning. He worked closely with two other developers of our team, and together they turned out to be very effective.

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

The project is still ongoing. The proxy is already deployed and stable, and work has been completed in most cases. Our current goal is to evolve the platform according to the growing number of clients.

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

We had regular daily meetings in the mornings to discuss current tasks and priorities, and feedback sessions to submit amendments. The team was able to run several releases daily, making the process dynamic. We managed to arrange cooperation effectively despite the time zone differences and create a great, engaged team that worked very swiftly. In terms of tools, we used Slack for communication and Trello for project management, which allowed us to stay in the loop.

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

We appreciate their knowledge, engagement, and dedication. They deliver high quality, are open to feedback and collaboration. They supplemented the team effectively and were able to cooperate with our developers flawlessly, oriented on our platform’s success, as they were working with us since forever.

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

Nothing comes to my mind. We were impressed with how quickly Brainhub developer was able to start, with his knowledge and the level of dedication. We felt like he was a part of our team from the very beginning and that’s exactly what we wanted.

Please describe your company and your position there.

We offer custom, fully personalized training experience for runners and fitness enthusiasts. The company was founded in 2013 and quickly gained popularity in Poland. I am the CEO.

For what projects/services did your company hire Brainhub?

With rapid growth in user base, we realized our initial web version of the service was simply not scalable enough to allow further progress, including the launch of long-awaited mobile app. We decided to rebuild the web version completely using more robust technology and simultaneously develop mobile app as well.

What were your goals for this project?

We are a service that people use "on the go", 70% of sessions are mobile so we needed our web and mobile apps to be EXTREMELY USER FRIENDLY, meaning UX and speed were our primary goals.

How did you select this vendor?

We were very careful with the selection process - with our previous experience with software development outsourcing, we knew it's not about the money, but about value for money.

So we have done a huge bit of research (google, clutch), interviewed about 10 of the companies and went into more detailed project discussions with top 3. That might sound crazy, but at times, Brainhub made us feel like they cared about the project more than us.

Their input far exceeded traditional software development discussions, so picking them as our partners turned out to be a no-brainer really.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

They took charge of the whole process really. They designed UI/UX for two separate experiences for our app (mobile and web), decided on tech stack, added new features (gamification), connected our app to 3rd party services (like Garmin Connect etc), developed, tested and made sure the switch to new version was smooth for our users.

What was the team composition?

We worked directly with two Brainhub consultants who covered all aspects of our cooperation.

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

We are very happy with the results and most importantly, so are our users. Business-wise in year-to-year comparison of the old app vs new app, our paid version conversions went up by approx 25% and user churn was decreased by 50% (!) which made a huge impact on our bottom line.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Nothing to complain about, we mainly communicated via email, with weekly update calls and keeping track of everything in Jira and Google Sheets.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

We loved their "be our partner" attitude, compared to the standard client-vendor relationship. They immersed themselves into our project and it felt like they were part of our team. Apart from that - good business sense, vast tech knowledge and simply nice guys to spend time with.

Are there any areas for improvement?

I don't know. More upfront planning would be great but the project was so complex and still-evolving that this flexibility was in fact good.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the CTO at SportsRecruits, a platform that provides youth sports organizations, athletes, and their families with all the resources and guidance needed to effectively navigate the college recruiting process. Connections made on the platform have resulted in commitments to the best academic and athletic institutions across the United States.

For what projects/services did your company hire Brainhub?

We hired Brainhub to build a prototype of an app that can allows events to manage schedules and allows users to interact with event data, including while they are offline.

What were your goals for this project?

We wanted to leverage Brainhub's expertise with React Native, in order to bring our own development team up to speed with the mobile app development techniques. We also relied on them to develop the offline download and sync capabilities.

How did you select this vendor?

We sent out requests for proposals to several companies we've identified as having positive reviews for similar projects. Brainhub was by far the most professional in understanding our needs, and sending back a proposal that addressed our needs.

Describe the project in detail.

We collaborated with two Brainhub engineers and one project manager in a way that truly felt like they were part of our team. We had daily updates in Slack and weekly demo calls to review progress. We reviewed code in a shared git repository and collaborated well on defining the scope with regards to spec and design. All Brainhub employees were very diligent and a pleasure to work with.

What was the team composition?

Two engineers, one more project manager and one technical advisor.

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

Our team was able to take over the prototype thanks to collaborative way in which it was developed and transition it into a full QA-stage app currently being tested in TestFlight.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Very effective

What did you find most impressive about this company?

The company provided an accurate estimate and was committed to deliver on it, while being flexible, thorough, and easy to work with.

Are there any areas for improvement?

N/A