BuildLab

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m an administrative manager at Altius Learning. I do many things here at Altius, but one of them is running the tech side of this program we built.

What challenge were you trying to address with BuildLab?

BuildLab helps us with tech processes.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We run an automated system using Airtable and Integromat. They manage the backend of those platforms for us. Any time we run into an error or issue, we turn to BuildLab for that.

The team also built us a dashboard. We have report recipients. We collect data from financial advisors, and then the data itself is self-submitted through a survey that gets populated into Airtable through Integromat. All of that information was being written into Google Sheets, and the information was completely overwhelming. BuildLab developed the dashboard to help with that. It takes all of that information and displays it nicely. It makes it easier to read for our report recipients.

What is the team composition?

I’m mainly working with Mike (Founder). There are two other people I’ve worked with as well.

How did you come to work with BuildLab?

We found them through a reference. We were working with a learning solutions company that built e-learning modules for us. They actually were the ones who built the original dashboard scenarios for us.

That company was supporting us but gave us the recommendation for BuildLab for ongoing support. We connected right after.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent around $3,500 so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with BuildLab in August 2020.

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

I’m extremely happy with BuildLab. They always seem to get it done. Mike is extremely responsive, taking care of an issue we have quickly. He’s the perfect fit for what we need. His pricing is within our budget.

How did BuildLab perform from a project management standpoint?

Mike understands our needs. We have quick calls, and then he takes what we need and runs with it. He’s always very accommodating to any adjustments we want to make to the dashboard. I’d rate him very highly on project management.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We’re a small company that doesn’t have the budget for an in-house tech person. It’s an extremely budget-friendly option for us. That’s a big factor in working with BuildLab.

We haven’t run into a situation where Mike can’t do what we need him to do. He takes care of anything that we need to get done.  

Are there any areas they could improve?

Not that I can think of.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

BuildLab always met and exceeded our expectations with everything we’ve done with them.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CTO of a company founded by a TV star and author. He rose as a real estate broker, appearing on a show with 25–30 million viewers each episode. He now has about 1.6 million Instagram followers, and he’s responsible for about $1.3 billion in residential real estate sales per year. We broke out as of September 2020 from being a team at a large brokerage to be our own company.

Over the last six years, I’ve overseen all digital efforts, ranging from websites to the creation and reconception of revenue streams.

What challenge were you trying to address with BuildLab?

We needed an integration specialist for an online course we’d put together. We launched the course in August 2019 to much fanfare, and we had pleasing sales within the first few weeks.

The problem we ran into both before and after launch was that certain things were a nightmare to get talking to each other. Even though we’d invested a crazy amount of money into web developers, they turned out unable to step out of their comfort zone. We needed help automating and optimizing a lot of what we’d already done.

What was the scope of their involvement?

I had a bunch of diagrams with a bunch of workflows that I had BuildLab look at. They helped me simplify and automate everything, and to get parts talking to each other with accuracy.

Mike (Founder) introduced me to the phrase “single source of truth,” which I’d never heard before, and which we’re using daily around the office now. Until that point, we never thought of having a single repository for all information.

He told us about different things they’d worked on and the tools they could bring in. They helped us figure out the APIs and understand where we were going wrong in terms of doing things in a non-automated way.

What is the team composition?

We mostly worked with Mike, along with one other person.

How did you come to work with BuildLab?

After searching for integration specialists, I found them online. I made them jump through a bunch of hoops because we’d never hired an external partner like them.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve invested between $10,000–$25,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

I started talking to BuildLab in early-September 2019, and it took us a few weeks to get the contract signed.

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

I don’t know what we’d be doing now if BuildLab hadn’t come in when they did. We may have found a solution eventually, but we probably would’ve had to scale unintelligently and hire a lot of people to do a lot of manual work.

We probably ended up with more money because of Mike and BuildLab. They helped us optimize everything the way we needed to.

How did BuildLab perform from a project management standpoint?

There were daily follow-ups. Most of the communication was by email, and we had scheduled calls.

I had a great rapport with Mike, and we started texting. He was quick to get me responses. It’s never longer than 24 hours before I hear back from him.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We're from New York and Mike isn't, which helped us to slow down and pace more effectively in our conversations and planning. That was phenomenal.

When it comes to the people we’ve worked with, it’s usually a mile a minute. An otherwise 15-minute Zoom call would take 25-30 minutes with him, which is fine. It caused us to actually slow down through challenges a bit differently than we otherwise would.

In fact, we realized that we needed to take a breath and approach our problems a bit more chill. We’re under a lot of pressure to move. I’m collaborating with a lot of developers, including Mike, to build tools no one’s built before.

Mike would give us a chance to breathe and think things through. My favorite thing about him is that he’ll say it when he doesn’t know something and needs to go research it. We never felt we were getting a half answer.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Mike could bring a bit more levity to the conversation, which is true for a lot of developers. I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel for a nitpick.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

BuildLab should try to do as much of the scoping and expectation setting as possible, just in case. Communication is the most difficult thing when it comes to project development, so having expectations well-thought-out and in writing will make everyone more successful.

We needed some extra clarification on a couple of occasions. We’d frequently just blurt out some things on Zoom and expect Mike to decode it.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I lead a company that produces food and also perform home delivery.

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

BuildLab was hired to connect separate systems and get them talking to each other so that our company could pivot during the COVID pandemic.

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

We selected BuildLab due to a reasonable due diligence process that quickly led to action. This was crucial given the situation. BuidLab iterated and improved upon what we needed as the project evolved.

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

Connected multiple Shopify apps to Airtable. This created a reporting and error checking system for our business model that could not be accomplished within Shopify.

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

We worked directly with Mike.

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

The project was successful.

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

We asked for an agile and conversational approach and BuildLab delivered.

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

Buildlab's speed and attention to detail were impressive. While not their only client it felt like it.