Cheesecake Labs

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization. What is your role and responsibilities?

I’m the founder and CEO of an Internet radio company that has college sports podcasts.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What was your goal for working with Cheesecake Labs?

We partnered with Cheesecake Labs because we wanted to improve the quality and concepts of our previous apps. Our development team had done the coding on our previous apps, and it wasn’t of great quality. We needed a stronger, outside team to help develop a great product we would be proud of.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their work.

Cheesecake Labs was involved in developing both the front end and back-end of our iOS apps. We are currently working together to rework our website design.

What was your process for selecting Cheesecake Labs with which to work?

One of our investors knew Victor [Oliveira], the co-founder and CEO at Cheesecake Labs. We looked through his portfolio and previous works. We then reached out to him and talked about the work we needed. He had great ideas for us. That convinced us that Cheesecake Labs was a great option for us.

Can you give a sense of the size of the initiative in dollar terms or a personnel work-hour figure?

The size of the project was in the $10,000 to $50,000 range.

When was the work completed?

We started our partnership with Cheesecake Labs at the end of January 2015. We released our app mid-March 2015. They worked really fast, especially in our line of work. Our partnership with Cheesecake Labs is still is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Do you have any statistics or metrics to track improvement from the project?

Since our partnership with Cheesecake Labs, the users of our app are engaging with the app more, and they’re staying within the app longer than before. The user feedback is better, too. So, our partnership with Cheesecake Labs made our app a lot stronger and more user-friendly.

Are you satisfied with their performance?

The Cheesecake Labs team is fantastic. We loved working with them. We’re really happy with the results.

Is there anything unique or special about Cheesecake Labs that really makes them stand out compared to other business partners?

Cheesecake put this app together for us really fast. Normally, the development of a mobile app is a six-month process, but they got it done in less than two months. They stayed on time with everything we had planned out. That’s pretty rare. They’re really collaborative. Typically, engineers tell you what you can or can’t do something, but the Cheesecake Labs team would go out of their way to figure it out without getting too much push back. Even if it’s something they’ve never done before, they do all the necessary research and get back to you. They’re really solution oriented. We don’t have to educate them on anything. We’re always moving forward. 

Looking back on the work so far, is there any area that you think they could improve upon or that you might do differently?

No. I can’t think of anything. Maybe we would have tried to give them more work. They’re just so good and so fast at what they do.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Software Development Manager of Moneygram International

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

We are a FinTech Company

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Cheesecake Labs to accomplish?

• Software Upgrade

SOLUTION

How did you find Cheesecake Labs?

Other

Why did you select Cheesecake Labs over others?

Good value for cost

How many teammates from Cheesecake Labs were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

Upgrade Angular and Node.js to the latest version for one of the application that we use for marketing department

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Software upgrades are successful keeping the application functionality in tact

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

Yes, All the deliverables are on time. In some cases they are delivered before the planned timelines

What was your primary form of communication with Cheesecake Labs?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

Both their technical and project management skills were impressive.

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

Not at time. Keep executing in the same way that you are doing today.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the CEO of an information technology company 

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

AI Infrastructure Software that connects LLMs to back-end enterprise APIs

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Cheesecake Labs to accomplish?

• Staffing - DevOps
• Staffing - Python stack

SOLUTION

How did you find Cheesecake Labs?

LinkedIn

Why did you select Cheesecake Labs over others?

• Close to my geographic location
• Pricing fit our budget
• Great culture fit

How many teammates from Cheesecake Labs were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

DevOps engineer 50%, SW Eng 100%

Both teams were excellent and performed various development, bug fixing, release and deployment activities

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Tickets closed

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

Staff augmentation, so engineers worked as requested. All work was on time vs estimates.

What was your primary form of communication with Cheesecake Labs?

Email or Messaging App

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

Python background, size, focus, location

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

No

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Director of Product of a financial services company 

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

We support the development of the blockchain network to expand everyday access to the global financial markets.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Cheesecake Labs to accomplish?

• Build and maintain a sandbox for digital asset issuance on our platform
• Market bespoke implementations of our asset issuance platform

SOLUTION

How did you find Cheesecake Labs?

Existing provider

Why did you select Cheesecake Labs over others?

• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost
• Referred to me
• Company values aligned
• Quality of work

How many teammates from Cheesecake Labs were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

CKL was tasked to build and maintain an asset issuance platform for us. Key deliverables include: 

• Build a system to mimic how asset issuance can be done on our system
• Demonstrate how smart contracts can be used for regulated financial institutions 
• Support our marketing initiatives, including presentations and videos on the sandbox

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

1. Usefulness of the sandbox to the our partnership team 
2. Contributions to the ecosystem, including the provision of open-source code 
3. Identification of a bug in our new smart contracts code

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

The team was excellent and provided exceptional service. We had weekly calls, weekly written updates, and monthly management calls. We lacked internal our project management support. CKL identified the gap and provided technical project management support for the project.

What was your primary form of communication with Cheesecake Labs?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

The quality of their people, hands down! The CKL team was smart, hardworking, and nice. We get many of its engineers from CKL, and I can see why. They are good people. I would steal a number of them if I could.

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

I honestly can't think of anything.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

 I am the Founder of a legal company 

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Connects consumers with information on class actions.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Cheesecake Labs to accomplish?

• iOS and Android Application

SOLUTION

How did you find Cheesecake Labs?

Clutch Site

Why did you select Cheesecake Labs over others?

• High ratings
• Pricing fit our budget

How many teammates from Cheesecake Labs were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

• UI/UX Design of Mobile App 
• Prototyping and launch of Android and iOS MVP 
• Web Marketing/Landing Page 
• CMS (Content Management System)

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Received MVP with agreed upon functionality within budget.

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

Communicated multiple times on a weekly basis through design of the application and with weekly releases through engineering and testing.

What was your primary form of communication with Cheesecake Labs?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

Cheesecake understood the goal of the project very quickly and required minimal feedback throughout the life of the project. The deliverables were buttoned up and transparent which gave us comfort throughout the process.

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

No areas of improvement, I plan on continuing to use Cheesecake as we continue to develop and formally launch.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the President of TLS Holdings, Inc

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

A Fan Engagement + AdTech Platform

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Cheesecake Labs to accomplish?

• UX/UI
• Develop the Application
• Deliver Codebase to Stakeholders

SOLUTION

How did you find Cheesecake Labs?

Online Search

Why did you select Cheesecake Labs over others?

• High ratings
• Good value for cost

How many teammates from Cheesecake Labs were assigned to this project?

6-10 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

To design an updated UI/UX for an emerging fan engagement and adtech product.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Revised UI/UX delivered and application was built.

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

• Very thorough.
• Delivered most items on time.
• Very responsive.

What was your primary form of communication with Cheesecake Labs?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

Very Creative.

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

No. They're a great company to work with.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am an executive at CRU Automotive LTD

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

An app for the automotive community

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Cheesecake Labs to accomplish?

• develop infrastructure of app
• bring together a full team
• develop app with founders from creative vision

SOLUTION

How did you find Cheesecake Labs?

Referral

Why did you select Cheesecake Labs over others?

• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost
• Referred to me
• Company values aligned

What was the size of Cheesecake Labs’s team?

6-10 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

started with cheesecake from the very beginning of app creative vision. developed the beginning areas of concept with cheesecake team. architecture and feature development. figuring out the GPS side was difficult but the team put in an amazing amount of research to problem solve this area. now we are onto revenue based systems soon like ecommerce.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

• milestones being met. features being completed and functional.

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

most items were on time and when they weren't plenty of communication was had. so we were all aware. we have become even tighter on communication of priorities and the team is running very smoothly

What was your primary form of communication with Cheesecake Labs?

Virtual Meeting

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

• easy communication
• organized meetings
• They were a solid team with a good foundation.

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

nope.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Head of Engineering of Reflex Careers, Inc

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Building the best way to work in retail by creating the gig-like marketplace

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Cheesecake Labs to accomplish?

• Build mobile MVP

SOLUTION

How did you find Cheesecake Labs?

Referral

Why did you select Cheesecake Labs over others?

Close to my geographic location, Good value for cost

What was the size of Cheesecake Labs’s team?

2-5 Employees

What was your primary form of communication with Cheesecake Labs?

In-Person Meeting, Virtual Meeting

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

Build the MVP app that includes these specific criteria:

• Use ReactNative and deploy to both iOS and Android
• CI/CD deploys to both stores when pushing changes
• App to focus on the biggest of three primary user groups
• Interact with an existing GraphQL API backend
• Take designs built in-house and handed off to Cheesecake engineers

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

• Functional application that satisfies requested requirements

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

Team management was owned by Reflex. Delivery was on schedule with no billing surprises. Developers were prompt in responding to requests.

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

Developers were competent and had good velocity. Communication with the team was clear and timely.

Are there any areas for improvement or something {provider_name} could have done differently?

No issues of particular note

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the co-founder and CTO of a shopping rewards platform that provides opportunities for donating cash back to nonprofit organizations. We were a small firm in the Bay Area and relied heavily on outsourced resources during our growth phase for iterations on product launches.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Cheesecake Labs?

We hired Cheesecake to continue building and maintaining one of our mobile apps.

What were your goals for this project?

Our goals were to complete quick feature iterations and bug fixes while maintaining updates with the Swift programming language and device compatibility.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We had worked with Cheesecake in the past for a different venture and were pleased with the results. They were the obvious choice for us.

Describe the project in detail.

We built our proof of concept mobile app and got it to market to judge its success. After we decided to move forward with it, we reached out to Victor [Co-founder and CEO, Cheesecake Labs] and his team to discuss options. Victor was quick to resource and ramp up development support. His team quickly integrated into our workflow and picked up on the goals and intricacies of this project.

What was the team composition?

There were a few developers from Cheesecake working with me on build releases.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Cheesecake always provides a great service. Their developers are knowledgeable and friendly.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Great. They go out of their way to mold into our workflows, i.e. Slack channels, video communication systems, etc.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Victor and his team are friendly and grateful. They enjoy what they do and it shows.

Are there any areas for improvement?

None.