ClearSummit

What was the scope of their involvement?

They developed a fully functional iOS app for us. If anything wasn’t functional, they took care of it. They did a project-based rate, which we appreciated because mistakes can add a lot of billable time. We wanted to make a native app, so we used Swift3. The code base is clean. They worked directly with our CTO, and the process went smoothly.

Shane [Co-Founder and Lead Engineer, ClearSummit] always gave us options—Mixpanel, Django, or something else. We went with Django and Mixpanel. We have a backend, a login, an add-picture function, and 2 feeds that run simultaneously. One is the voting feed, and the other is a feed with results from the decisions that were made. We have a part where users agree to the terms of service through TestFlight.

The app has been uploaded to the App Store. We also use a product called Buddybuild for testing. We used Xcode on GitHub for version control, which was extremely helpful. Everything worked seamlessly.

How did you come to work with ClearSummit?

I’ve built apps before using overseas developers and had some issues with that process. I wanted to hire someone local that I could talk to. Making a decision took a while. We conducted an online search to find the right fit, specifically people who had an actual office. I reviewed all the proposals and talked to different firms in person. The proposals were hard to judge because I was new to this area. I ended up picking somebody with a project scope that was too ambitious. They got it done, but the work took a year longer than they said it would.

Then, we had a meeting with Shane. He’s close to our age, which we liked. He had a relationship with social networks similar to ours and could see our vision better than some other people we’d talked to. He also had a knowledge base that was larger than most of the other developers we talked to. Kara [Co-Founder and Project Manager, ClearSummit] was also helpful from both a legal and a technological standpoint.

We met with them twice, and Shane took on another project while we were still looking. We were upset about that at first, but then it took us longer to get things together on our end. When we had everything ready, we hired ClearSummit as soon as they finished the other project. Working with Shane was a great experience because we knew he was our guy after long conversations with him. He did a good job with the proposal process and seemed genuine, especially compared to some other people who spoke with us. 

With overseas companies, I often encounter a disconnect culturally. For example, I had built a children’s app for autism with a provider overseas. Once, I asked for a supermarket, and they sent me a supermarket from their home town, which is in Europe in a low socioeconomic area. Communication issues often pop up too. That provider had someone in California, but he suddenly disappeared, and I wound up working with people overseas, which meant I had to wait a week or more to get a response to my messages.

What is the status of this engagement?

I’m not sure when we started working with them. The collaboration is ongoing. 

Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.

When the app was broken by these Indian developers, Shane [Zilinskas, president,] and Kara [McGehee, COO,] at ClearSummit patched up the pieces and fixed much of the code. They were using Ruby, and our app originally had certain platforms built into it, like PubNub as a chat platform for example. For the most part, they rebuilt everything that the other company had built and largely kept what had been in our MVP [minimum viable product] before we contracted with the other company.

How did you come to work with ClearSummit?

The MVP had originally been built by another local development team here in Los Angeles, who was also who referred us to ClearSummit.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

Initially, it was around $50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in October 2015, and we're still working with them today [as of July 2016].

How did you come to work with ClearSummit?

Well, it so happens that ClearSummit's founder, Shane [Zilinskas], used to work at a mobile development company here in Richmond, Virginia, where we're headquartered. His former employer was and remains known for very high-quality work in the mobile space. We talked to them on numerous occasions about helping us out and became acquainted with Shane through that process, but never actually hired that firm. When I heard he had broken off on his own and started ClearSummit, I immediately reached out to him and struck up a relationship, and the project flowed from that process.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

Our project was in the tens of thousands of dollars – on the low end of that, I would say. It was tightly scoped, and we stayed right on budget. We changed some things and added a tiny bit of change request cost, but it certainly was in keeping with what we thought was very reasonable pricing throughout the project and, particularly given the results that we've gotten, we were happy.

What is the status of this engagement?

Well, honestly, it's been a little bit of a disaster, but that's my fault, not ClearSummit's. We sort of pivoted the whole business right in the middle of the project. If we had stayed the course with how we had originally scoped the project, it would have been probably 10 or 12 weeks, in and out. Shane and his team were extremely responsive and extremely fast – we had to have prototype apps on our phones internally within probably four weeks of initiating the project. It was quick. Unfortunately, it's now been almost a year, and we haven't actually launched an app, but that's because we changed requirements and put the project on hold for a while and are only now starting to come back to it. It's been a long process, but the fault certainly hasn't been with Shane or ClearSummit in any way. The delay is a result of us being indecisive. In fact, I'm sure, from Shane's perspective, we asked him to get the ball to the 25-yard line, and then marched it back to the 15, and then he marched it back to the 35, and we've done that process probably six times.