Contrive Solutions

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the CEO & Co-founder of Metabeta, a dealflow & portfolio management platform for tech investors (accelerators & VCs)

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We need to add many features to the app to attract our clients like metrics, charts, organizations, mentoring, network management, etc This project succeeded because of the efforts of the team at Contrive Solutions, who exceeded my expectations both in terms of understanding the scope of the project as well as in terms of executing abstract ideas that required a great deal of thought and a thorough understanding of the process involved.

SOLUTION

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

Our search for potential developers on various developer marketplaces led us to Contrive Solutions, who we contacted among three other firms. After doing the technical & business diligence, we started working with them.

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

Creating an all-in-one platform for startups, investors, and accelerators was our goal. Ideally, we wanted the platform to be "easy to use" and integrate multiple software services, including Google Sheets, QuickBooks, Mixpanel, Salesforce, Xero, Stripe, Hubspot, Google Analytics, etc.

By using this software, users can manage their quality deal flow, streamline diligence processes, create metrics and performance charts, track OKRs, mentor and review, and manage their networks.

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

A team of 4 members carried out this project. Three of them were full-stack developers, one was a tech lead.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

As far as quality of work is concerned, the company does a very high standard of work. They are knowledgeable technically (we used the MEVN stack), they are well coordinated and productive, and understand our needs when they are not clearly articulated (which is kind of rare with subcontractors).

Our project is progressing, and there is a good chance that we will be adding software resources from their company to our team in order to expand our work with them in the future.

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

We use Agile pseudoSCRUM and Jira to manage our workflow, Confluence for specs, Bitbucket for code repository, Figma for UI design, Slack for internal communication. Sprints last two weeks, we release at least once per sprint. We also do daily standups via Google Meet.

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

They are extremely accountable and dedicated. The developers are friendly and helpful, and we work very well with them.

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

The whole process was very smooth. All the issues inherent to any collaboration from the beginning were solved within the first three months of working with them and now there is nothing to complain about.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the CTO of a US-based real estate software and services company

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

Our web-based CRM had evolved over many years, the UX stale and the legacy are difficult to support. Our goal was to:

1. Completely redesign and modernize the UI
2. Provide additional functionality the product was lacking
3. Update the website to be responsive to work on desktops, tablets, and mobile devices
4. Eliminate known performance reliability issues
5. Update the tech stack
6. Stay on time and at/under budget

SOLUTION

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

We searched for developers on the freelancing platform 'Upwork,' came across Contrive Solutions, and reached out to them.

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

The first thing we did was build out the scaffolding based on the design we wanted. The team built a responsive UI focused on lead management and had the first deliverable in time for a large sales conference. Then we focused on adding features that had been requested by our users. Finally, we focused on the CRM user config ("back-end") portion of the app. Doing the work in stages allowed us to engage our beta users for feedback while we worked on the project. The team built the new version of our CRM using Vue.js and Laravel, supporting and expanding on over 20 different integrations we have, including Auth0, Elev.io, Twilio, Google Maps, Mixpanel, Sentry, Stripe, and multiple real estate data providers.

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

This project team was five members, three full stack developers, one tech lead/architect, and one QA tester.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We were able to complete a new version of our CRM with very positive user feedback. MRR is up with the new version, and we are excited to have a new tech stack to build upon. The quality of the work from the team was very good. We wanted the team to implement technical best practices, and they did so. The new code is much more organized, maintainable, and scalable. I needed a technical partner who could meet our needs without making assumptions.

In the course of their work, they understood the niche nature of our industry, and the needs we have as a company. The tech lead also took the time to educate us on what they were doing so my existing staff could build up their skillset to support the new version of the product. There were no "turf" issues or infighting.

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

The GitHub issue tracker was used to create sprints. The sprint duration was seven days. The weekly sprint meetings consist of discussions about previous sprint problems and new sprint tasks. At the start of each day, developers share their daily plans, and at the end, they share their end-of-day status. We also used slack for communication.

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

Their communication was excellent — everything was communicated in a timely and professional manner. We were able to get along with the developers very well. They were friendly and helpful. When we disagreed about a technical approach, we worked together to come up with the right solution and the team was always open to new ideas and perspectives. I documented most things, but I liked that, when required, the team could work with vague direction from me and sought to understand our business and be creative problem solvers.

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

Everything proceeded smoothly. I have no major complaints and look forward to working with this team again.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the owner of a web development consulting firm. We support all kinds of clients with software development services.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

We needed support to implement a variety of new features for an existing web app. The developers were directly involved in planning, implementation, and testing.

SOLUTION

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

We searched for potential developers on the freelancing platform 'Upwork' and got in touch with Contrive Solutions.

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

Several features were planned, implemented, and tested. Some of them were new services such as web crawlers. Other features were added on top of an existing application like statistics, automated email sending, WhatsApp notifications, etc.

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

Two developers who were engaged as full-stack developers.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

With the new version of the web app, our client can manage 50+ employees as well as almost one thousand customers. Customer acquisition has increased a lot due to automated systems.

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

We had a sort of daily standup where the developers reported their current status. Features were organized in a ticket system. We used Slack for all kinds of communication.

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

Straight-forward communication. The developers were easy to get along with and friendly.

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

At times, we expected more creativity and out-of-the-box thinking instead of just following the instructions that were written down. Fortunately, we were able to make improvements in this area after some discussion.