dupontstudios

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of an e-commerce company.  We have a white-label app where users can sell anything. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with dupontstudio?

We were on the second version of our web app, and it was strong; we were happy with it. Its backend portal organizes raw data by the customers’ first and last names, average spends, and locations. However, we wanted our data to be more organized because we were heading toward a predictive ordering feature. Given that, we hired dupontstudios to host and maintain the app and develop its backend.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

In the beginning, we only wanted dupontstudios to host and maintain the web app. For instance, if we found a bug when pressing a button, we’d get in touch with them, create a ticket, and wait for them to take care of the issue. However, their CEO said they could further improve the app, promising our delivery people would also have a web app. 

Giving us a presentation, he threw us all the bells and whistles. In other words, they promised us way more than what we wanted. On top of that, the price and timetable also seemed reasonable, so the idea sounded good — we decided to do it. From there, we increased our $20,000 budget to $80,000, which then grew to $100,000. Their team also promised us they’d finish the web app three months after the designs were done.

In the meantime, we requested to have American in-house developers. Since the 2.0 version of our app already had a strong infrastructure — all the logic was created — we wanted them to build on that, and their CEO agreed. They used Node.js and Vue.js on the frontend. 

What is the team composition?

Originally, we worked with four people, which consisted of a project manager, a designer, a full-stack developer, and the CEO. After signing the contract, the CEO was gone.

How did you come to work with dupontstudios?

I was working on some designs at a coffee shop, and their CEO saw me there. After introducing himself, he said he’d seen me at a comedy show since I did stand-up comedy on the side. He asked me what I was working on, and I showed him our app. After that, he said his team could spruce it up for us. A few days later, I asked if I could stop by their office to check out the new designs. At that time, he hadn’t done them yet, but I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt, so we continued with the engagement. 

How much have you invested with them?

In the end, we spent around $215,000. 

What is the status of this engagement?

Our engagement lasted from January 2020–July 2021. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Describe the impact this engagement has had on your business.

Signing a contract for the 3.0 version of the app, we expected to get a better service. That was where our problems began. dupontstudios’ CEO didn’t respect our time. He should have told us from the get-go that they couldn’t do it. Because of that, we were in limbo when we could have just searched for another studio. 

Moreover, they didn’t use WebSocket. Our version had WebSocket, so the app was updated in real-time. If something changed on the website, the WebSocket could read it and update the app accordingly. Meanwhile, when their team showed us their first draft, we immediately saw that we had to reload the site; it didn’t update automatically. This showed that our version was better than theirs, but they fought us by saying their version was better. Yet, they were using 2004 technology when we were using 2016 technology. 

On top of that, their CEO told us that they weren’t in the business of finding new clients. They said they believed in our app and the revenue it generated. As such, we’d be the only client they’d take on; they’d give us full devotion. Then, a few months ago, he said that they had a bunch of new clients, apologizing for their neglect of our project. This showed us that they didn’t care about the client; they just wanted the contract to guarantee money every month. 

The worst part was we discovered that dupontstudios went to India and outsourced the app’s development there; the team didn’t even work for them. When we decided to end the contract, they promised to cancel the last invoice and give us the app’s code. However, the Indian developers had the code, and dupontstudios didn’t pay them, saying they didn’t have the money to do it. As a result, the developers wouldn’t give them the code. 

How was project management handled?

The project management was handled poorly, and dupontstudios’ project manager ended up getting fired. Most of the time, the team was linear in their thinking. We gave them parameters, and they did what we told them to do. However, they didn’t think about edge cases where the project manager could have helped even more. 

To communicate, they’d email me and set up video meetings. Their CEO would write notes during such meetings. They also gave me access to Trello and Notion; I had to put down information there because the project manager didn’t do it. When that manager was fired, they assigned us a new one. That was already a red flag for us because when project managers changed in a project like ours, one had to wonder what was happening internally. Meanwhile, the new project manager was great. Unfortunately, I only had him for two months; he left for graduate school. I dealt with their CEO after that, and he had no idea what was going on; he let their developers code with no direction. 

Moreover, compared with other developers I’d worked with before, dupontstudios was also bad at timetables. They promised that the app would be released by April 2020, but we missed it. When we looked at what they’d developed, it seemed they couldn't finish it in a month. At that point, I wanted the app to be done by August 2020 since we were busy again in the last two weeks of that month. Their CEO assured us they’d have it done by then. 

However, we missed that deadline. As a result, we needed to get it done by January 2021, but we also missed that. We missed the April 2021 deadline, too — the project had gone on for over a year at this point. That was when I stopped and saw that their CEO only cared about the money and not about the customer. As a CEO myself, I was trying to motivate my own people and company. However, the project was demoralizing for the entire team; one person even quit because of this. At that point, I’d used so much of our profits and company funds to pay a studio that wasn’t good for us.

Is there anything that the vendor did well or that you would consider a strength?

They said yes to whatever we wanted.

In what specific areas can they improve?

They shouldn’t lie. They’d say yes to everything without knowing whether they could do it or not. In our engagement, they’d lied about the timeline, developers, and code. 

For the timetable, we wouldn’t have cared if they’d said it would take nine months. However, they’d said it would only take three months, and I agreed because I was already $20,000–$40,000 in the hole. After that, they said they needed a few more months, and I had to make a decision. 

I wouldn’t have a problem paying $90,000 for nine months’ worth of work, but I had a problem paying $40,000 for three months’ work and another $50,000 just because they needed more time. Overall, they should’ve been honest to us from the get-go. The only one that suffered because of time was our team.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

You have to be your own project manager. If you already have version 2.0 of your app, dictate what features you want. Don’t let them say that they know your market better than you do. If you let them do that, they’ll do whatever they want.