East Coast Product

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m COO of a safety tech firm. We are a company that’s focused on improving safety for industrial workers through use of IoT [Internet of Things] technology and virtual reality training in a native mobile application.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with East Coast Product?

We needed to get a lot of resources working with us quickly to staff up our internal teams. We had a fairly large internal team, but East Coast Product was able to come in and boost the amount of product and engineering resources that we had and were able to get us to market significantly faster. They were able to closely work with our internal product team to make sure we were building the right product for the market.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

The first thing they did was some initial product discovery work.

We used React.js for the frontend and React Native for the native application. We used Express in the Node framework. There was some MQTT [MQ Telemetry Transport] broker aspect associated with it. There was cloud containerized instances and other various libraries we use.

What is the team dynamic?

We used 6 direct full-time resources from their team.

How did you come to work with East Coast Product?

I knew Chris and knew he had formed a consultancy. One thing that appealed to me about his mode of working is that, essentially, you get U.S.-grade developers, communication skills, and processes, which tend to be lagging in nearshore firms. You get all that at a price point that is approachable. At the end of the day, it was a significantly better ROI than other options that we explored.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent somewhere around $1M.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in March 2016, and the work is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

It’s a complicated product because the market we’re addressing is the industrial workforce, which is usually behind from a tech skills perspective. East Coast Product executed in a very Agile way that allowed us to try things out and iterate to quickly find the right grouping of features, in addition to products and UX talent that was extremely adept at keeping the end user in mind. They were also very skilled at being strong communicators and strong collaborators with other members of our team, despite not being in our offices.

How did East Coast Product perform from a project management standpoint?

They adapted to the tools that we were using. We were using Trello for task management. They assigned us a product manager that acted as the project manager, although we did an Agile approach to the processes—we sprinted stuff out and executed on it. As a result, there wasn’t a lot of deadlines and Gantt charts. It was closer to a Scrum type of methodology. They were heavily involved in product discovery and pushing out features which we accomplished in a separate track.

What did you find most impressive about them?

One of the things that makes East Coast Product so appealing is their unique value prop. That’s Silicon Valley quality in a firm that has developers farther away. I think it’s how they recruit their talent in a very picky manner. It’s anything but a body shop; it’s at the opposite end of the spectrum. Even the people they hire stay off client projects for months as they get them up to a level of quality that they’re comfortable with. You get some top-notch developers working on your project.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Early on we said we wanted a fair mix and could use 1 or 2 junior developers. It’s more our fault for that. We realized we needed more medium to senior people. We had a little pain around one of the junior developers, but East Coast Product was extremely fast in swapping in the appropriate resource for what we were trying to accomplish. They were proactively calling it out based on the work coming down the pipeline, as opposed to us having to call out the issue. That was good to see and we had a positive result.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am a co-founder of an anti-piracy content management service that helps protect companies from piracy. We are a 10-person startup.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with East Coast Product?

Our initial challenge was sales-related. Being a young startup, we lacked experience with product development and business strategy.  Our sales were stagnant and we lacked a consistent strategy for adding new clients.  We wanted to get some feedback on our sales cycle and process. We also needed some software architecture help to make broad decisions about the tech we use. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

The first thing we did was a business and product design sprint with Steve [Hickey, Director of Product Design and Strategy], which helped us improve our sales strategy. This was over the course of five days.

The second thing was a tech design sprint with Ivan [Blazevik, CTO and Co-Founder], over three days.  We went over the core technology of the business, and Ivan gave critically honest suggestions and feedback to improve our tech.  If we had that design sprint six months earlier, it would've saved us hundreds of hours of dev hours making poor decisions.

We went through a four-week sprint with East Coast Product, with their lead designer. We have also received a lot of technical consulting from their CTO, which has been very helpful, given that we don’t have an experienced tech person. This has been helping our full-stack development effort.

The design sprint was meant to give us feedback on our sales process. We made a number of Post-It designs on a whiteboard and used a couple of design tools. 

Since the design sprints, we have had ongoing weekly tech consultation with Ivan.

How did you come to work with East Coast Product?

We found them through MassChallenge, a startup accelerator in Boston, to which we were accepted in the summer of 2016. A number of consultants attend the event, talking about their services and startups. We met East Coast Product’s team and found that it would be a good fit to work with them. We went from there.

How much have you invested with East Coast Product?

The cost of their work was $5,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We continue to have weekly consultations with their CTO.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

We've used ECP as consultation for both business and design, as well as technology architecture. Steve and Ivan have both been phenomenal for that - experienced talent in the industry and great at what they do. I strongly recommend a design sprint to any startup that needs a little boost of creativity and life into their business. We came out of the design sprint with a ton of ideas and clearer business strategy that helped boost our sales.

East Coast Product has the ability to develop clean code, and they have a good engineering team. Their CTO has been very helpful to us, and we’ve seen them as more than a dev shop throwing things together quickly. East Coast Product does things the right way, which I’ve been impressed with.

While we personally didn't use them to build a product for us, their consultation was invaluable. I know their tech team enforces quality code and design, which would make me 100% confident in using them for an actual software project. Another advantage is that because they are a new company, their tech stack is the absolute best possible right now, so you won't end up with some dinosaur app running on Flash or anything. 

How did East Coast Product perform from a project management standpoint?

They did as good as job as they could have. Their designer came to our office and had a short but intense sprint with our team. We continued to talk through email afterward.

What did you find most impressive about East Coast Product?

They’re very friendly and nice to work with. We've interacted with their core team of Chris [Swenor, CEO and Co-Founder] Ivan, and Steve. This is a great "Big Three" leadership team. We used each of them for their particular expertise to help guide our company. They're also genuinely nice people who are a pleasure to work with. 

Are there any areas East Coast Product could improve?

I can’t think of too many areas to improve. Everything went well.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Vsnap is a software company. I was the founder and CEO [Chief Executive Officer] of the company. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with East Coast Product?

East Coast Product was brought in to rebuild our entire product. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

The scope was to use the set of technologies around JavaScript and Node.js in order to build a core application which also drove our iOS and Android apps. East Coast Product worked on our apps as well.

We've worked with 5 developers from East Coast Product.

How did you come to work with East Coast Product?

I met East Coast Product through a personal reference. I appreciated the combination of engineering capabilities and adherence to a very strong building and executing process. East Coast Product's CEO was an exceptional person to work with in terms of translating business objectives into a tactical scope and vice versa.

How much have you invested with East Coast Product?

The total cost of our project with East Coast Product was over $500,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with East Coast Product in 2014. The project duration was around 10 months.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

It's hard to provide exact metrics since the work took place over a year ago and someone bought the assets built by East Coast Product, which speaks to the strength of the work.

How did East Coast Product perform from a project management standpoint?

What I most appreciated about working with East Coast Product was the combination of project management, transparency, accountability, and quality of code. I've worked with teams that usually offered only one-half of this equation. East Coast Product's CEO managed the process along with me and provided strong open dialogue. 

What did you find most impressive about East Coast Product?

East Coast Product was able to identify where we could achieve business objectives at lower costs, and had a strength in not just understanding the work, but also executing it in a forward-thinking technical way. The application was architecturally nimble, which prompted its ultimate acquisition. It could be integrated into gaming platforms without a lot of customization work.

Are there any areas East Coast Product could improve?

No. We've had a good engagement all-around. East Coast Product designed and executed what I asked for, and reduced the scope in areas where that made sense. When we ultimately took our product to market, it held up to the diligence process.

What tips or recommendations could you share that might increase the likelihood of success with East Coast Product?

Not particularly. The beauty of East Coast Product as a company was that I didn't need to speak a special language in order to deal with them.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Innovation Women is a speaker's bureau for innovative, entrepreneurial and technical women. Our goal is to have more women speaking at conferences and events, especially technology ones, where women are under-represented.

I am the founder of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with East Coast Product?

In November 2014, we went through a crowdfunding campaign in order to put together a website where event managers could find great speakers who happened to be women. We had started with another developer on that project, but it didn't work out, unfortunately. We wasted about 2-months' time, and that company recommended another developer who told us that the scaffolding which had been built would not help us and that we should start from scratch.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

East Coast Product built my website from scratch using Ruby on Rails, which was also the technology choice of our previous developer.

I don't know how many people on East Coast Product's end were assigned to the project, but almost their entire team jumped in towards the end.

East Coast Product set me up with a Slack account, where the whole development team was present. My initial junior developer was incorporated into the team, and the rest of the East Coast Product members acted as mentors to her. She worked on-site with me while the rest of the team was remote, but everyone was connected via Slack. The tool was also integrated with GitHub, allowing us to see different banks of code being worked on and tested. The whole process unfolded in front of me.

One of East Coast Product's main strengths is their customer communication channel. I always knew what was going on, and communicated with them clearly, in real-time. I don't know when East Coast Product's team slept because it seemed that there was always someone working on my project.

How did you come to work with East Coast Product?

East Coast Product was recommended to us by a third party. I talked to them, and East Coast Product came to the exact conclusion as the other developer we'd contacted, namely that we'd need to start from scratch. I was set to accept a major award for the currently non-existent website, and it would be personally embarrassing for me if it didn't exist at that point either. I gave East Coast Product a 3-week timeframe for a website and a web app which would allow event managers to search for speakers, build profiles, and perform transactions.

East Coast Product jumped right in, got to work, and allowed me to direct people to my website at the award ceremony. A year and a half later, we've reached 1,400 members, and the website continues to work flawlessly.

How much have you invested with East Coast Product?

The total cost of my project with East Coast Product was between $10,000 and $50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

I started working with East Coast Product in April 2015, and the website was finished in 3 weeks. We still have a few additional improvements to make on the site. It hasn't needed much maintenance, but East Coast Product has remained available for any questions I've had. I always got the sense that they would be there for me in the case of an emergency.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

We started out with 200 members attracted through our crowdfunding campaign, mostly speakers who wanted to pay for a profile on our site. We've done marketing in order to add to that number, including newspaper write-ups and a weekly newsletter with 5,000 subscribers. We have 12,000 followers on social media, and 1,400 registered members on the app itself.

How did East Coast Product perform from a project management standpoint?

One of the interesting aspects of East Coast Product’s work process is that they offered a Chief Technology Officer for the team. I'm marketing person, not a technical one, so it was useful to collaborate with someone who could guide the scene and keep constant communication. We never felt that we were having meetings for the sake of it. They only occurred when it was necessary, and we kept one-to-one communication with East Coast Product for the rest of the time.

Having a project manager who was also a high-level technical person was great, but East Coast Product also assigned a manager to keep track of hours, and who was doing what. That part of the process was almost invisible, but we saw the results of it, which is the best way in which project management can be described.

What did you find most impressive about East Coast Product?

East Coast Product's team made the project their own, taking ownership to the point of becoming advocates for my product. We never had a strict client-agency relationship. I know that East Coast Product has other clients, but it was never apparent to me, as a customer, that they were off doing something else.

Are there any areas East Coast Product could improve?

No. East Coast Product has probably set me up for some unrealistic expectations in the future, given that this particular project was so fast. There were areas which I didn't define well, which East Coast Product helped me define, and they made decisions in terms of direction and functionality in order to speed up the process. I wasn't as available as I could have been because I was also running another business, and we had a 3-week deadline for bringing a major app to fruition. Small changes which I've requested since then have taken around a week by comparison because East Coast Product operated in frantic mode during the main project.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Our company provides a service similar to DraftKings, but with more stock-based gameplay. Users can buy and sell shares on players for specific events. Our startup was founded in April 2016. I am the founder of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with East Coast Product?

We needed resources in order to scope out our app and nail down the core features which we wanted to include in the initial beta.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

East Coast Product started the work through an initial design sprint, building a static demo of our product, which we were able to show to prospective investors and receive feedback prior to actually building a fully-functional platform. We went through a number of design exercises, conducted user interviews, and made 2 iterations; one of them was a quick, Balsamiq mockup, and the final one was done in InVision and was more polished.

We're building the functional version as a web app. We will continue to iterate, and ultimately build native iOS and Android apps.

We worked with a project manager from East Coast Product, as well as a designer. We also kept in touch with their CEO.

How did you come to work with East Coast Product?

East Coast Product was recommended by a technical talent recruiter who had used them. I also spoke to 2 other firms, but ended up choosing East Coast Product because they provided a combination of professional contacts in the industry and experience.

How much have you invested with East Coast Product?

The total cost of our project with East Coast Product has been $20,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with East Coast Product in May 2016. Our project is on hold at the moment, after a one-month duration. My co-founder is an engineer and we've decided to develop the basic functional prototype on our own. We are considering using East Coast Product for native app development. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

East Coast Product conducted a number of user interviews with people which I referred. Everyone found East Coast Product to be a professional team and they enjoyed the experience.

How did East Coast Product perform from a project management standpoint?

East Coast Product performed up to our expectations and did everything which we wanted to accomplish within our 4-week timeframe.

What did you find most impressive about East Coast Product?

East Coast Product's CEO was particularly helpful, especially since this was my first startup. He introduced me to connections in the industry and provided feedback beyond the scope of the actual contract.

Are there any areas East Coast Product could improve?

Not that I can think of. Everything outlined upfront was delivered by East Coast Product.