Evolve IT Consulting

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the founder and CEO of TeeVid. Our team of 20 provides end-to-end solutions for hybrid and virtual web events, which are extremely popular these days. We’re selling our products in China, the US, and Europe. We’ve had two rounds of fundraising, and we’ll be starting a new one very soon.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Evolve IT Consulting?

As with any tech-oriented startup, the challenge is finding, maintaining, and training the right people to build the organization, with the hope that there won’t be high turnover rates.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Evolve IT Consulting allocated some developers according to our needs. All their developers are located in Ukraine. Our CTO interviewed them after the initial screening.

The Evolve IT Consulting team handles the initial screening and recruitment phase, as well as the administrative bureaucracy of paying salaries and taking care of offices and equipment.

The developers are working directly with us, as though they were our employees. They’re continually supporting released versions and developing new features. The team works directly with our customers for support issues.

What is the team composition?

We started with a few people, and, as of today, we have 13 developers on Evolve IT Consulting's side. We have two main points of contact on their side for recruitment and administrative matters. 

How much have you invested with them?

Overall, we've invested over $1.25 million. We pay them around $50,000–$60,000 per month.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Evolve IT Consulting in October 2018, and it’s ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We've received very high-quality developers from Evolve IT Consulting, which has helped us get through many challenges. The most important KPI is that we have customers buying our product. We designed it, Evolve IT Consulting's developers executed it, and we’re selling it today.

We’re happy with what we have with Evolve IT Consulting, in terms of timely delivery and quality of code. They’re very experienced in terms of R&D.

How did Evolve IT Consulting perform from a project management standpoint?

Our teams usually communicate over email, and recruitment is done over video calls. We also have a dedicated Slack channel for daily communication.

We manage the developers on Evolve IT Consulting's side directly. Our team defines the project and gives each developer the tasks that they should perform, specifying the deadlines and required quality.

There are occasional surprises, but we usually try to give them at least two months’ heads up in terms of recruitment. The process takes 4–6 weeks from the moment we provide them with the position description.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I've worked with lots of IT subcontractors over the years. The major problem with these companies is that, although they can onboard some developers, they’ll get a new project after a while and switch our resources to it. That makes it very hard to maintain a team because there’s a learning curve for the developers until they’re familiar with the product.

It’s not that way with Evolve IT Consulting. The developers they’ve assigned us function as a part of our company. They stand out in terms of the quality of developers they provide us, and anyone they've onboarded has stayed with the company.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We’ve been working with them for a long time, and the interfacing has been great right from the start. Each developer will have a learning curve, but they’re fast to onboard with us and learn our company’s DNA. We hire people based on their character, not just their proficiency.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

Evolve IT Consulting is great for long-term relationships, but they can also handle short-term projects and deliver on a project basis. It’s important for startups to decide early on whether they want to work on a project or outsourcing basis.

We can either define the requirements and go to Evolve IT Consulting to define the scope and provide the output, or we can act as project owner and have them just hire and take care of the resources.