Fishermen Labs

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We’re doing a web platform to help dentists. I’m the co-founder and chief executive officer.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Fishermen Labs?

We want to keep the functions private until we launch. They did a great job helping us complete our vision. They did a great job of executing what we wanted and we were more than pleased with them.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Eventually, we’ll be introducing an app for iOS and Android. It was certainly a project that required a lot of thinking. Regarding the scale and the scope, I would say it’s a moderately difficult program to execute. It wasn’t simple, but it wasn’t difficult either. We had so many different design elements integrated all at once, and Fishermen Labs was really good at designing the flow to make sure everything synced and worked well together.

How did you come to work with Fishermen Labs?

We were Googling for these incubator startup companies. I interviewed three companies prior to meeting Eden and his team at Fishermen Labs. Once I sat down with him, we knew instantly that this was the guy we wanted to work with. The other companies were either arrogant or they felt like they had too many projects. Some of their past work didn’t seem that good. Some of them even used a guy that just got on the company to interview us, which didn’t make sense when you’re looking at a very expensive project. I think Fishermen Labs was very professional. They made us feel comfortable right from the beginning. We knew instantly we wanted to work with them because Eden was a great listener and made us feel at ease with their abilities. They executed on what they promised us.

How much have you invested with Fishermen Labs?

We have spent $10,000 to $50,000.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We haven’t launched yet so it’s hard to gather that data. We spoke with tons of people. We have attorneys, business plan writers, and animators. We have the whole team assembled already. They could be biased because they’re working with us, but the feedback has been overwhelmingly and universally positive. Everyone looks at what Fisherman Labs did for us and everyone’s very encouraged and thinks there’s a lot of potential in what we’re doing.

What did you find most impressive about Fishermen Labs?

Accessibility. I wrote some reviews for them and I mentioned how they had a company trip where they went to New Zealand. My partner and I were not the easiest to work with. We try to be really fair but we are quite demanding. Every single time we made a request or decided to make a change, they would give us valuable input and would always make themselves available very quickly for them to address our concerns. That’s why I have to say so many good things to say about them because I know we’re not easy to work with. We know exactly what we want and we are demanding individuals ourselves. That’s why I think we’re pretty successful. For a team to share that goal and to be able to work with us, I thought was very impressive.

Even though we’re technically done with our current contract with them, the first thing they did was ask us, and they still continue to ask us, updates on the project because they care. They give you a human element which is very important to us.

Are there any areas Fishermen Labs could improve?

No. No one’s going to be perfect. I would be nitpicking in order to answer the question. I think, overall, they were excellent. They weren’t perfect, but we’re not perfect clients either. I can’t put anything on them.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

I work for Ribbow Media, a digital social media, and marketing company.

What is your position?

I am the head of development, so I handle account management as well as the strategy and ideas component.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What business challenge were you trying to address with Fishermen Labs?

We needed a full website to be developed.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.

Fishermen Labs developed the site for us and were an in-house go-to for any questions we had related to the system.

How did you come to work with Fishermen Labs?

I've worked with Eden [Chen], the founder, a couple of times, and he's great. I'm his social guy, and he's my digital guy. I have the highest regard for him and his team.

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

The cost was between $10,000 and $50,000.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

We got exactly what we were hoping for. It was done on behalf of a client, and they were very happy with how it played out. We also benefitted because we could repurpose the product for other campaigns rather than a one-and-done project. We were able to get some good mileage out of it.

What distinguishes Fishermen Labs from other providers?

Fishermen Labs has a great workflow and turnaround time. They're consistently on time and on schedule. They kept me in the loop the whole time and were ahead of the curve in terms of having a preview image and other materials prepared.

Is there anything Fishermen Labs could have improved or done differently?

No. I wasn't unhappy with anything.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company.

The name is Reality LA. We’re a nonprofit, nondenominational church in Hollywood. We have about 3,000 attendees on an average Sunday.

What is your role and responsibilities?

I’m the director of operations.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What was your goal for working with Fishermen Labs?

We’ve worked with Fishermen Labs a couple of times. The last project was tweaking a lot of stuff on our website, primarily the home page. We’re a pretty content heavy site. So, the main goal was to present a fair amount of content in a better way.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their work.

As a church it fluctuates between 250,000 and 500,000 downloads a month of sermons, so a lot of that was getting cluttered and not really presented well. Basically, we needed someone to help us think through how best to present that and organize it, especially on the home page.

We talked to them several times, outlined what we viewed as our problem, how we want to solve it. We went through some brainstorming, and I was impressed with their technical expertise, and also their ability to help us think through how to solve the problem, which not all vendors that we’ve dealt with can do. Other vendors can handle the technical side, but not necessarily the brainstorming. Fishermen did a really good job from start to finish, the UI [user interface] and design side of things, as well as the actual execution of it. So, although we tend not to hire third-party vendors, they were worth it.

What was your process for selecting Fishermen Labs with which to work?

We’re a nonprofit, so a lot of the work we rely on is volunteer work. That’s great, but you also tend to get what you pay for there with experience level and commitment to project, and things like that. So, as we’ve gotten bigger, we had to pick and choose which projects we needed more expertise with. Obviously, when you get into design and technical issues, that’s something we more often need third-party help with. So, we wanted to outsource that, and not use volunteer labor.

One of the people at Fishermen actually is an attendee at our church. As far as how we select, we look at how portfolios match up with what the particular project is. We had a series of fairly rigorous conversations to make sure that it’s going to be a lot more effective than using internal, volunteer resources.

Can you provide a ballpark dollar figure for the size of the work that they’ve done for you?

We probably paid them in the $10,000 range, but I have a feeling that we definitely had some nonprofit pricing in there. So, I think the value of the work they did was much higher than that.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Do you have any statistics or metrics to track improvements from the project?

The type of stuff they did for us wasn’t really metrics driven. We just needed better organization, a better user experience. My gut would say that we saw some additional growth, but I’m not sure of that right now, numerically. Anecdotally, just the user experience on the home page, finding content was much better after we did the project. We were all very happy with the results.

Was there any set timeline, or due date, and did Fishermen Labs meet expectations as far as the amount of time it took them to complete your projects?

Yeah, I would say probably overall, it was a month or so, a few weeks. They were very good, very communicative about deadlines and things. We probably didn’t make it easy for them, there was some scope creep, as there often is in things like this. We have a lot of different types of voices having input on our side, so our scope was a slightly moving target. They were really very good in how they worked with us. So, it was a couple weeks of work taking place during a month or so, but any delays were on our side.

Is there anything unique about them that really makes them stand out, compared to other companies?

The primary differentiator that we saw was that they were very good not only on the technical side, but they were also very good on the user interface and design side. Fishermen Labs was able to help us think through what we needed technically and what we would need going forward, they were not just executing on the task at hand. They were very good at shaping what those tasks were, and working with us on the user interface and design side as well as being very competent technically. 

Looking back on the work so far, is there any area that you think they could improve upon or something that you might do differently?

Not that I can think of [on] my side. I think they handled things very well. 

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company.

Structure Research is a third-party, independent market research company that focuses on hosting and cloud services and data infrastructure space. We publish research on a daily and quarterly basis. We do consulting and due diligence projects for our clients that range from vendors to service providers to financial services.

What is your role and responsibilities?

I am the co-owner and head of research for data of Structure Research. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What was your goal for working with Fisherman Labs?

We have lots of data laying around in notes and spreadsheets, and we needed a central portal online to consolidate all that data, as well as to monetize it with clients. Clients want to view it in a clean format and to incorporate it from many sources. We engaged Fishermen Labs to build an online database for us to capture all the data that we were receiving from our phone briefings, phone interviews, and from our site visits to see companies and data centers.        

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their work.

We want our database to be marketable in terms of the way it looks and feels. We want to be able to use this for years to come as we grow as a business. We plan to sell the database to our client base through license purchases. Our measure of success will be the number of clients we’ve signed to obtain licenses.

What was your process for selecting Fisherman Labs with which to work?

We were already working with another firm in Canada that set up our WordPress site and did all of our IT [information technology] development. Being previously tied to the Canadian development company meant a lot of effort was needed for us to move companies, but when we came across Fisherman Labs, they not only offered to revamp our database, but began to feel more like a strategic partner who gave recommendations on technology, software, and programming language for architecture of the database. The previous firm didn’t really get what we were trying to achieve while Fisherman Labs understood in one quick call. Effective communication was one of the key points to choosing Fisherman Labs as well as their suggestions and recommendations along the way. 

Can you provide a ballpark dollar figure for the size of the work that they’ve done for you?

We spent north of $30,000 on the entire database. It took about four months from the moment we called them until they delivered the completed version of the database. We were very impressed with the speed of which they delivered all the details. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the results of the project?

The project was completed beyond satisfaction on September 30, 2014.

Do you have any statistics or metrics to track improvement from the project?

In terms of metrics, I could say that they introduced us to a couple of very effective project management platforms like Trelo, which was a very effective way for us to communicate in terms of changes, add-ons, new features, and corrections for the database. They implemented features quickly, and I could test it almost immediately.

Is there anything unique about them that really makes them stand out, compared to other companies?

We are a small research firm, and it’s very rare that you come across a developer firm that not only wants to help you design a project, but also who is a strategic advisor. They felt like they were part of our company advising us on how we should go about positioning the project, the kinds of software and technologies we should use to architect it. The thing that I was most impressed by was the speed at which they worked at. We got the results faster than we anticipated. They were also very competitive on price. They executed what they said by the date that they said they would. There were never setbacks or anything like that. They were very transparent. We felt that we got great value for the amount of money we paid.

Looking back on the work so far, is there any area that you think they could improve upon or something that you might do differently?

No. Even after they completed the database project, we actually expanded our relationship with them and now they’re managing our server, doing a lot of administrative stuff, and troubleshooting. We’ve been having some attacks on our website and they have taken care of a bunch our IT requirements. From this project, we’ve now moved forward and expanded our relationship with them to be responsible for more of our IT and development needs.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your organization.

We are an e-commerce-driven menswear brand. We offer everyday custom suits with modern design and off-the-rack prices.

What is your role and responsibilities?

I'm the CEO.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What was your goal for working with Fisherman Labs?

We needed to build a highly customized e-commerce platform. We used Shopify to do it, and we had a lot of requirements for what we needed. They filled our needs, and they were awesome. The overall goal was to drive more traffic since all our sales are online.

SOLUTION

Please describe the scope of their work.

The launch of the website was in advance of an ad campaign that we ran across New York City. The job included custom HTML, CSS, and Web pages that were prebuilt. These things were all integrated into the Shopify platform. It also included design, photo editing, custom Ajax coding, and a unique order method that was different from what anyone else is doing. They also did a lot of consultation on-site strategy and user flow. They did a great job from both the design and the functional perspective. The product is very impressive in how it turned out.

Fishermen Labs really went above and beyond in terms of the original scope. In addition to development, they also consulted on UI [user interface] and UX [user experience], and they coached us on the overall strategy and vision. There were a lot of things that they jumped in to help us with, beyond the core project.

What was your process for selecting Fisherman's Labs with which to work?

We spoke to a number of firms. Fishermen Labs was by far the most capable. They were very clear when we communicated before the project. A lot of people felt more like just developers, and Fishermen Labs seemed more like partners that had skin in the game.

Can you provide a ballpark dollar figure for the size of the work that they’ve done for you?

This was a four-month-long project, and they were able to give me a discount that I can't discuss, but the cost was north of $25,000.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Are you satisfied with how the project came out?

Yes. The actual platform launched  in late September of 2014. It's a little early for tangible numbers. Anecdotally, the response has been great from our customers as well as our partners that we work with. They like how the site works. It's cleaner, and the transactions are smoother. It's significantly improved.

Part of the process they provide is outstanding service, which is hard to come by. It's hard to find firms that care, so Fishermen Labs' performance was impressive. They took care of almost everything with very little direction. They made some amazing suggestions that we hadn’t even thought about with the original design. We had to change the scope a couple of times because of the design changes. They were very accommodating and used a lot of project management tools. They also figured out the project management information for us so we didn't have to deal with any of that hassle.

From a process standpoint, they are the best that we've worked with so far. They are very organized and strategic. From cost and performance, it was very compelling.

Do you have any statistics or metrics to track improvement from the project?

It's too early to tell, but we will be tracking traffic, sales, and the usual customer metrics.

Is there anything unique about them that really makes them stand out, compared to other developers?

They are different in that they have great expertise. The quality is very high. They felt more like partners than an agency. The consulting, guidance, and advice that they provided were very strong, and they thought of a lot of things that we didn’t think about and made it better. Their strategic guidance was wonderful, highly organized, and highly experienced. They were also great on the project management piece of getting us to the deadline. They managed the timeline very well and didn't push us right to the deadline.

Fishermen Labs was great at integrating other technologies and helping us anticipate other factors that we might need to consider. The quality, service, responsiveness, and management were all excellent. The cost, performance, and the proposition were also great.

Looking back on the work so far, is there any area that you think they could improve upon or that you might do differently?

I'm fairly picky with the vendors that I work with, but they did a wonderful job. I feel a bit indebted to them. There were a lot of items that became challenges in the design, and they went above and beyond in helping us past them. They're great.