Gearheart.io

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the founder and CEO of Find a Game, Inc.

What challenge were you trying to address with Gearheart.io?

We needed frontend developers to help us build our software. We were not satisfied with our previous vendor, so we were looking for a new company.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They helped us build a SAS-based software for managing golf tournaments that are played over a few months. Working alongside our internal team that managed backend development, Gearheart built the frontend for golf course operators and golfers. They used HTML5, CSS, and Javascript for the frontend, while the backend is built in Python Django. They did a great job, so we started another project with them last week.

What is the team composition?

We primarily work with their owner and 1–2 other members of their team.

How did you come to work with Gearheart.io?

They were referred to us.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent between $50,000–$100,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in 2018 and the relationship is ongoing.

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

They've produced high-quality code and the whole process has been very smooth.

How did Gearheart.io perform from a project management standpoint?

They do a great job helping us turn our designs into specs. We use Slack and Google Hangouts to stay in touch. They're are great communicators.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They ask insightful questions about our designs, helping us come up with the best option to prepare designs and specs for developers.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They could be a bit more responsive. When our main point of contact is away, we might wait a day to hear from someone.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Schedule regular meetings. I’d recommend having meetings 2–3 times a week.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the senior product manager of a tech startup.

What challenge were you trying to address with Gearheart?

We wanted to build a web app but didn't have the skill set to develop it. We decided to outsource the project.

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

Our users react positively and always compliment our clean aesthetic.

How did Gearheart perform from a project management standpoint?

Their project management is excellent, and their project manager is one of the best I've worked with thus far. I credit a lot of our success to their management skills. Their team never misses deadlines or lets us down. We mainly use Slack for daily communication and collaborate on documents using Google Drive. They have their own proprietary sprint-planning software, which is useful. We also use Confluence for documentation, and Zeplin and InVision to develop the designs.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Gearheart delivers high-quality work. They are a good team and enjoyable to interact with. It's obvious that their team is passionate about the work and really care about delivering results.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I have some small issues with them like planning conservatively instead of aggressively and maybe having better audio quality during our meetings. However, I don't think there's anything significant or egregious.

Any advice for potential customers?

Have the right technical background to do product management. Matching a professional with their expertise will help out a lot. However, they're also perfectly capable of working with someone without technical knowledge and explaining difficult concepts.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Growth Capital Services is a private placement broker/dealer firm. We provide compliance services for independent placement agents who sell private securities. These agents are typically called registered representatives (“Reps”).  I’m the COO.

What challenge were you trying to address with Gearheart.io?

We initially began working with Gearheart through a local IT developer/manager who outsourced to them. When she moved on, we started working with Gearheart directly because we were happy with their service.

What was the scope of their involvement?

OLIVIA is our proprietary software. It primarily has 2 major modules.  The first is Compliance, which “Reps use to report a number of different things in accordance with federal and state regulations.  They file forms to describe their activities, then OLIVIA assigns the forms as tasks to the appropriate supervisor for review.  The system has custom workflows for approved or rejected forms, and tasks to keep Reps and supervisors organized.

The second module is for Deals.  Reps must seek pre-approval for all deal materials they wish to present to potential investors.  OLIVIA allows us to monitor at a document-by-document level, enabling us to provide a full audit trail for our mandatory audits.

The operating system they used was Ubuntu. The programming language is Python for the backend and JavaScript for the UI. We’re hosted with Amazon [AWS]. Our web application framework is Django.

We’re constantly in development. We’ve been developing straight for 5 years, so we’re always building cool new features. For example, we recently implemented a HelloSign API. We’re currently working on a new dashboard that shows supervisor efficiency. I can just tell Gearheart what we want to see as far as functionality goes, and they’ll do a mockup. We say what we like and don’t like, and they do a nice job of taking the business need and creating the functionality that fulfills it.

How did you come to work with Gearheart.io?

We initially had a local IT developer/manager that helped build the framework when we were first starting to develop the software. She hired Gearheart to write the code and implement it.

I am not a technical person whatsoever, but I still felt comfortable continuing the project with them. We weekly via Skype, and we keep a running project list to track feature development and infrequent bugs.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve been working with them for 5 or 6 years. We like the work they’re doing and plan to continue working with them. Every year it gets bigger and better.

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

We receive feedback from users that OLIVIA is modern and easy to use. Some of our Reps are not as technologically savvy as others, but I think they get it and appreciate that there’s a lot of meat and functionality in our software.

How did Gearheart.io perform from a project management standpoint?

We have a standing 9:00 a.m. [PST] meeting on Thursdays, so they’re working with us towards the end of their day, in the evening. If I need to reschedule or we need extra time or extra help, they’re very accommodating. As far as language barriers go, I haven’t had any problems. Our points of contact speak English fairly fluently, so that hasn’t been an issue.

If there’s ever a time when I feel something’s not being communicated well, I just write it out for clarification. Both timing and language support have actually been better than you’d expect.

In terms of deadlines, sometimes things do take a little longer than we expect. To be fair, some projects turn out to be more complicated than originally thought. They do a good job of managing all that.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I don’t have a lot of experience managing software builds, so I don’t have a lot to compare them to. But we’re such a unique niche business; we’re not aware of any other software product quite like ours, and Gearheart has done a good job of understanding our business.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I have the impression that there are a lot of coders on the team. Sometimes we get a very literal translation of what we’re asking for. For example, if I want a certain function, they might give something that basically works, but isn’t necessarily intuitive for the user. They do have designers on the team that they’ll bring onto the project at certain times.

I find that it’s a better when a designer involved for new features from the outset, someone who can think through all those moving pieces. They do offer that, but we typically have to pay extra to add a designer to specific projects. I wish that process was a little more integrated.

Do you have any advice for potential clients?

The one thing that I would say to somebody who was looking to work with them is to make sure there’s a designer on the team early on.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

The company is no longer in existence. We provided solutions for small-to medium-sized businesses so they didn’t have to hire contractors and consultants. Clients could drag and drop different elements to build solutions.

For example, a real estate agent wanting to build listings and showings could drag and drop a sheet showing dates, customer ID, and name, and then our company would take care of everything on the web, iOS, and Android.

I’m the founder and CEO.

What challenge were you trying to address with Gearheart?

My co-founder and I have PhDs in computer science and we used to work at Amazon, Google, and Facebook, so we set our bar high. We were trying to find a high-quality, cost-effective team that could grasp and work with required technologies.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We are highly technical ourselves, so we weren’t expecting someone to give us an estimate for delivery. They functioned more like an extension of our team. They provided expertise in technologies such as Python and Django backend, APIs, high-scalability architecture, and high-visibility systems. Our stack was super complex. It had an Apache Solr search layer and MongoDB and Amazon Web Services Relational Database Service (RDS).

They worked with us on an hourly basis for 2 years. We had weekly sprints. Our CTO built the tasks and projects, and we also had a design team. Everyone worked together on this complex project.

What is the team dynamic?

I didn’t work day-to-day with the team. They would scale up and down as needed, which was incredibly helpful. They were able to hire quickly and fill needed positions. The most resources of theirs we used were 10–12.

How much have you invested with them?

They were paid hourly. We spent between $300,000 and $400,000 over the course of 2 years.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked with them from 2014 to 2016.

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

Quality was our utmost priority, and second was delivery. Gearheart was amazing. We communicated our requests and deadlines, and they created incredible, highly reliable software to support more than 100,000 businesses in 169 countries in 7 languages.

How did Gearheart perform from a project management standpoint?

They did their part perfectly. We had clear requirements, and we worked in JIRA so that everything was documented. That worked well since there was a time difference.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Vladimir [Founder and CEO, Gearheart.io] and his team were really impressive. He knew how to vet engineers and team leaders. They were amazing.

We’ve outsourced to other companies in India, China, Ukraine, and Russia, and Gearheart’s quality and passion stand out. They care about what they’re building. That means first understanding what they are building and why. It showed in the quality of their work.

They were incredible about pushing back when they didn’t agree with what we wanted to do. We appreciated that because it resulted in a better design.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They felt like an extension of our company. Some of them weren’t completely proficient in English. We weren’t relying on them as a typical outsourcing company, where there was only one contact—we wanted everyone on the Skype calls discussing the designs and features. So they paid out of pocket for team members to learn English, and we subsidized that as well.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I manage the technology projects of a business workflow management software for photographers that’s been around for about 10 years. We’re one of the top solutions in the industry for photographers to manage their business. We’ve been in the process of modernizing our software stack and moving our Legacy code into a new architecture, which means rebuilding the front and backend of the application. I’ve been facilitating the process between our company owner and both the internal and external teams.

What challenge were you trying to address with Gearheart.io?

We had a substantial amount of technical development and business logic from our old application. Rebuilding a 9-10 year old piece of software is no small feat, and we’re not a huge business with dozens of developers, so we needed external resources.

What was the scope of their involvement?

It’s a complicated piece of software, so there was a lot involved. Initially, they were doing small feature development on the site. The first thing they did for us was the citing process for a type of text editing interface where you can offer a contract and variables, then render that to a final client ready contract that can be sent to customers. They then moved onto the proposal process, which involves a contract, payment schedules, and discounts, all of which are presented to the client. There’s also a sort of mini-website where customers can access this information to review it.

Gearheart.io did the photographer proposal frontend and they also did the booking site, which is the interstitial application where the client is presented with the proposal. They actually did the post booking site as well, which is where the client reviews and signs the contract and becomes committed to payment. This element was crucial, and probably the thing that impressed me the most when working with Gearheart.io. They were very consistent with both their timeline and assessment.

The software was built with a Django backend platform and an Angular frontend.

What is the team dynamic?

Gearheart.io has around 4-5 developers at any given time, as well as their project manager, Anna [Business Analyst, Gearheart.io]. We have our internal team, including some QA people, a couple developers, and myself. We’ve never had any conflict with Gearheart.io. There’s a lot of moving parts, which means there’s a lot of code commits that come in. The only thing that ever happens is that we step on each other’s toes with code commits and need to fix certain things. This is just a normal part of development when you’re dealing with multiple people on a big application.

How did you come to work with Gearheart.io?

We had tried out some other companies along the way, as well as worked with overseas development shops in different locations worldwide. We found Gearheart.io through Upwork. We started small with them, and after seeing the quality of their work and project management skills, we expanded our engagement over time. I had two development teams at one point of equal size working on the project. I ended up firing the other development team and doubling Gearheart.io’s workload after I saw what they were capable of.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in December 2016, and the relationship is ongoing.

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

Our application isn’t in production yet. We did set some aggressive timelines for getting our MVP application finished, which was important to our customer base who were anxiously waiting to use it. Gearheart.io remained consistent in sticking to our timeline and not letting anything slip up.

How did Gearheart.io perform from a project management standpoint?

Their communication skills are excellent. Everyone, including their senior project manager and company owner, speak excellent English. We communicate primarily over instant messaging applications. We write to each other more than anything else, and there hasn’t been any issues.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They employ mostly full spec developers, which is extremely nice when building this kind of application. If you have people that only either do front or backend development, it puts a real strain on productivity because someone is always waiting on someone else. There’s always this huge communication buffer that you need to keep filled to make sure everyone is on the same page. Having developers who are able to look at the entirety of the software makes the process fairly autonomous, which is very nice.

Their project management is their most valuable asset. Anna [Business Analyst, Gearheart.io] is very impressive because of her amazing attention to detail and ability to never miss a beat. Every step of the way, she has validated our assumptions on some of the design and technical decisions. She’s offered alternative ideas and solutions, and has contributed to the overall health of the project outside of a normal development relationship. She’s definitely helped us think through complexities within the app. It’s like having another person who can analyze and deconstruct to point out flaws. This is one of the biggest reasons we’ve stayed loyal to Gearheart.io, and why we consider them to be such an integral part of our process now.

Are there any areas they could improve?

My only pain point is that they use their own project management software heavily. I understand why they do it, because it’s tied into their process, but it would be nice if the entire process had been done in JIRA. They’ve also been using our project management system, so it’s not like they completely ignored our process.

Do you have any advice for other potential customers of Gearheart.io?

I believe there should always be 80% design and 20% implementation. There should always be time or money spent to come up with a thorough application design or document that is in-depth and capable before engaging with companies. These companies will allocate a lot of resources and will move faster than you, so you have to be completely prepared. When you’re not, that’s when things slow down and you end up having to figure things out on the fly, which is how mistakes are made.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We have developed a media monitoring and measurement platform which is being sold to PR managers of big companies. We monitor and analyze all types of media, including social platforms, TV and radio content, and printed media.

What challenge were you trying to address with Gearheart.io?

We have developed our platform with their team. At the launch of the company, we had a goal of creating a platform which would aid our clients. We had been using old-school document formats like doc and pdf, which were sent to clients every day. The new platform would give them access to reports across the day, and allow us to use fewer analysts.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Gearheart.io developed our platform using Python. We use several databases, including Apache Solr, MongoDB, and PostgreSQL. On the frontend, we use JavaScript.

What is the team dynamic?

The team varies depending on the task. We currently have 2 developers on our project, as well as an analyst and a tester on a part-time basis. During busier times, we used 3 developers. Vladimir Sidorenko, their CEO, has helped us plan various tasks, acting like a manager of the project.

How did you come to work with Gearheart.io?

Vladimir is my brother, and I know that he is a professional in his area, so we chose Gearheart.io.

How much have you invested with them?

The total budget has been around $70,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Gearheart.io more than 4 years ago, at the launch of our company. We haven’t used any other developers.

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

We have more than 150 clients on our system, including McDonald’s and VISA. We have received feedback from them, and have seen great results. The platform received good marks from the users.

How did Gearheart.io perform from a project management standpoint?

They collaborated with our in-house development team on a weekly basis. We controlled the process, and had access to the progress and results online. Gearheart.io is not only developing our platform, but are also supporting our system, so we are connected daily, discussing the issues around our project and their solutions.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They provide different ways to approach tasks. Gearheart.io wants to help, and they choose simple but also correct solutions. We have worked on all screens and tasks together, and received great advice from them, which was used in our work and in the planning of our platform.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I haven’t had experience working with other companies, but, at this moment, all our processes are stable, and everyone knows what to do and whom to contact. It’s most likely because we have been working with Gearheart.io for 4 years.

Advice for potential customers?

Any company looking to build a product should put together detailed technical specifications, and maintain contact with the development team. There are many possible issues related to the technical specs of a project.