GM2

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CTO of Freebird Rides. We’re a mobile platform targeted at consumers aged 21–40, as well as bar and restaurant owners.

For the consumers, it serves as a marketplace for people that want to save money and find awesome places to dine or drink. The merchants can leverage rideshare as a loyalty and user-acquisition tool.

What challenge were you trying to address with GM2?

We needed a team that had expertise with mobile app development, specifically with a platform called React Native. We also needed to quickly find engineers to augment our existing team for additional firepower. We found that with GM2.

What was the scope of their involvement?

GM2 has helped us deliver a release of our mobile application that was ready for both Android and iOS. We took an existing app that was built on a different platform and changed it to a new platform called React Native, which was the main framework. We had to maintain feature completeness and port performance, as well as develop the Android app because we had an iOS-only app.

The app development has required heavy TypeScript skills and a lot of mobile app development tools usage. We’ve implemented heavy integration with our API to serve up offers that are geo-targeted to the user. We’ve also integrated the app with our rideshare partners, Uber and Lyft, and it has required heavy usage of mapping and geo-libraries provided by Google. On top of that, we’ve made sure to accomplish this complex task with a beautiful design.

Once the deadline for the project was met, we retained one of the engineers. This person has been one of our best and longest-standing engineers to date. Currently, GM2 provides maintenance services and helps us with ongoing developments.

What is the team composition?

At the peak of the development, we work with three engineers. Two of them are React Native mobile app developers, so they’re very JavaScript- and TypeScript- oriented. The other one is a backend developer and helps us with our Node.js backend.

How did you come to work with GM2?

I’ve had a very long-standing relationship with GM2. I’ve worked with them over the course of two different companies that I’ve led. My previous relationship with them was at my former company, where we partnered with them to do a lot of different developments.

Originally, I found them through a referral within our network, and they became the largest provider of our development services. Thanks to that past relationship, when I formed this new company, GM2 was the first company I reached out to get additional developers from.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent over $200,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together on this project about three years ago, close to June 2018. The app was launched around four months later, but they stayed as an effective part of our team.

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

The app they have helped us build at peak has 200,000–250,000 users a month, and it’s facilitating around 150,000 transactions or rides, in our case, a month.

GM2 was able to spin up fast and get a critical deadline met. So far, they’ve been hitting all the deadlines that we have put in place. Also, I do a very careful code review of all of our engineers' work, and GM2 has satisfied all my code quality standards.

Collaboration and communication is a strong metric of success for me as well. GM2 is able to communicate clearly about the right assets at the right time — they collaborate effectively, and they’ve exceeded all those measures.

How did GM2 perform from a project management standpoint?

As GM2 provides staff augmentation for this project, our project managers take care of their resources. Their developers easily fit into our existing project management structure and team workflow.

We use Jira, Slack, and GitHub for communication because they’re not working on site.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The level of commitment GM2 has on the project exceeded our expectations. They take ownership of the work that they’re doing and push to create something that they’re proud of. GM2 elevated our platform’s quality and standards.

Are there any areas they could improve?

GM2 is doing their job really well. I can’t think of anything they could improve on.

Any advice for potential customers?

The clearer you are about the requirements, the better the collaboration is. As with every other team, GM2 does a better job if the client really knows what they need and how to communicate it.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the Managing Partner of a technology investment fund, and former Director of Technology for a leading LA based digital marketing firm. Our fund invests in technology companies, and we bring a C-Suite to the equation to enact meaningful forward movement.

For what projects/services did your company hire GM2, and what were your goals?

One of our portfolio companies had a vision and plan to execute a drastic change to the real estate industry by integrating a robust, custom UX flow in order to allow home owners to sell their homes by owner, but still gain the benefit of having a real estate 'agent' assist in the more tedious aspects of inspections and form filing.

The goal was to allow everyday homeowners the opportunity to fully list their home for sale by owner, but have that home syndicated nationally on the MLS as well as 3rd-party platforms like Zillow and Redfin.

How did you select GM2 and what were the deciding factors?

I worked closely with the Director, who ensured at every step of the initial pitch process that they had the experience, professionalism, and acumen to complete the project on time and in many cases, with more thought leadership from their team.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

They designed and developed a custom user flow for listing your home on the MLS and having that syndicated nationally. This was insanely complex, as anyone that has purchased or sold a home can attest, the forms and processes involved are anything but "user friendly".

The forms and questionnaires, as well as all of the disclosures and signatures had to be condensed into a consumable form, and the GM2 team did this in spectacular fashion. They constructed a step-based system by which a user could start, stop, and resume the process at any time, as well as consolidated many of the hundreds of duplicitous and/or conditional information items that were to be collected.

They used a Laravel framework backend, hosted on a scalable AWS Fargate managed service with a Vue.js frontend.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

In total, I believe there were about 8-10 people from GM2 involved with the project, including a stellar project manager, UX and design team, and a lead developer with his team of backend and frontend engineers. As well, we were well looked after by GM2's Managing Director, who would frequently join our meetings to ensure smooth communication and client feedback was being heard.

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

The project timeline was adhered to very closely, and we were given advanced warning of any yellow flags that might hinder the timeline and the project being delayed -- which fortunately it was not.

The design and UX team cannot be commended enough on the monumental task that they had to overcome in translating literally hundreds of poorly worded, duplicative, and sometimes incoherent questions that are required for a home to be listed on the California MLS.

Finally, it should be noted that while the business was still operating with this model, only they used humans for data collection. After the launch of this automated system for data collection and initial payment collection, with proper advertising, lead generation went up by many orders of magnitude and the pipeline was able to be serviced at a much later initial starting point.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timelines.

The project manager, and the entire team at GM2 were very accommodating during the development of the project. They acquiesced to every request we had from using Slack for inter-company communications, using Figma for collaborative UX and design review, and using a client-facing ticketing system to be able to track change requests and other tasks important to the stakeholders.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

The ability for GM2's team to pivot, change tactics, respond to client feedback and have something in front of us extremely fast that reflected those requests - this applied to UX, design, and development.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

Being an Argentina based team, I was unsure if the language barrier was going to be an issue. Fortunately, almost the entirety of their team is bilingual, and quite well versed in colloquial and industry jargon in English, so integration was quite easy. There were a few times that a team member had trouble, but this is understandable at this level.