Hoodies

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder and director of a consulting company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Hoodies?

We needed someone to provide their development skills and build a web platform to run my consulting business.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Hoodies built two web apps. One helps me design my projects, and the other app evaluates financial performances. The first app is partly a customer-facing app. It enables consultants or anyone to sign up to propose their projects. The second app allows us to look at the revenue of a project and see what the margins will be. Additionally, Hoodies did some design work for us in the last four months of the project.

The techs they used were NodeJS and Vue.js and for the backend, they used Django DB and PostgreSQL.

What is the team composition?

In the beginning, I worked with a software manager. I also worked with a frontend developer and a backend developer.

How did you come to work with Hoodies?

I met them through a referral. Another reason why I chose them is that when I spoke to them, I got a feeling they understood how to compose a business discussion in ways they needed to — they were very professional.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve invested somewhere between €100,000–150,000 (around $120,200–180,900USD)

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from November 2019–May 2020.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

I don’t have any specific metrics, but I would say their responsiveness to feedback was very high — which is probably one of their best aspects. Anytime there’s an issue, they really look into it and fix it. I also think they’re quite well-structured, as we hadn’t really experienced that many issues. They understand how to manage the clients and the product development process.

Additionally, the quality of the UX design and the intuitive interface they developed was really good as well. I’m happy with the end result of the product and what they’ve done for us.

How did Hoodies perform from a project management standpoint?

Holistically it was good, and overall they managed their team very well.  We used Trello and Notion as our primary project management tools, and mainly used Microsoft Teams and Zoom to communicate.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Like I said, their responsiveness was very high. I’ve worked with some other agencies that were unreliable and unresponsive. We are able to communicate with Hoodies about our issues and they were able to understand and translate that into what they need to do about it — that definitely makes them exceptional.

I’m not a technical expert, but after having a look at their code, the development quality was high compared to others.

However, I would say that communication and responsiveness have been the more important aspect of our relationship.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There wasn’t anything they needed to improve on based on the work I’ve given them. They tick all the boxes and there wasn’t an area they haven’t done a good job on.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

If someone wants to engage with Hoodies, they should be very clear if they'll be the ones to run the project for you. That wasn’t the way their business was portrayed to me when I first engaged with them — though it was really effective. They would put the members on our side and they would really work with us, and we would essentially run the team.

Additionally, if you are going to run it the way we did, make sure you have someone on your side that’s capable of running the product process. Have someone look at the technical architecture and make choices on your side. They made some choices on our behalf which we didn’t have a say on and in the end, they turned out to be the wrong choices.

Having said that, it didn’t really cause us any real pain. I would’ve had someone review the technologies that we were going to work with. Therefore, always remember to be clear about what engagement model you want.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a professor at Penn State University and the founder of Plant Village. It’s a nonprofit within the university that helps smallholder farmers in Africa cope with climate change and pests. We’re partnered with the UN and work with about 16 countries.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Hoodies?

In 2020, there was a large and ongoing locust crisis in East Africa. We needed to develop the tools to monitor the spread of this problem. One of the founders, who had competency in software development, left acrimoniously so we needed a highly competent team to take our ideas and bring them into reality. I hired Hoodies to help me develop the software for the locust problem and refactor our website.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Essentially, what we developed is a client management system for humanitarian purposes. The solution consists of a website and Android app built using Ruby on Rails. While we do have an iOS app, we tend to focus more on our Android version because most phones in Africa are Android-based.

The primary task Hoodies had to do was refactoring the website. It wasn’t that the site was broken on any stage, it just wasn’t that good and it was going in the wrong direction. Hoodies did a very good job of getting the new features that we needed into the website. They were able to help us with the new features and at the same time, pay off our enormous technical debt.

As we felt we were getting better and had more room to breathe, we diverted our resources into improving the site and its UX. This is where the design element came into play. They redeveloped the old site for us because it was quite a train wreck. It had so many problems because it was put together in a hodgepodge way. Having them involved in the design process has been a really fantastic addition. 

I would create simple mockups and wireframes using Powerpoint and send them to the engineer. It’s nice because they always do it in a professional manner. Instead of having the engineer run off with it, the dedicated designer would then do it in a greatly detailed way, giving us an idea of what the viable product would look like. That was much better because I was able to come back and choose from a range of designs that they created.

They’ve also implemented a set of computer vision and machine learning tools inside phones. This enables smallholder farmers in Africa to diagnose their problems offline. Similarly, they’ve developed the ability for policymakers and politicians to see a map and determine any problems. 

What is the team composition?

The team consists of Alexander (CEO), Alexander (Frontend Engineer), Alexey (Designer), Igor (Ruby Engineer), Ilya (DevOps Engineer), Ivan (Frontend Engineer), Sergey (Engineer), and two other people.

How did you come to work with Hoodies?

I tangentially know David, who is the developer of Ruby. I asked him to put a call out for us on Twitter and given how famous he is, he had quite a lot of responses. Alex reached out and we just had a conversation.

How much have you invested with them?

We spend roughly $65,000 a month.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in April 2020, and our partnership remains ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We created the tool for the locust crisis, and because of our collective efforts, we have saved food for 18,000,000 people in 2020. The impact has been tremendous. We’re also reaching 16,000,000 people a week with TV alerts and 400,000 people to specific climate change adaptation advice. And, because of the tools we’ve built with them, we’ve been able to raise 2.5 million in 2020.

There were some quotations from people of the United Nations and the Gates Foundation saying how impactful the approach was. In general terms, this also includes Hoodies.

How did Hoodies perform from a project management standpoint?

We mostly use Basecamp as a primary tool for communication. For the more rapid chapters, we use Slack. I’m also aware that they have their own internal tool for tracking time and effort. 

We have a weekly stand-up for them, and Alex sends me daily notes on how it’s all going. We use objectives and key results (OKRs), and they’re very good at working with us on that structure.

What did you find most impressive about them?

One of the things we found impressive about them is that they’re a very mission-driven technology company. I like how Hoodies gravitates towards working with universities for good social projects. This helps our humanitarian efforts a lot.

The other thing that really distinguishes them from other companies is they have closed the gap between me and the engineers. This idea that they can contribute enormously to the development process and not just simply be a coin-operated system that does as they’re told is absolutely phenomenal.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I can’t think of anything at the moment other than more diversity in the travel tech sector.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

It’s a relationship. Once in a relationship, it’s hard to get stuff out of it. What I would advise is to start off with a series of “dates,” which is what we did with Alex. This is where we did a little test to see what it would be like and understand that it’s going to be hard for the engineers to perform because they don’t know the system. It’s a very useful process where we just kind of explored whether it’s going to work out or not. 

Just be very open to Alex. He’s very empathic, nice, intelligent, and he’s quite aware of what functions for good management works. Give him the chance to be a co-developer with you of whatever product you’re going to get out there.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a software engineering manager at Amsterdam Internet Exchange, a telecommunications company. We work with data centers and connect them together.

I work with a team of software developers to automate networking operations in the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Hoodies?

We had a few ongoing projects and planned to start new ones, but we didn’t have enough resources.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We worked with Hoodies on a project that started from scratch. We knew what we wanted to achieve and had a set of requirements.

Hoodies worked on both the frontend and backend parts. They were integrated in our internal team and participated in our scrum standups and planning sessions to ensure that we were aligned.

What is the team composition?

The team changed constantly, but the average team size on their end was three full-time engineers. We’d need two backend people in one month, then one frontend developer in the next. We also used a DevOps consultant for a few weeks.

How did you come to work with Hoodies?

Hoodies were introduced to us by a coworker. We had an RFP process and looked at other suppliers. We used forms to record our impressions, and we summarized those to find the best candidate.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent between €500,000–€1 million (approximately $609,000–$1.2 million USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked with Hoodies between September 2019–November 2020.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our internal departments were happy with us delivering the project on time. We went from an MVP to a production system, which we’re still using.

We kept statistics on who was delivering what and at what quality. We had code review processes that showed us how the developers were performing. Overall, we were satisfied with the work delivered by Hoodies.

How did Hoodies perform from a project management standpoint?

Everything related to project management was on our side. We used Jira as a project tracker. Our product owner was responsible for the backlog, and we also had a scrum master helping with sprint planning, retrospectives, and demos. Hoodies’ communication was great, and we had no issues there.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I was impressed with their responsiveness. Hoodies was fast to react whenever we had communication issues, and we had quick resolutions on all work-related issues.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We were satisfied with what Hoodies did for us.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Clients should keep the communication flowing. The more we synchronize with them, the better it is for us result-wise. It’ll give them a better understanding of what it is that we expect.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the VP of Engineering for Republic. We help startup founders raise capital. We started about four years ago, and have roughly 25 employees.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Hoodies?

We were looking for some engineers to do development for us.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They help us build, maintain, and improve our platform, doing backend and frontend development, as well as DevOps. It’s a fundraising platform that allows people to invest in startups.

What is the team composition?

Alex (Founder & CEO) worked with us to integrate the team of seven engineers.

How did you come to work with Hoodies?

They responded to our post on Facebook.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent $665,000–$950,000. It costs roughly $35,000–$50,000 per month.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working together in April 2019, and it is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

They’ve demonstrated high standards in their skills and communication, integrating into our organization quite nicely. They’ve built many of our products and we are incredibly happy with their work. We plan to continue the engagement with them for the foreseeable future.

How did Hoodies perform from a project management standpoint?

They speak English quite proficiently, and there have been no issues with meeting deadlines.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They can provide engineers that provide many different skills, including design, system analysis, backend development, frontend development, DevOps, and more.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They tend to be very deferential in their behavior, rather than assertive. We’ve pointed out that they can take the initiative to fix things, and communicate the need for fixing them, directly, rather than wait for us to point it out.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Alex works to make the integration of his team smooth, so there’s no need for concern regarding hiring offshore developers with them.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the former CTO of an advertising agency in Moscow.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Hoodies?

We were working on a platform to automate different digital marketing campaigns.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We've worked together on several development projects. Mostly we used Ruby, JavaScript, and a couple of small applications written in Go.

What is the team composition?

We worked closely with three of their developers. Their culture is very developer-driven, so there's not much need for an additional manager.

How did you come to work with Hoodies?

We worked together a couple of years ago before and I was very satisfied with everything, which made the decision to partner with them again very easy.

How much have you invested with them?

We've invested approximately $80,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our work spanned June 2016 to November 2016.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Since they were working on our internal system there were no customer related metrics. We looked at their number of requests, contributions, the level of their communication, and how easy it was to discuss things with them. In all these categories, they performed quite well.

How did Hoodies perform from a project management standpoint?

Everything worked well. We only had some standard estimation mistakes, which didn't really affect any business processes. They were very considerate, which was really good.

What did you find most impressive about them?

 The fact that their engineers are able to communicate on their own, express their thoughts, and deliver a proper message to customers, was very impressive. It's quite a common problem to be unable to communicate with developers without a translator, but that's not the case for them. That's a big plus.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There is always room for improvement. Perhaps they could consider adding additional languages in their day to day stacks, like Go or Python.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

My advice is to give them a try. They're a very good remote team.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of Hippocrates, an IT startup that gives people the opportunity to get additional recommendations about their health based on a questionnaire that draws information from qualified databases and evidence-based medicine.

When people want answers about their lifestyle, nutrition, and family history, we detect their risks for certain illnesses and give them information and a list of tests they should go through to get a more precise understanding of their health condition.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Hoodies?

I needed help with the development of the website and hired Hoodies for the job.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

I had an idea and Hoodies helped me from the very beginning. They developed our health website, handling everything from its coding, design, logo, branding guidelines, and content. They’ve also provided consulting on UI/UX.

We have a landing page and pages with specific tests. On the backend, there’s an algorithm that calculates health risks based on the client’s answers. Based on that, we generate a report that combines all the recommendations and all the tests that a patient should go for. We’re now in the phase of making interviews with focus groups.

What is the team composition?

I have a main point of contact that I communicate with. I haven’t interacted with the rest of the team.

How did you come to work with Hoodies?

Hoodies is based in Russia like we are, and we have several acquaintances that helped us meet each other. I’ve seen a lot of their work and they may be one of the most experienced companies in IT that I’ve seen. I’ve worked with several companies and I found that Hoodies has done some of the most complex, sophisticated, and professional work.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent $210,000 on this project so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in February 2018, and the collaboration is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We don’t have any results yet, but we’ll be able to use the product in about two months. I’ve gotten everything I’ve wanted from Hoodies and my overall experience with them has been positive.

How did Hoodies perform from a project management standpoint?

Project management is efficient as we’re only working with one person. We don’t have to talk to programmers and designers. They’re also good at time management.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The way Hoodies communicates and solves problems is outstanding. They side with their clients even when things get complicated. Many companies have programmers that create quality code but have problems communicating with clients. Hoodies is very good at that.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Sometimes they work a little faster than they should since they have developers on salary working all the time. When we don’t have a decision in place for something, and they should stop their work and wait for us to decide. It’s a common issue for a lot of companies, though, and my experience has been really good overall.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

If you pay more, you might find a more experienced team that will provide a fantastic service. I believe Hoodies is the best choice based on their price. I recommend working with them.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the founder and CEO of a full-service digital product design firm. We also offer identity and branding services.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Hoodies?

We’ve worked with Hoodies for many of our digital needs over the years. We engage them for a number of different projects—mostly websites and other projects where we need technical support, either for ourselves or our clients.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Hoodies has become our go-to option for website development projects, both frontend and backend. The technology varies based on the requirements, but they’ve done a lot of work to this point with Angular and Ruby on Rails. To host everything, we typically use AWS and Cloudflare.

What is the team composition?

We usually work with Alexander (Founder/CEO, Hoodies) and as many as four developers.

How did you come to work with Hoodies?

I worked with a couple of members from their team in their previous positions. Once they started Hoodies, I wanted to support them, and I happened to want their expertise on a new project.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent between $100,000­–$200,000 at this point.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our engagement began in April 2016 and remains ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Our clients are consistently pleased with the quality of work Hoodies provides.

How did Hoodies perform from a project management standpoint?

When there are issues or feature requests to discuss, we have conversations directly with the project manager and the developers, which eliminates the arduous communication streams at larger agencies.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their frontend visual work, in particular, is very high quality and indicates close attention to detail. They are also clear communicators throughout the project.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I have no complaints.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

The best way to work with them is to be clear about what the expectations are and what would be considered a successful project.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of a company that creates baby monitoring devices and related software.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Hoodies?

We hired Hoodies to help with organization amongst our team, particularly with communication because most of our employees are remote.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Hoodies organized processes within our team, managing a variety of systems. We use Slack, Jira, Trello, and ticketing system. Their team also helps with business processes, road maps, and completion reports. They do admin work with our servers as well. Along with structuring communication within the team, they also manage and control the quality and completion of the work we have in place.

What is the team composition?

We work with a team of three, including Vladimir (COO & Co-Founder, Hoodies), who acts as our project manager.

How did you come to work with Hoodies?

I knew Vladimir from his previous work, finding him to be an excellent and structured organizer. When he moved to Hoodies, we started working with them.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent around $100,000 so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our engagement with Hoodies began in September 2017.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We judge them based on milestone completion, so we check the processes that they managed. We’ve seen significant improvement. Their presence wasn’t well-received by our internal team at the beginning, but only because no one likes when a new person comes in to control everything. Eventually, it all settled down.

How did Hoodies perform from a project management standpoint?

We’re completely satisfied with their work. If we weren’t, we wouldn’t be working with them. There is a scoring system we track.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We’ve worked with other vendors, but Vladimir is the most organized project manager we’ve ever had.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Not really, there are small issues with communication because they’re not native English speakers. We speak Russian, so it hasn’t been a major issue. We sometimes need to report to our customers and have to do it directly because of the language barrier. There are a few people on their team that speak English, but we only work with the Russian speakers.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Not really. If you have a similar task to the one that we’re working with them on now, hire them.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder of Piviart, a software company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Hoodies?

We distribute work to resources around the work, which we then deliver to our clients. I had to find talented people who can use different technologies to develop, consult, QA, and make suggestions on how to optimize a solution.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They did multiple projects for us. One involved a concept we had for mixing between retail, purchasing, and gamification. They created a mobile application for retail where clients can scan the product carton. It has a layer of AR, in terms of characters to collect and fill an album to obtain a weekly drawing, as well as image recognition and machine learning.

Beyond that, they did the frontend for a website and landing page after we sent them the processes, also embedding analytics. They’ve created the backend for a mobile application using Unity, and we’re now discussing a project for a neural network, facial detection, and pattern behavior for a large bank. They’re working for me on solution architecture.

What is the team composition?

I worked with between four and six people. Alexander (Founder/CEO, Hoodies) manages our projects for us, communicating with the team.

How did you come to work with Hoodies?

I was looking for a Russian company that speaks English and found Hoodies as a sister company to a design agency we’ve used. I tested them with urgent AR project, and they did it for me in three days, which saved us.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent over $100,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in 2016 and the work is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

They’re quick at developing solutions. The solutions they’ve worked on have gained around 400,000 downloads, 85,000 active users, and generated more than 1 million promo codes.

How did Hoodies perform from a project management standpoint?

We consider them to be our partners. They give us optimized time for execution, rather than billing us for hours, and they do a great job. We talk on a daily basis—night or day—using Trello and Jira, and I’ve even visited them.

When I want an estimation for a project, they can do it in 48 hours, and they always find the right technical people and they manage them for me. It’s fully transparent.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their communication and passion for work are impressive.

Are there any areas they could improve?

In time, they could expand into different countries. They really know what they’re doing.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Work with them. They have optimized solutions, give advice, are very transparent, and don’t try to take projects from another company.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder of a SaaS company for aftermarket automotive companies. Our products allow companies to manage product information and other data.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Hoodies?

We hired them to augment our internal team and support our frontend web development.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They significantly overhauled our existing system. We dictated the work they did, and we outlined all the custom component development and other deliverables. We worked with a UI designer who helped outline everything and create tickets, and a scrum leader.

The platform is primarily for desktop, but its responsive templates work on tablets as well. It’s more of an enterprise solution, so is not ideal for mobile devices.

What is the team composition?

We worked with a team of four or five, led by a project manager. At times, they may have brought in extra help, but that was the usual team makeup.

How did you come to work with Hoodies?

We worked with a UI/UX designer who worked with them previously. He had a good working relationship with them and recommended them.

How much have you invested with them?

We definitely spent over six figures, probably within the $200,000–$1 million range.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked with them for over a year for the first phase of the project. Now that we’ve gone to market, we’ve paused their involvement as we work on the frontend side of the business. We plan to bring them back on in the near future for product enhancements and regular platform maintenance.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We tracked all of the work for speed and efficiency. They met all our milestones, and everything operated as we expected it would. On several occasions, they went out of their way to meet our scheduling requirements, and they always worked hard to accommodate us.

How did Hoodies perform from a project management standpoint?

Their project management is great. Our main method of communication was through Google Hangouts and video conferencing.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their size and flexibility were important to our interactions with them.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don’t have any areas of improvement for them.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I don’t have any specific advice. They’re honest, straightforward, and good people to work with. They deliver everything they say they will, and the quality of their work is great.