Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?
Like all start-ups, it's an interesting journey. We had a vision for what we wanted to have, and had some early successes with some major global brands. We look to further success in bringing our first application to market with one of our clients in the June timeframe.
What distinguishes HyperSense Software from other providers?
I'm not being facetious when I say that they speak English really well. I've been doing this for a long time and I've hired a lot of freelance talent over the years. One of the most important things in hiring resources, especially resources located offshore, is that they can communicate well with you as an organization. They have to be an extension of your organization.
As point number one, I can tell you that HyperSense stands out for me with their ability to communicate. They have a great command of the English language, which is a second language for these guys. They really put a strong emphasis on understanding English, both written and oral, and this not only includes the guys leading the project, but their full team as well. That’s a massive deal.
Point number two is their knowledge of iOS and Android operating systems, best practices, tricks and tips. The fact that they've been there and done that in other projects is a huge help. I have a project management background, so I built a comprehensive product marketing plan and product development plan, which we worked with them on in terms of pricing this out and delivering. Sometimes you have a vision for how something might work, and some other developers might simply go forward and develop what you said.
I think one of the key values that HyperSense brings to the table is that they, I wouldn't call it push back, more so I think the correct term would be that they're consultative. They say, "Look this is a way to do it. Here's another way to do that that might get better results, and here's the things that we think you could get from that." Having a development partner who's thinking about this from a business perspective and the technology perspective is a huge help. It's like have additional employees in that sense.
At a technical level, I think they have an innate knowledge of the libraries and technologies that are on these platforms. When one of the key criteria of our application was that it had to have really good performance and had to leverage the Open GL graphics library of the platform to get that graphics acceleration, not simply by using brute force on the CPU, which is another way to do it. They were able to get us somebody on the project who was really comfortable in Open GL and could translate the video transitions effects and filter looks that we were providing as video producers, into something that could be reproduced on the phone quickly, in a matter of seconds. I think that's another really key piece to this.
Uniformly, when we show people the application, they go, "Wow that is quick!" I think that's exactly what we wanted to do here. We know that consumers don't want to wait for anything anymore, so having a very responsive app was a key criterion.
Is there anything HyperSense Software could have improved or done differently?
Not really. I really try to be objective in these kinds of interviews, and whenever there is an opportunity for improvement, I'm usually the first one to say it. I have to tell you that my experience, and as I said, I've been doing this longer than I care to remember in terms of hiring both teams that reported to me at very big organizations like Microsoft and Sun Micro Systems on the engineering side, and then separately having both start-up engineering organizations that reported to me and contract folks reporting to me. I don't think, in all of my career, I've had as good an experience of dealing with product management and engineering resource folks as I have with HyperSense.
My only reservation, if anything, is that I don't want people to seek HyperSense because they may get too busy and can't focus on my project. That's always the downside of this. It's like telling your friends about a great radio station, sooner or later everybody's listening to it, and then the ads make it impossible to listen to anymore. I think we're absolutely committed to a future with HyperSense, and unequivocally recommend them for anybody who's thinking about an application that's pretty advanced, which ours definite is; it's not a run of the mill app.
Bugs are resolved quickly thanks to HyperSense Software’s expert understanding of their sector. Though they’re still improving their user story services, they provide top-level communication and constant availability. Customers can expect a motivated partner with a deep well of experience.