Video Processing Application Development for Startup
- Custom Software Development
- $200,000 to $999,999
- Quality
- 5.0
- Schedule
- 4.0
- Cost
- 5.0
- Willing to Refer
- 5.0
"They have a great methodology and quality control."
- Information technology
- San Francisco, California
- 1-10 Employees
- Phone Interview
- Verified
HyperSense Software developed an iOS mobile app for fast photo and video editing. The final goal is to have major consumer brands creating content on the app. The team is now working on an Android version.
The team shows good methodology and builds projects with great foundations. HyperSense communicates well, has great iOS and Android knowledge, and freely offers advice to improve the product. They also have a great technical level.
A Clutch analyst personally interviewed this client over the phone. Below is an edited transcript.
BACKGROUND
Please describe your organization.
MyBlender is a mobile application designed for consumer brand engagement. The application uses photos and videos stored on the device and a set of creative themes, and it produces a 6 or 15-second professional looking video on the phone within seconds. Simple sharing tools allow users to share those, what we call “blends”, with their social network.
It's really designed with a publishing platform in mind, for major consumer brands to engage their users at events of special promos, where the creative theme might include elements from the brand or other associated content that would be interesting for their fans or advocate consumers to share. That's what MyBlender does.
What is your position?
I'm the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer.
OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE
What business challenge were you trying to address with HyperSense Software?
Well, we're an early stage start-up, so we decided from the get-go that we were not going to go out and try to recruit engineering resources ourselves for this. We would look for a company who had a wide range of experience in developing mobile applications of this type. We did a fairly significant amount of due diligence.
What platforms is the app on?
It is available today in the app store. Our intent is not to make this a consumer app, although we have it published as a way to do a live beta of our application. You can download the application for free on the iOS app store as MyBlender. It's currently in development on Android and will be introduced on Android in March. One of our key criteria for the selection was that the company had to have experience on both iOS and Android, so that we weren't managing two different organizations.
SOLUTION
How did you come to work with HyperSense Software?
We hired HyperSense through what is now oDesk, but it was Elance at the time. We interviewed probably eight or nine different development companies, and we had a set of criteria that we were looking for in specific skillsets. HyperSense met those skillsets.
After that, we rated the companies and then did an interview process. We awarded HyperSense the contract to build the MyBlender app.
Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?
I suspect this will be certainly a $200,000-plus investment for us.
What is the status of this engagement?
Our intent is to continue with HyperSense as our engineering resource, and as we get additional funding, that will go to allowing them to bring on additional staff that will be dedicated to us. They have a great methodology and quality control. Take away anything that they're actually building, you have to have essentially good foundations in development in order to develop an application correctly, timely and of good quality. They have that and it would take a substantial amount more to reproduce that ourselves with in-house employees. We will continue to invest in them while they continue to develop and deliver for us at the level that they are.
RESULTS & FEEDBACK
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.
RATINGS
-
Quality
5.0Service & Deliverables
-
Schedule
4.0On time / deadlines
-
Cost
5.0Value / within estimates
-
Willing to Refer
5.0NPS
