What was the scope of their involvement?
We have an iOS app and an Android app along with the platform that runs those apps. Within that platform, they developed a database. What we’re doing is building a database of people that are available to do work in a geographical location so that you can do a geographical search for people in your area that are available to do work. It’s a 2-minute job to complete a profile, including the location, kind of work they’ve had to do, their age range, a few notes about themselves, and any qualifications they have, and then it’s in our database waiting for clients to pick them out.
If they find a grafter, clients can then offer them work. The grafter says yes, and they go through a simple contract to agree to basic terms about how much they get paid per hour, where the work is, etc. At that point, the user goes off-platform. They do the work successfully and come back to the platform. We run Stripe Connect, which is a marketplace payment system, for the client to pay the grafter using the platform, and they also pay a fee for using the platform. That whole payment system is a quite complicated implementation of Stripe. The grafter gets paid and then at the end of that, there’s a ratings and review system. There’s a whole journey around that. You have a dashboard where you can manage your work or manage your jobs. There are alerts and push notifications that the app manages.
KindGeek was totally responsible for developing the platform. I’m not a technical person and neither is anyone else on our team. I did provide some basic wireframes because I’ve got some experience in doing that. But I think they would have just as happily done it a different way. It was a basic prototyping tool and a description of what I wanted to happen, about 30 pages. We then went through a UX process with the KindGeek UX team, and they implemented more details using these flows and designs. They took my basic concept and turned it into a proper set of user experience designs. They offered marketing services, but we do that ourselves.
How many resources were assigned to your project?
It changes over time, but generally speaking, we had a project manager, a business analyst, an iOS developer, an Android developer, a backend developer, a QA tester, and dev ops. At different times, we’ve had 1-2 of those roles involved in the project at different stages.
How did you come to work with KindGeek?
I ran an RFP process. I selected 5 people based on desk research and sent them a brief specification. I used to run a business like KindGeek in the U.K. which I sold a few years ago, so I’m quite an educated buyer in this process. I found KindGeek on Clutch. I decided that I wanted to put this development into Eastern Europe. The U.K. is very expensive and all the good developers work for Facebook and Google or the banks. The banks pay ridiculous money for developers. It’s very hard to get good developers for a good price in London. I’ve worked with India, South Africa, and other offshore places before and, culturally, it was very, very difficult. So, I was focused on Eastern Europe. I put it out the RFP to 5 different companies and narrowed it down quite quickly to 3 that were interested and the most engaging. Then, of those 3, KindGeek’s proposal was just way better than everyone else’s. They wrote what I would have written when I was doing a proposal for my clients, which was a 20-page PowerPoint of what they thought of our product. They gave ideas of how to make it better. They informed us of their processes and what kind of team they would provide. They told us their pricing model and covered a whole range of things. By comparison, one of the other agencies provided me with a 1-pager that just had a big number for the price with no detail. The third response was somewhere in between. It was an okay proposal, but it was 5 pages and lacking in detail. I was very impressed with KindGeek. They were keen and they responded to the RFP properly, and they made the effort to put together a good response. They thought it through, spent the time to think about what we needed, and came up with a really good proposal.
How much have you invested with KindGeek?
We have spent £50,000 ($70,000) with them so far. Phase 2 will be about £20,000 over the next couple of months.
What is the status of this engagement?
We started working with them January 2017. We’re very happy with their work so we continue to use them.
KindGeek is thorough and thoughtful. They’re a transparent and fair team that handles challenges well. Though they rushed some parts of the project, the end product was satisfactory. They’ve overall delivered exactly what was promised, and they’re enthusiastic and responsive.