Live Typing

Introduce your business and what you do there.

RocketGo is a small startup in Russia. We sell excursions around the world through a mobile app available on both iOS and Android. I’m the founder.

What challenge were you trying to address with Live Typing?

We needed to build an iOS and Android mobile app for our travel product.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We had a short list of features and functions that we wanted. We have six or seven screens currently. Users can select a variety of locations for their vacation. They choose the vacation category and select their excursion. They can book it by selecting the date, filling out the form, and paying for the excursion. This includes travel and accommodations.

How did you come to work with Live Typing?

We chose them out of five or six development agencies that we evaluated because their team spirit was closely aligned with our expectations and they met our business needs. We used a local Russian resource called Ruward.ru to find them.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in June 2017, and the app is completed. We are currently discussing new features with them for the next release.

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

We have 7,000 organic downloads for iOS and Android. We have not done any marketing campaigns, yet. We are trying to start our marketing campaigns and we believe the number of downloads and clients will increase as a result.

How did Live Typing perform from a project management standpoint?

They are excellent. The process was clear to us. We also had access to the past, current, and future-planned tasks. We used Basecamp, Trello, Telegram, and Skype to manage the project and communications. What did you find most impressive about them?

What impressed me most was they understood what we want to achieve.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, not right now.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the founder and CEO of Nestead, a consumer technology company that develops apps which allow people to manage their possessions at home. Nestead is on a mission to simplify ownership. It provides households with a digital vault of information about everything they buy online. Enabled by Nestead’s searchability and connectivity to e-commerce and resale channels, heads of households can make repeat purchases or dispose of items they no longer need with the tap of a button.

What challenge were you trying to address with Live Typing?

Our core team had an excellent system architect and hands-on backend developers but we needed a strong partner to create the iOS app with us.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Our CTO in Boston worked on the backend and released the APIs which were picked up by Live Typing’s iOS developers. They created the entire frontend, which is quite sophisticated. The backend has a number of functionalities and features which are reflected on the frontend.

The app links to users’ inboxes and monitors their emails, looking for order confirmation messages. When it identifies them, it goes into each of them and finds out the information about the particular items purchased by the user. It creates a nice inventory of everything purchased by the user online. From then on, it basically enables users to manage those items in their home in order to repurchase the same items from the same retailers, resell those items on eBay, or tag them for donation, return, and so on.

Live Typing’s team worked very well with our CTO. They developed the app itself and made sure that we could see the usage of the app by linking an off-the-shelf tool called Segment, which enabled up to see analytics for the app. It’s a home inventory app on steroids, which makes it easy for inventories to be entered within it, with no manual work required on the user’s side, as long as they are predominantly online shoppers.

How did you come to work with Live Typing?

I asked people for referrals, and also looked for companies on Upwork. I don’t exactly recall how I came across Live Typing but they were one of 20 companies I interviewed. It was great to see the work that they had previously done.

We chose to work with Live Typing because of their ability to grasp our project and their can-do attitude. Another thing that really impressed me was that Vlad Korobov, their COO, moved from Russia to the US in order to develop the business. They were focusing on the US startup market, so I bet on this factor. They haven’t let me down.

How much have you invested with Live Typing?

The cost of their work was around $18,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Live Typing in October 2016 and the project was completed in May 2017. We have planned additional work with them and intend to optimize the iOS app in the next few months. We will then replicate everything that has been optimized for it on the Android platform.

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

While the app is already on the App Store, we haven’t started marketing it yet. We currently have close to 100 beta users generated from our network. Their feedback is very good, but we need to deepen the app’s functionality in at least one of a few different aspects, namely the whole functionality of being able to resell items.

Users are interested in being able to resell not only on eBay but also on other apps like Letgo and Close5. That capability needs to be worked on quite a bit more in order for us to enable multichannel reselling. It’s on us to keep working on it, but unfortunately, we’re not going to do that before raising seed money. At this time, we’re negotiating funding with a couple of investors and it will be another 3–4 months before we’re able to push a serious marketing campaign for the app. Adoption will not start until then.

The UX and UI are very nice. Live Typing was a strong partner in figuring this out, but we took the leading role, using another designer. Live Typing was in charge of coding, but whenever we hit a roadblock, they had an idea of how to resolve it. They were a very strong partner, and the app is working. It’s actually a very complicated onboarding process, given that users need to link all the email addresses on which they’re receiving order confirmation emails. This is not an easy thing to do in terms of passing information from the frontend to the backend for authentication and offering a pause for the user in order to pass certain tokens.

It’s a sophisticated experience which they enabled us to develop. When people start onboarding on the app, the actual success rate — from beginning to end — is 80% or more, which is amazing. Overall, the platform is working smoothly.

We handled QA on our side using a junior product manager and myself. We had little nagging to do when it came to solving small design problems or bugs, but it was definitely strong work.

How did Live Typing perform from a project management standpoint?

They were by far the better managers of the project than us. We handled much of the conceptualization around what we wanted to create; Live Typing pushed us to clarify our thinking and be on time for everything. They did a great job, and it’s because of them that we were able to deliver our own app on time.

From the outset, we decided to use Trello and set it up on our end even though Live Typing was its most frequent user. We used a number of other tools for sharing designs, like InVision and Zeplin for finalized designs. We also used Slack for communication. We continue to have their entire team on our Slack channel, and whenever we have something that everyone needs to know about, we will share it there.

What did you find most impressive about Live Typing?

They’re in it to win it and have excelled at keeping in touch, staying prepared to serve us with whatever other needs we may have. It’s clear to Live Typing that we are still bootstrapping and trying to make it, but they’ve been flexible and able to work based on our needs without necessarily jeopardizing their own revenue. I hope that Live Typing will do well in the future.

Are there any areas Live Typing could improve?

I would be pressed to find something that they should be improving. For what we’re currently working on, I would have had to spend at least 5 times more than what we spent on Live Typing had I hired a frontend engineer in the US. For that cost, Live Typing has completely blown away my expectations and I have no complaints.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the CTO of a digital agency. Our company focuses on beautiful design, technology, and innovation. We have an office in Texas and another in Russia.

What challenge were you trying to address with Live Typing?

Our company is a provider of services for small businesses. We provide a product you could consider a set of back office systems, and we needed help with the dashboard that lets users access our services. Some of the services were white labeled and hosted by another company, so they couldn’t be integrated very well. Our goal was to create the integration and make it as seamless as possible for the users. For that, we needed backend development talent.

What was the scope of their involvement?

On the backend side, we used PHP. The existing infrastructure of the project used e-Framework. We expected the company we worked with to integrate and expand on this infrastructure. At some point, the requirements changed, so some of the new parts of the system were written on Laravel. The developer we had was capable, but she was not very familiar with Laravel. She worked on the point of the system where all services connect.

How did you come to work with Live Typing?

Live Typing has an office located in Russia and we’ve generally heard good things about them. I personally know some of the people from the company and some of our employees know them as well. We’ve seen part of their portfolio, which was pretty good, so we decided to work with them. We interviewed the developer who was going to work with us and she passed very well.

How much have you invested with Live Typing?

So far, we have spent between $25,000 and $40,000 on their services.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in September 2016 and the work was completed January 2017. Since we liked the performance of the developer, we kept extending the contract. We stopped working with them when they needed the developer for another project.

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

When we work with people, we apply them to work we do internally for greater velocity. We don’t have specific ways for measuring velocity, but the developer we worked with was a good fit for what we expected.

How did Live Typing perform from a project management standpoint?

It was a very lean process. We have an internal project management team, so we didn’t use their project management. We just used a developer and an account manager from their side.

What did you find most impressive about Live Typing?

When we work with contractors, we focus on the ability to create sustainable and high-quality code. They did that and we appreciated the quality we got. There was also a high level of communication. The developer we worked with was Russian—so English was not her native language—but she was still very capable of communicating. She would speak up and give any feedback she had. Her personality and the way she worked instilled confidence in the company. I feel that Live Typing manages their people and processes well.

Are there any areas Live Typing could improve?

There was nothing major. We had some ambiguity around billing and there wasn’t enough rigor around sending invoices. Part of the issue could have been on our side.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are a luxury travel concierge company servicing business travelers worldwide. We have a global clientele that contacts us specifically because we specialize in premium offerings. I am the owner of the company, and I'm also in charge of all marketing.

What challenge were you trying to address with Live Typing?

We were using Google Docs and email to manage our operations, which made the employee workforce management difficult between departments. We had a tough time growing, given that it was hard to keep track of the client base and find relevant information to use in promotions and newsletters. We were missing a strong backend database for the company.

What was the scope of their involvement?

I was looking for a team that would not only develop a piece of software for us but could also learn our industry, which is extremely complex. They could then help us streamline the business and act as a team member.

When Live Typing was brought in, I was very open to multiple approaches. I could have brought in someone to build a custom database or implement Zoho or another cloud solution. Live Typing listened to our needs and came up with an economical solution for us at the time. It was supposed to be a minimum viable product, but it was much better than that. Instead of customizing a complete database, Live Typing recommended a cloud CRM service called Pipedrive, which would be customized for us.

Live Typing took Pipedrive and added every customization we needed in order to make it work for us. It didn't feel like we were buying something out of the box and trying to make it work for us, like in the case of Zoho. Live Typing offered to build the system and only charge us if we approved. I saw that it was going in the right direction, and gave a green light to Live Typing. There was a lot of research required on their end in integrating apps and making elements more streamlined. Live Typing did this for us, which was a huge help.

Live Typing also created a backend database using Stripe, allowing us to accept payments in a unique way.

How did you come to work with Live Typing?

I researched 20-25 teams which I found through referrals and consulting companies.

How much have you invested with Live Typing?

The total cost of our project with Live Typing will be between $50,000 and $200,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

Because our project had a large scope, we structured in across a wide timeline and made ongoing updates to the system. We have been working with Live Typing for three months, and plan to maintain the collaboration for another two.

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

Live Typing's work has saved a tremendous amount of time for our employees and automated a good portion of the business. Client interaction has changed by a tremendous amount; if someone makes a payment at 3 AM, they will receive a confirmation email immediately. In the past, they wouldn't receive confirmations for a number of hours, which made clients uneasy. Everyone's lives have become easier because of our system.

How did Live Typing perform from a project management standpoint?

The team is on top of things, and I've been able to email our contact at 2 a.m. when something went wrong with our system and get immediate responses. This ability to have a good working relationship and going the extra mile is not present in many IT companies. I've been told by many of them to only have contact during working hours.

What did you find most impressive about Live Typing?

I work with many companies and have four or five other development projects going on at this time. The concept of nickel-and-diming matters to me when working with a vendor. The ease of creating contracts and working with Live Typing is spectacular. Live Typing's service is excellent, and I've developed a light friendship with our contact there. He works hard, wants to get things fixed, and takes responsibility.

Are there any areas Live Typing could improve?

Live Typing's team knows their limits, which I appreciate. They wouldn't take on a project which they can't handle. I haven't used them for design, so I can't vouch for Live Typing's skills on that front. Based on their development skills, everything is fine, and I have no hesitations about continuing to work with Live Typing.

Please provide a brief description of your company.

I and a few others created an app that would make it easier for users to send pictures and GIFs along with their messages.

What is your position?

I am one of the co-founders and a product manager. My responsibilities included working directly with Live Typing to control their work and expenses.

What was the business challenge that you were trying to address with Live Typing?

We wanted to test the product hypothesis that a mobile app that would allow users to send pictures and GIFs with their messages was viable. We planned to monetize the app through advertising. Of course, we wanted the project to be completed in a timely manner and at a reasonable price.

Please describe the scope of their involvement in greater detail.

The app was only developed on the Android platform, per our request. Some of the technical specifications we required included four different views: onboarding, list view, image view, and history list view. Also, we needed code written from scratch to be able to include GIFs in the messages. We also needed integration with social networks. Lastly, we required a lot of small features such as: rearranging share buttons based on usage, context onboarding, etc.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

We have spent something over $10,000 working with Live Typing.

What was the timeline of the project?

We started the project in May and ended in August of 2015.

What distinguishes Live Typing from other providers?

At the same time we were working with Live Typing, we were also working with another agency. Compared to Live Typing, working with that company was so painful even though the pricing was about the same at both companies.

Working with Live Typing was very easy. Their project management was excellent and their team leader understood the nuances of the project, and was always looking for the best solution.

Finally, they were open to modifying the process as the project developed, which helped a lot.

Is there anything Live Typing could have improved or done differently?

To be honest, there were some bugs in the app, and we did have to sacrifice quality for the sake of speed, although that was all right with us.

Please provide us with a brief description of your company.

Condé Nast started operating in Russia in 1998 and now successfully publishes eight magazines—Vogue, GQ, GQ Style, Tatler, Glamour, AD, CN Traveller, and Allure—with 2.6 million readers, along with eight websites with a total of five million unique users each month. In the early 2000s, Condé Nast initiated several major events that became annual magnets, including Vogue Fashion’s Night Out, Glamour Woman of the Year, and GQ Man of the Year.

What is your role at the company?

I am the art director.

What was the business challenge that you were trying to address when you approached Live Typing?

Our goal was to find a reliable app and web developer to work with, a partner that would be interested in working with us to achieve high-quality results. The Vogue Collections application was our first and largest project with Live Typing.

What was the scope of the project?

First of all, Live Typing consulted with us on how our ideas for the app would work out, helped us identify the weak and strong parts of what we had in mind, and collaborated with us on developing the UI/UX [user interface/user experience]. The biggest part of their work was coding and testing the app.

What was your process for selecting Live Typing to work with?

We chose them based on a referral from someone who had a good experience working with them.

What was the timeline of the project?

The Vogue Collection is ongoing, but the first part was done in three or four months, which is about average for other projects we have worked on.

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

The app was featured in the fashion section of the App Store, and has had over 220,000 downloads.

Is there anything Live Typing could have improved or done differently?

We always want to work faster with no bugs, but that's simply not realistic. If such a company exists, I’d like to know about them.

Please describe your organization.

We're an electronics manufacturer.

What is your position?

I'm a cofounder of the company.

What business challenge were you trying to address with Live Typing?

We had pretty concrete needs. We had iOS development in-house, and we wanted to expand to Android and didn't have any expertise in Android, so we decided to go with Live Typing.

Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.

They built an Android app with our designs. We designed the whole app before for iOS, but we didn't just copy it to Android. We wanted the app to be native for Android users. This was main challenge and task for them to redesign the app for Android.

How did you come to work with Live Typing?

I found them through a friend. I had good feedback about them.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

It was between $10,000 and $50,000.

What's the timeline of this engagement?

It was about three months. It was a few iterations, so they did first one very quick, and we did three or four iterations in total.

What distinguishes Live Typing from other providers?

For me, there were three points why I liked to work with them. First, when you negotiate the project with their management, you always get to the terms you want and need, and you have an understanding of your project by them on the highest level.

The second one is working day to day with the project manager was quite enjoyable because they handled all the operations work. Lastly, Live Typing hit all of our timelines. There were some intense days when we were on a tight deadline, and they worked very late hours to come through for us.

Is there anything Live Typing could have improved or done differently?

No. Not really.

Please describe your organization.

Glovo is consumer delivery app based in Barcelona. We have a network of couriers who deliver a variety of goods to our customers. I'm the CTO of the company, responsible for all technical aspects of the app.

What business challenge were you trying to address with Live Typing?

When I joined the company, we already had an outsourcing company that was helping our in-house developers manage the workload of building and maintaining the app. In particular, we were looking for Android app developers.

Please describe the scope of their involvement in detail.

We already had a native iOS app, and we were looking to build a native Android app as well. We needed the app to be completed quickly and inexpensively, so we decided to outsource the project.

How did you come to work with Live Typing?

Before Glovo, I had worked at a major media company based in Moscow, Russia. We had used Live Typing for several iOS-based app development projects. Because of this, I knew what they were capable of and the quality of their work. For this reason, I decided to bring them into Glovo.

Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?

It was between $10,000 and $50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked with Live Typing around five months in the summer of 2015. After their work on the Android app was completed, we were in a position where we could hire in-house developers to carry on the work.

Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?

The main result we got from our work with Live Typing is that the work was done extremely quickly and efficiently. We were able to give them projects and have confidence that they would be completed efficiently and effectively.

What distinguishes Live Typing from other providers?

I've worked with a number of outsourcing teams, and I can confidently say that Live Typing is one of the best I've ever worked with. They are simply very good programmers.

Is there anything Live Typing could have improved or done differently?

Communication is never going to be as good with an outsource team as it is with in-house developers, but that's just something you have to live with.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I work for a major beauty retail company. My job includes creating, promoting, and improving our mobile app.

For what projects/services did your company hire Live Typing?

We hired them to develop a mobile app that would allow users to purchase our products.

What were your goals for this project?

We are the first major beauty retailer in Russia to launch a mobile app.

How did you select this vendor?

Our procurement department selected Live Typing based on their tender. We looked at their cost, speed, and quality of execution.

Describe the project in detail.

Initially, they spent about eight months integrating with our back office. After we agreed on the functional blocks, they made designs for iOS and Android devices, including tablets.

The next phase took about 6.5 months, from development and integration with existing processes to testing, debugging, and the actual launch. They continue to improve the mobile application.

What was the team composition?

During the initial phase, we worked with one project manager and two designers. We also had four frontend testers for each platform.

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

We are completely satisfied with the commercial data. The most important thing is that the app has high ratings on the App Store and Google Play.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

It is effective. They have a deep knowledge of development and suggest solutions for our problems.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

We appreciate their interest in our project and professionalism. They love their work. We believe in them and have never regretted it.

Are there any areas for improvement?

At the moment, our company is satisfied with their services. We all have a lot to improve, as this process is quite dynamic.