Meta Craft

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder and CEO of Hole19. We’re building tools to empower golfers to play their best.

What challenge were you trying to address with Meta Craft?

We had designed an app in-house, but we didn’t have the bandwidth to develop it internally.

What was the scope of their involvement?

With Meta Craft, we were experimenting with a new product around practicing on the range, and we wanted a functional MVP. We went through different phases and defined milestones with them. We started with the golfing drills and then we moved onto the authentication and account details. The final stages involved graphs and analytics.

What is the team composition?

We worked with a project manager and an iOS software engineer.

How did you come to work with Meta Craft?

I knew one of their founders personally and understood from other projects that they’d worked on that they could do good work. We went through a tender and spoke to about eight different potential companies.

We narrowed it down to three and ended up with Meta Craft after going through an interview process. The team dynamic was very important to us.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent roughly $48,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked with them from September 2019–February 2020.

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

Our main goal was to have an extension of our team, and that was the case. They ticked all of the boxes we wanted. Their experience with mobile app development was important in getting us to where we wanted to be.

How did Meta Craft perform from a project management standpoint?

We finished on time, and everything went smoothly. There was constant communication and we had a dedicated Slack channel. They gave us feedback on our own designs as well and told us what they thought would work better. They managed expectations very well and hit their deadlines. 

Meta Craft was clear about what they could and couldn’t do in a certain timeframe, which ensured that we didn’t overbuild without testing hypotheses. They were honest about how they thought we should approach the project. Meta Craft got everything done in the ideal amount of time with the best quality possible. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

We’ve worked with other providers that promise everything in the world before the engagement, but once the work starts, they slack. With Meta Craft, we got more and more impressed with every task they did. 

They had a personal touch and made it clear that they wanted to be an extension of our team. Their engineers felt like an extension of our team, and it’s always great to work with people like that.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We’re a little more price-conscious and Meta Craft was a little more expensive than other providers. However, you get what you pay for. There’s not much that they could do better — it was a great experience. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Have a clear plan and clearly defined milestones so that Meta Craft can work with you to meet them. Having everything coordinated will make it much more efficient. We were a little disorganized in the beginning, but once we got everything together, we noticed the productivity gains. 

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the founder and director of Felix Payments, a software company with a payment product for freelancers.

What challenge were you trying to address with Meta Craft?

In my previous tutoring business, we had developed a payment platform that allowed our tutors to manage their payments individually. We decided to turn that into a standalone product that we could sell to other businesses and turned to Meta Craft to help develop that application.

What was the scope of their involvement?

The way the service works is that it tries to make the payment process for any freelance worker as seamless as possible — in other words, you book, receive the service, get an invoice, without having to worry about the actual transaction at all. The app that we developed with Meta Craft allows freelancers to simply log their work and get paid, while clients just have to approve their payments. Everything else, from invoicing to pulling payment information, is automated.

All of the work was done in native code, with the initial build using Objective C and a substantial amount of Swift added on top of that. When we started working on the project, we had no app-building experience, so we needed a partner who could really walk us through the entire process. Meta Craft’s team helped not only to fulfill our technical requirements but also to mentor us as entrepreneurs.

Since then, we’ve partnered on a number of other apps that we continue to upgrade and maintain, including a new payment app for the tutoring company and a proprietary test scanning application that delivers real-time test results.

What was the team composition?

We’ve worked with 3–4 developers from their team, as well as one of the founders who serves as our main point of contact.

How did you come to work with Meta Craft?

We found them based on the recommendation of our web developer, who had worked with Fabio (Founder) at what was pretty much the best tech company in Portugal at the time.

How much have you invested with them?

Across the three apps that we’ve built in our five years of working with them, we’ve probably spent between $100,000–$150,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

The project started around June 2015 and we’ve built three apps with them so far and are going strong.

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

All of our work with them has been incredibly successful so far. Our payment system at this point has processed over 7000 invoices for tens of thousands of payment sessions, and we’ve achieved a 100% collection rate, all without any full-time accountants or any sort of billing department.

The test processing application that we’ve built is now processing over 30 tests, with 200 questions each, so over 6000 student answers per day. The error rate on that is below 1%, so we’ve been incredibly pleased with the results that it has delivered.

How did Meta Craft perform from a project management standpoint?

Fabio was extremely valuable to our work with them. He has an incredible level of experience and was able to really leverage that to our benefit throughout the process. He’s also quite good at managing all of the work and communication back and forth between our teams.

They are proactive and will always tell you if your expectations aren’t entirely aligned with reality. Because of the level of experience that they have, they are able to identify components of a project, decisions, or issues that will have significant consequences down the line and pinpoint and make fixes before that happens.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I don’t have the experience with any other web developers to compare them to, but that is because we’ve been so pleased with their work that we’ve never tried to go anywhere else.

Our organization has cycled through a few different web developers and designers, but between Meta Craft’s technical skill and project management, they have given us no reason to do that with them. They are autonomous, fast, and transparent about budget, so it’s a relief to work with them every time.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Nothing in particular stands out to me that I wish they were doing differently.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Let them test your ideas and designs because they have a lot of experience and a lot of insights that they can share about the whole spectrum of the app development process as a result of that.

We’ve really benefited from their experience and insight not just on the app, but on how it's tied to our other technologies, our marketing, and its scalability as a product.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am leading a team that is building a technology that will match talent to career opportunities in real estate businesses.

For what projects/services did your company hire Meta Craft, and what were your goals?

Meta Craft is building the entire platform, both web and mobile.

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

I was referred to Meta Craft by two trusted advisors who have previously worked with Meta Craft.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

Meta Craft is building the front end and back end of the entire project. They work closely with the design team, turning the designs into a reality. The first step was to build an onboarding process for potential candidates which has been completed and tested with users. Currently, we are building onboarding for real estate businesses who wish to hire talent, a job posting platform, in-product communication and candidate matching.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

Currently, we work with three members of Meta Craft's team -- one front end developer and two back end developers.

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

Meta Craft has delivered according to our roadmap that we built together. The quality of their work exceptional and built in a way that will make it easy for our product to scale. They have exceeded expectations.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

We use Slack for our primary source of communication and have two weekly Zoom meetings. The Meta Craft team is exceptional at communicating when things are going well, when more information is needed and when they are facing challenges.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

The work product is exceptional and even more importantly, they are individuals that our team enjoys working with. It feels as if they are part of our company, not contractors.