Mindnerves Technology

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder and CEO of a cybersecurity startup.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Mindnerves Technology?

I created the company out of an MBA class project, and we brought in Mindnerves after our first round of funding. We had some initial developers in other parts of the world, but we were having problems with communication. We hired their team to replace them.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Mindnerves is responsible for the core UI of all six of my products. I have people outside of their company for the backend work.

Our infrastructure is based on AWS, and Mindnerves’ team is well-versed in using its various security features. They’ve kept our data confidential, as per our standard security procedures.

What is the team composition?

We’re using five developers from Mindnerves at the moment. We’re don’t have a project manager on their side.

How did you come to work with Mindnerves Technology?

I approached multiple vendors on Upwork, and got a lot of responses. My technical team interviewed Mindnerves, and their proposal and Java knowledge were both very impressive. We had no uncertainty about whether or not they understood our business requirements. We’d had those issues earlier, so this was our key consideration.

I gave them a small project, they delivered it successfully, and we added more team members from there.

How much have you invested with them?

The cost so far is $300,000–$400,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Mindnerves in June 2016.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Mindnerves’ team is fantastic on the UI side of things. Even though I’ve not given them work in complex data analytics, I’m sure they would excel at that as well.

How did Mindnerves Technology perform from a project management standpoint?

We’re using Upwork to track their time as well as Jira and Bitbucket for project management. My team manages Mindnerves’ developers and assigns tasks directly.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re a highly flexible team that can address outages or issues in the middle of the night or on weekends. Their flexibility is the number one thing I love about Mindnerves, and the cost is decent.

Are there any areas they could improve?

It can be difficult to retain talent in this industry. In the last four years, we’ve lost about three key developers. Mindnerves was kind enough to replace them quickly and offer training periods for the new resources at no cost.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

I’ve referred quite a few clients to them, and my recommendation is always to start with 1–2 developers, see how it goes, and expand the scope from there.