Minerva Gate

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the co-founder of a social media company based in Berlin, Germany.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Minerva Gate, and what were your goals?

I founded a social networking start-up and needed to have a working demo ready in a strict timeline. One of my colleagues who is in the same cohort of the accelerator I’m a member of, Entrepreneur First, had recommended Minerva Gate to me. I had hired two full-stack developers to help me finish the demo. They were extremely proficient in React Native, and I was impressed.

Before hiring Minerva Gate I had the hassle of working with other freelancers who simply could not work as fast or with the same precision as Minerva Gate (I spoke with more than 50 freelancers and agencies, but nobody was good and fast enough). Throughout the entire process, they had kept us in the loop and had integrated very well with our full-time engineering team. When I hire full-stack developers to help me with my product I only want “rockstars” and Minerva Gate is definitely that.

SOLUTION

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

I had found this vendor through a recommendation from a fellow founder from our accelerator cohort (Entrepreneur First). The deciding factor was that they were able to show a large amount of sample work they have done in the past and they were able to provide me, two engineers, quickly. They also were able to pass my coding challenge before onboarding them on the project.

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

I had hired Minerva Gate to help my team finish the front-end of our app. We had hired them to help us specifically with React Native work for our social networking app. The main functionality they were building out was 4 fully customized screens for the front end and swiping animations that are essential to our app. They were able to get the job done ahead of schedule and with crystal clear communication.

If I needed to get on a call to understand the progress they made the time and were able to show work being delivered as they were finishing it. In the future when my start-up needs to build out a beta I would not hesitate to contact Minerva Gate to help me with our solution.

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

We had hired 2 full-stack engineers to help us with this project. Their CTO was our main point of contact throughout the process and was able to answer any questions we might have had.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

They were able to help us roll out our demo for our app ahead of schedule giving us time to review our presentation more and come up with any revisions. I would say Minerva Gate filled their role perfectly as they were able to not only finish ahead of time but have their deliverables 100 percent correct. I think I should also mention that the schedule was tight with just 14 from kick-off to delivery for the entire app front-end.

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

Their workflow with our team was seamless. They had constant communication throughout the process and I could not ask for anything more. Our team has 3 engineers and with their two engineers, we were able to finish our app on time for our accelerator's demo day. Since they have engineers working on US and European timezones they were able to complete work during non-working hours in Germany.

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

From their professionalism to their level of expertise I’ve been satisfied with it all. I’ve worked with contractors in the past and to be honest the speed and level of precision when completing the work doesn’t even come close to Minerva Gate. I think what is great about this company is that you are getting your money’s value by hiring them. If you need a job done, Minerva Gate finds a way to make it happen. When deadlines are tight, they work overtime with us to complete the tasks.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

I would just tell them to keep doing what they are doing because their framework and system works!

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the founder and CEO of Terra Information Group, a IT Services company based in Chicago, Illinois. Our company mainly focuses on technology consulting with large scale organizations. Mainly we specialize with financial technology firms and software companies.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Minerva Gate?

I run a IT services company and often times I need to consult with contractors to help fulfill our own projects. We mainly work with larger size companies such as Pfizer and Intel helping them with staff augmentation. We had a project with a Large Software Software Company where we needed to place 3 engineers in a short period of time.

Often times with different dev shops you don’t know what you’re going to get, but this was my first time working with Minerva Gate and I would not hesitate to hire them again. They had provided us with 3 full stack engineers who were particularly great with Javascript and React. They integrated seamlessly with our team and the client’s team as well.

All throughout the process the communication was crystal clear and they were well verse in a SCRUM/Agile environment. From the start they were able to understand the requirements and hit the ground running. We had saved a lot of time working with them and honestly I was taken aback on how professional they are and how they conduct themselves.

SOLUTION

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

We needed a company who could provide us 3 engineers relatively quick and at a optimal cost. The main hiring criteria was that each of the engineers had to pass our coding interview.

Describe the project in detail and walk through the stages of the project.

The project was with a large software company based in California. Our company was contracted to provide 10 engineers. At the time we did not have enough engineers with the right background to take on the project and we had to find engineers fast.

At the moment we are helping build out a product for a HR Technology company that will have a web and mobile application rolled out by the end of the year. At the moment we are working with the client's team and helping them roll out their product in time. We are still working with Minerva Gate at the moment and will have them contracted out until end of this year. This project was mainly staff augmentation for the client's team.

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

Their CTO was our main point of contact. We had hired 3 full stack engineers to help us with the web and mobile applications that were to be rolled out.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

At the moment we have been able to meet client expectations and have our PI/Sprint goals made. We have been able to reduce backlog items ahead of schedule by 3 weeks. This has really made sure we have enough time to test and we don't have to push out our project. The team was also able to provide us with extensive testing.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Our team consisted of 7 engineers and we had hired 3 of their engineers. Our technical lead worked with their technical lead on a daily basis along with the client to go over what needs to be done. They had joined the client's JIRA and helped pick up tickets. They were also very integral in joining in the client's PI planning and giving design suggestions.

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

They really took the time to understand each requirement and deliverable. Working with them was a breeze because they truly did have an understanding of what they were assigned to do(mostly React work) and did not cut corners in terms of unit testing. Minerva Gate is really a great company to work with and they deserve to be called "The World's best Generalists". I think what really sets them apart is the idea that you are getting some of the best engineers in the industry(they are all ex-faang caliber) at a fraction of the cost.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

At the moment we are really happy with their work.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the CMO of a crypto streaming platform, I my responsibilities involve branding, digital marketing and approaching customers with various offers and benefits.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Minerva Gate, and what were your goals?

Minerva Gate was hired for developing a suite of smart contracts for our custom crowdfunding campaign. Our goal was to raise capital and do the initial coin offering towards our users.

SOLUTION

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

Minerva Gate was recommended to us by another startup based on their quality of work and fair pricing on their previous project.

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

At the point of hiring, our technical part was basically non-existent. Minerva Gate had to deploy our custom BEP-20 token and create the smart contract architecture for the crowdfunding stage. They also had to create our crowdfunding page in ReactJS and Web3. The architecture was challenging due to the fact that we wanted to support multi-token and also native-token investments.

We also required our user to do a KYC verification, which is mandatory for this type of investment rounds, and was quite challenging given that the blockchain side needed to be in sync with the external KYC service, where we had minimal control. Technologies used: Blockchain, Solidity, Web3, BEP-20, ReactJS, Django, Figma.

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

In total 5 people worked with us, with 3 of them being full-time on the project and the other 2 on-demand. This was possible since the team has it’s own strategy to quickly scale-up the manpower needed. Their positions were:

• 1 UX/UI designer
• 1 Fullstack Engineer who was assigned the React part
• 1 Backend Engineer
• 1 Solidity Engineer
• 1 Project Manager

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

What caught our attention when we were introduced to Minerva Gate is that we’ve heard that they always finish before the deadline, with plenty of time left for testing.

Since we were on a short timeline and wanted to launch ASAP, we decided a reasonable yet ambitious goal would be to have everything up and running in 1.5 months time. Minerva Gate promised us it will be ready within 1 month. This was hard to believe at first, but after only 2 days we saw the pace they set and realized they were moving twice as fast as we would expect. They also explained us that have plenty of internal tools and code snippets that facilitate their speed.

The project was ready a couple of days earlier than the 1 month deadline, with only a minor bug in the KYC process which was easy to spot and fix within a couple of hours. Everything still works perfectly today, after more than 2 months without any external redeployment or bug fixing.

The general feedback is great... they did better than we ever expected, especially on such a short notice. We loved that the team doesn’t only focus on developing the product, but comes with their own suggestions and provide help even outside their initial scope of work (we found a great business partner who was a mutual connection of the CEO of Minerva Gate, and they also surprised us by helping us redesign and rewrite our Whitepaper)

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

They use G-Suite, Notion (where we gained access to their dedicated page for our project) and Slack. Notion comes with lots of tools, including Kanban and Gantt charts, which they fully make use of. We worked quickly and transparently, having a daily sync in the morning, and another heads-up call (short and to the point) in the afternoon. They were available for calls at every needed moment.

Even though , the energy was great with lots of jokes on the morning sync, and we never doubted at any point the project will be completed successfully. The project manager delegates a lot of ownership to the other team members, and we realized shortly after we began our collaboration that this wasn’t their first rodeo. They have lots of experience working together as a team and each of the members is well familiarized with the technology stack and code snippets they make use of.

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

Aside from completing everything well in advance of the deadline, they helped us with things totally unrelated to the scope of work they were initially hired for. They are really passionate about the projects they work on and come up with great ideas in general. They also have lots of experience working with startups and a very broad network of other professionals, which proved to be very helpful to our cause. The overall feeling we got was that they were our fully committed partners.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

I don’t think so. They have their own unique working style and their future collaborators should understand that and let them do their magic.