NaNLABS

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Head of Product of INE

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

IT Training in the Cyber Security, Networking and Cloud space

What specific goals or objectives did you hire NaNLABS to accomplish?

• Analysis of a Data Engineering solution
• Alternatives to implement
• Implementation details (in depth) of the chosen solution

How did you find NaNLABS?

Referral

Why did you select NaNLABS over others?

High ratings, Referred to me

What was the size of NaNLABS’s team?

2-5 Employees

What was your primary form of communication with NaNLABS?

Virtual Meeting, Email or Messaging App

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

We were looking for a partner with experience in Data Engineering to collaborate with us on developing a brand new analytics system for INE’s platform. The main challenge was to design an analytics system able to collect, store and analyze a high amount of data.

Thousands of users log into the platform simultaneously and millions of events occur every day so we had to consider the volume of data. In the meantime, the new analytics system had to be scalable and cost-efficient. NaNLABS’ team managed to deliver viable solutions to overcome these challenges.

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

• Concurrent users querying our analytics dashboards
• Response time for default chart in the order of milliseconds (using caching or other mechanisms)
• Response for custom charts and dashboards in the order of seconds
• Adaptability of the infrastructure to be queried by our APIs and BI tools (AWS Quicksight)

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

The NaNLABS team worked closely with us to define the project goals and our requirements. They consistently prioritized our satisfaction and feedback to ensure that the end result met our expectations

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

The team maintained open communication and collaboration with us, working closely and providing rapid responses

Are there any areas for improvement or something {provider_name} could have done differently?

Not really. I wish I could have continued working with them.

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Founder of Popr.ai

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Popr.ai is a tool to add motion to messages to help earn a response in noisy inboxes.

What specific goals or objectives did you hire NaNLABS to accomplish?

• Design and develop our MVP

How did you find NaNLABS?

Online Search, Clutch Site

Why did you select NaNLABS over others?

High ratings, Close to my geographic location, Good value for cost, Company values aligned

What was the size of NaNLABS’s team?

2-5 Employees

What was your primary form of communication with NaNLABS?

Virtual Meeting, Email or Messaging App

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

I needed a solution that made it easy for users to be able to create personalized, animated slideshows. Each slideshow should contain text based slides with unique personalization variables. I was looking for a capable technology partner that could help us design, build, and launch the product to market.

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

• We had a clearly defined scope and timeline established.

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

The NaNLABS team used Agile practices. They worked in sprints and delivered working software from the get-go. I could give them feedback on product design definitions, early versions of the product, and test integrations.

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

NaNLABS struck a balance between challenging me and ensuring that the solution we were arriving at was something they could deliver—not being the ‘yes-man’ and not the ‘no-man’ either.

Are there any areas for improvement or something {provider_name} could have done differently?

They delivered on the scope of the project in a timely manner. We are very happy.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I was the founder CTO/CPO of WootCloud Inc, an IoT Security company. WootCloud is an emerging innovator in enterprise IoT device security.

In 2016, the startup launched an innovative IoT risk assessment platform able to uncover all types of unmanaged devices by scanning both the radio and network spectrum to provide critical context about each device.Thus, the platform analyzes a large amount of data in order to detect, prevent but also remediate security issues.

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

We wanted to improve how large enterprise organizations handle their network security and specifically IoT security. We had a small team and a very complex and ambitious roadmap ahead.

So we were looking for a reliable software development partner that could help us along the way and shape the engineering together with our internal team. We needed help with front-end UI ( both the client and server) and back-end cloud development , and cloud infrastructure.

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

One of our principal engineers has worked with NaNLABS in the past and he strongly recommended them to help us build and scale our platform.

The salient reasons are

• They have experience working in the CyberSecurity space and they were a very technically sharp team.
• Our team had prior great experience working with this vendor
• The leadership is strongly technical and engineering-driven which led them to give us the right engineering talent to design and develop.
• Very good support and the team is always ready to help

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

We've worked together for 4+ years, they were instrumental in several initiatives inside our project. They have even led some of these: Revamped the entire UI using ReactJS and advanced charting libraries.

Improved our back-end services to support bigger customers and larger data processing. Using techs like Python, AWS Lambda, Elasticsearch, Kafka Automate manual work and set up CI/CD mechanisms.

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

There were 4 main developers working on the project with the supervision of a project manager and a principal engineer. They brought consultants on for business-critical tasks. Over the years, there were different people that worked on the project. They have always had strong technical talent, motivation and good communication skills. .

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

• Consistent results, great code and timely release of our product to customer.
• Making the team better equipped to experiment with features and validate them with customers.
• Development velocity was increased by 4x thanks to the additional manpower, agile organization, and automated processes.
• Our deployment times were reduced by 3x.

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

They brought an Agile organization that worked great with our internal processes. The NaNLABS team was very responsive and transparent in their work. Timeline-wise they were very aligned with our goals, going the extra-mile when the business needed it. Very helpful, dependable team and management.

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

We had direct contact with developers. They were all involved and committed to our project. Their talent is exceptional and always had a strong relationship with their leadership team. Leadership team is very keen to take feedback and find ways as to how to collaborate and deliver better results.

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

Not really. Along the way, we had some minor issues that were discussed and addressed quickly.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a partner for a small product management and design consultancy.

What challenge were you trying to address with NaNLABS?

We’re managing a software product for a Fortune 500 company, and we needed a new development team. We hired NaNLABS to continue the development of the application while adding new features and functionality to the existing coding base. 

We wanted to hire someone we knew we could depend on to make sure that the app stayed up, and someone who would be highly responsive if there were bugs or issues that needed to be handled.

What was the scope of their involvement?

The app is an internal sales enablement application that relies on rich mapping functionality. The primary workflow is effectively adding data and managing all the data visualized on the app. NaNLABS and our company work together as the software team for this project, so they’re helping provide maintenance, but it is ongoing, and we’re still doing active development. 

They took on the existing code base of the web application, and we’ve been developing from there. The key technologies being used on the project are React, Java, Neo4j, MongoDB, Google Cloud, and everything is being run in Docker. NaNLABS is also assisting us with our container setup and managing some of the DevOps for our builds and development. 

What is the team composition?

We usually work with 2–3 front- and backend developers, a project manager, and occasionally bring in a UI designer when needed. We recently had to scale up the team rapidly and had some senior help to assist during that period. 

How did you come to work with NaNLABS?

We found them on Clutch. 

How much have you invested with them?

We started working together in May 2021, and it is ongoing. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve invested more than $500,000 with NaNLABS so far.

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

When they initially inherited the project there were some real challenges with it because it has a huge code base, there are unique technologies, and the product was buggy. NaNLABS has been meticulously organizing a plan to handle those hurdles, and over the course of their engagement, they’ve been able to mitigate some of the key issues in addition to adding new features. They’ve also helped us reduce our deployment time, downtime, and our number of help desk tickets has gone down by 75%. 

How did NaNLABS perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re super responsive, and we meet regularly. They’re very transparent about where they’re at and highly communicative. We use Slack and Google Meet for communication and ClickUp for project management. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

NaNLABS is extremely committed to building and retaining talent. They use the opportunities available as teaching moments and bring in team members to shadow and learn. We like working with a partner that's so committed to their team and who puts so much into the education and training of their team members. 

We have a steady team that we work with, which is great because we don’t always have to get people up to speed. They’re highly organized, especially in terms of approaching big development problems. They have a robust documentation system and always evaluate before diving in. They’re also highly flexible, open to feedback, proactive, and quick to solve any issues. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

There’s nothing more that they could be doing for us. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Trust them and take advantage of their process because it’s successful.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of engineering at an art gallery that buys and sells art pieces through various channels. Our company represents many living artists and some not-living artists and their foundations. We put on quite a few throughout the year and participate in major art fairs. 

Additionally, we do a lot of work and outreach around art and artists, publish books, and work with museums, artists themselves, and artists’ liaisons to perpetuate good art. I work in the engineering department, and we have enhanced technology that we use for various purposes.

What challenge were you trying to address with NaNLABS?

We build technology in-house and also use external technology, so we require a development team to maintain it and build new features related to sales, keeping track of artwork, and other aspects of running an art gallery. We service, develop, and refine various applications, and we contacted NaNLABS to help augment our engineering team to build out new features.

What was the scope of their involvement?

NaNLABS has helped us with back-of-house application work. We initially brought them in to work on the frontend of a web app. They helped with new features that we were building into our web application stack. Later, we brought them in for backend services to build features there as well. Although we’ve scaled down some aspects of the engagement, we continue to use NaNLABS for some of the backend work in our pipeline. 

What is the team composition?

We started with two developers from NaNLABS and later scaled to three total developers, one backend and one frontend developer. Currently, we’re only working with the backend developer.

How did you come to work with NaNLABS?

Our former CTO had worked with other nearshore and offshore agencies in the past. Although I don’t recall how he came across NaNLABS, I know we explore all avenues when bringing in a partner. I was heavily involved in the sourcing and interviewing of their developers, and we felt like they were a good fit.

How much have you invested with them?

So far, we’ve spent less than $200,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in September 2021, and the engagement is ongoing.

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

NaNLABS is a great partner. Their work has received positive feedback from stakeholders; everyone is quite pleased, including our in-house developers. The folks from NaNLABS are super invested, have keen attention to detail, and see things through with high fidelity. Moreover, the team has a desire to get involved in other aspects of the work — they’re very involved and keyed into the process. Overall, they’re responsible and responsive, and their work output is good.

How did NaNLABS perform from a project management standpoint?

Their resources are full-time members of our team, so we oversee the project management side of things. However, their internal project manager is good at keeping in sync and ensuring the team gets feedback. We have a monthly check-in to understand how everyone is doing and if we need to pivot or shift. 

NaNLABS is very communicative and responsive. Overall, I’ve had a good experience with them, and the fact that they’re nearshore doesn’t impact our communication. We have a long feedback loop around their performance which is always nice to have with a vendor. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

NaNLABS’ team quality is high, and their output is good. They’ve been quick to bring on multiple people who have very swiftly understood a fairly complex system. I’ve worked with providers where that was not the case, so NaNLABS’ ability to source talent distinguishes them from others. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

NaNLABS has an interesting approach to how they model some of their developers, where some resources come as a unit, which is fair. However, this introduces cost and complexity because it’s a rigid system. Although I wouldn’t say they’re inflexible, this has definitely prevented us from continuing with a resource we may have wanted to keep working with. 

On the other hand, this might be what makes their team work well across the company, so it’s a cost-benefit aspect I can’t really speak to. Still, it would be ideal for me to more easily scale a team up or down without dealing with ramifications across the rest of the development team.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

My advice is to be engaged with NaNLABS. If you know you can oversee their development team directly, they’re really great.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the co-founder of a SaaS company. Our app is a conversational platform that aims to help employees improve their knowledge in the workplace.

What challenge were you trying to address with NaNLABS?

We needed their support in developing our web application.

What was the scope of their involvement?

NaNLABS’ engineering resources implement different software solutions to develop some of the key functionalities of our web app. Our technology stack is comprised of TypeScript, React, Node.js, PostgreSQL, AWS, and Google Cloud.

What is the team composition?

We work with 5–6 resources from their team, depending on the project phase.

How did you come to work with NaNLABS?

My friend recommended NaNLABS’ team to us. I reached out to them and was quickly impressed with their passionate and collaborative approach, so hiring them was an easy decision to make.

What is the status of this engagement?

We kicked off our engagement with NaNLABS in August 2020, and it’s ongoing.

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

NaNLABS is a skilled team that swiftly delivers solutions without compromising quality — they’ve built innovative features that continue to elevate our app’s performance. 

How did NaNLABS perform from a project management standpoint?

We mainly communicate via Slack. NanLABS has strong collaboration and project management skills. They incorporate our feedback, respond to our requests, and deliver our needs within quick turnaround times. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

NaNLABS is a professional team that easily translates our business ideas into feasible solutions. They communicate clearly to help us figure out what we truly want to build.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There’s nothing else they can improve. NaNLABS has been a great development partner to us.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

NaNLABS has a highly thoughtful implementation process — they’ll surely generate the right solutions for you.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m an engineering manager for a cyber risk services startup based in San Francisco. The company has 100 team members including 40 full-time engineers.

What challenge were you trying to address with NaNLABS?

We needed additional resources because we had client projects to deliver in 3–6 months.

What was the scope of their involvement?

NaNLABS collaborates with our team to create solutions, including product architecture. Their team helped design, implement, and deliver a web app, which was built on Java Spring Boot and hosted on AWS. They supported quality control too.

What is the team composition?

Across the three-year collaboration, we've worked with 2–7 people from NaNLABS. We’re now working with four senior engineers and technical architects from their team.

How did you come to work with NaNLABS?

I had a successful engagement with them while at a previous company. I decided to engage them in this project because of their skilled, committed, and collaborative team.

How much have you invested with them?

So far, the total cost is $100,000 or more.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with NaNLABS in May 2018, and it’s an ongoing engagement.

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

NaNLABS produces top-notch work. Before working with their team, the quality of code and coverage was 0–10%. We increased those numbers to 85%–90% with the help of their engineers.

In the span of one year, we worked on 6–7 complex projects and had successful deliveries. We also adopted a lot of new technologies such as AWS Lambda, Serverless Computing, and Elasticsearch with the support of NaNLABS.

How did NaNLABS perform from a project management standpoint?

We use Jira to track the projects. We don’t feel a difference between our full-time employees and NaNLABS’ engineers. NaNLABS adheres to our guidelines better than many of our internal team members.

We work across countries, and NaNLABS proactively notifies us about upcoming holidays or times when their team will be unavailable. I have never had to check on them in that regard over the past three years.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Rather than just doing what we ask them to do, NaNLABS asks us questions and considers alternative solutions. They give us alternative proposals and after a proposal's finalized, their team completes the task. NaNLABS takes responsibility for projects, working hard to finish their tasks even if it's after hours. They’re flexible and contribute to our projects.

Are there any areas they could improve?

It hasn’t affected their deliveries but NaNLABS could help their team members improve their English language abilities. NaNLABS is providing English lessons to their employees, so they've improved.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

If clients make their process and project requirements clear, NaNLABS will deliver.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder of MoxUnion. We’re a cyber insurance platform for agents, brokers, and producers that are selling commercial cyber insurance.

What challenge were you trying to address with NaNLABS?

I’m in a pre-seed phase of Mox right now. I’ve done a lot of working speaking with customers, researching in the market, and getting some of my mockups into high-fidelity wireframes. 

What was the scope of their involvement?

NaNLABS helped me complete my vision of going from wireframes to a React application that I could demonstrate in relatively high-fidelity. 

During the initial scoping conversations, we were both in line with the technologies we should use to develop the product. We used Node.js, React as the frontend, and AWS. They also agreed that if we did any future development together, we’d want to be very microservice-based with a cloud-native architecture. All of that was really nice. 

What is the team composition?

Four people were assigned to this project.

How did you come to work with NaNLABS?

I’d been looking at some firms to help me accelerate my interface design for some time. Earlier this year, I attended RSA, a big conference in San Francisco. I met a mutual colleague of NaNLABS that had done some work with them before, and they recommended them to me. I had an interview with one of the founders of NaNLABS, and it went from there.

It was awesome that I found them because they’d done work before in the cybersecurity industry. They weren’t the only firm I looked at.

How much have you invested with them?

The project cost about $9,000. It was pretty affordable for most folks. 

What is the status of this engagement?

This project began in mid-June 2020. We completed the initial scope of the project in mid-August 2020.

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

Their work has definitely allowed me to complete the story better when I give my demonstrations. Rather than having to use wireframes as my demonstration infrastructure, I now have an interactive React application.

The scope of the work was to make a demoable application, not an MVP, so there is very limited backend functionality. The interface design was great. I think this project went well because they’re a super competent team, but also because I provided them with everything they needed and had the scope of work pretty much pre-defined.

How did NaNLABS perform from a project management standpoint?

They were great; I was the one who didn’t hit all of my deadlines. They used Slack, Google Meet, email — they were willing to communicate in any way we wanted to. They also got on individuals calls with me. All of that was really helpful.

They leveraged ClickUp, which is a pretty popular project management standpoint. They also used a tool called Storybook, which was nice for documenting the element of our React application.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Something I like about the NaNLABS team is that they’re open to new concepts. They’re from regions outside of the US; the founder I spoke to lived in France, and the team I worked with worked in South America. Everyone was bilingual, which was a benefit. They came in with open minds because we were from such different regions. The team was very proficient and technical. If you can put what you want into words, they can deliver to that.

Are there any areas they could improve?

If I need to do another project like this, I’d probably use them again. I think that they could probably get more business if, at the end of every project, they gave a short writeup of where the partnership could go from there and present their vision of working together again to the client. I’d love to see them own the ‘problem’ by making suggestions for the next round.

Any advice for potential customers?

I gave them as much as I possibly could. When working with NaNLABS or any company like them, the client needs to have their stuff together and know what they’re looking for. I was able to provide them everything they needed, as well as go into architecture and technical conversations. Being prepared and giving them information is what allowed them to hit the ground running.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of an AI company. We automate expense reports.

What challenge were you trying to address with NaNLABS?

We wanted to automate the process of corporate expense reports.

What was the scope of their involvement?

NaNLABS is our development team. They built Android and iOS apps to automate our corporate expense reports. They did all of the integrations that we needed with Google Calendar, a phone’s photo reel, and a lot of the data science matching of receipts to calendar. They pretty much handle all of our development. 

What is the team composition?

We work with four team members.

How did you come to work with NaNLABS?

We were looking for a company that could develop not just a prototype or MVP, but an app that can be used by thousands of people. We went through our network, and NaNLABS came highly recommended by a few people.

At the time, they were going back and forth between South America and the US, so we got to meet them in San Francisco. That has changed with COVID, but their talent is exceptional, so their location doesn’t make a difference to me.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent $50,000–$100,000. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve been working together for about a year. We’re still actively working together, and we highly recommend them.

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

They’ve done a fantastic job, and we’re delighted by their work. The results are a happy customer and a great product. 

How did NaNLABS perform from a project management standpoint?

I give them an A+ across the board. They’re great.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We had a very complicated task, and they’ve done a great job solving everything. I recommend them for both simple and complex work. I think most companies ship iPhone only, so they’ve excelled in shipping something that can be used on both Android and iOS platforms.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the president and head of production at Tongal, a studio-on demand platform.

What challenge were you trying to address with NaNLABS?

We hired them to build a website for one of our clients. It’s a place to open source creative ideas for a large toy company.

What was the scope of their involvement?

NaNLABS is building a new platform with new technologies. The team is doing the front- and backend and adding flexibility. They're including notification systems, payment platforms, and ways for the community at large to work together on creative ideas. 

What is the team composition?

We’ve been working with five full-time developers, and we’ve also had two consultations with their co-founders. 

How did you come to work with NaNLABS?

We did an extensive search first to find a partner. NaNLABS was then recommended by the head of product whose friend had worked with them and sung their praises. They came out as the clear frontrunner because of their services, experience, and what they were offering for the price point.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent around $67,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working with them in January 2020, and our engagement is ongoing. We’ll be working on this project till the end of September 2020, and we’re talking to them about updating our codebase.

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

We went through rigorous data testing where we had about 250 data testers. The feedback has been overwhelmingly fantastic. What’s been great about our partnership with NaNLABS is that we’ve been able to address feedback and make changes quite quickly.

We’re aiming to go live in August 2020. The technical work has been exceptional, and our internal tech team has become a better team because of NaNLABS’s experience. It’s been a very collaborative environment. We like them so much that we may continue working with them to update our own technologies. 

How did NaNLABS perform from a project management standpoint?

They are fantastic about meeting deadlines. We talk with them every week and we have a biweekly retrospective on our work. The team is also integrated into our Slack, Jira, Asana, and Kanban Boards.

They communicate very well in English, and we haven’t had many issues with things being lost in translation, which is impressive. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their integration and collaboration are impressive. They integrated well with our tech team, which has been invaluable for this collaboration. They’re quick and clean in their development, which is great. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I have no suggestions. Anytime something has come up, the team has been able to help us to problem-solve. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Lean on their experience.