PINKDROIDS

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the Head of the digital production for services and content in education at Profil Klett.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire PINKDROIDS?

We collaborate on the production of interactive digital learning objects such as simulations for physics, interactive maps etc.

What were your goals for this project?

To provide high level quality digital learning content for students in Croatian schools and to create interactive component types for our software product - IZZI digital suite (authoring tool and distribution for learning digital content).

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

It was by recommendation, interview and testing.

Describe the project in detail.

We had several meetings to describe and introduce the team to our development environment, they created a test component based on our specification, and from then on, we provide them with object specification and then we work through iterations until the object is complete and satisfies all requirements - both subject requirements (scientific, pedagogic) or technical (accessibility, responsivness etc.)

What was the team composition?

CEO and programers, as asked by our side.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

These are the first few chapters of content delivery for CARNET - Croatian Academic Research Network. PINKDROIDS collaborated on us for several components

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

They are fantastic. Quick to respond in all communication, efficient, pragmatic and responsible. Communication was transparent at all times, and we always knew exactly the status or possible problems in development. All deadlines were met and we are still very happy to work with them.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Their level of technical knowledge and interest in the subject matter of the project set them apart. Quick and honest communication.

Are there any areas for improvement?

It would be nice if they worked with more frameworks. We really need someone for Angular dev.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am CTO at Fulfilli.com. Fulfilli is a business development platform for digital agencies.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire PINKDROIDS?

We hired Pinkdroids to help us create a digital agency search based on Algolia. We had React developer and Backend (Laravel) developer in our team, but we needed more experienced React developer who could fast and in high quality implement Algolia search.

What were your goals for this project?

The goal was to create the best search experience in the industry and get the project running as fast as possible.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We are in contact with a hundred digital agencies every year, so we shortlisted a few agencies out of thousands fit for the job. Then we interviewed them about the project details. We choose PINKDROIDS cause they had very experienced React JS developer available for the project right away and they showed a high level of understanding of how to implement this project fast and in high quality.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

They developed full search experience, implementing multiple filters, infinite loading, and analytics. We had a few challenging aspects of the task that PINKDROIDS managed to solve. 

1. We needed to implement 2 indices (databases) - agencies and services into 1 search results.
2. As we were on a basic Algolia plan that don’t have Analytics API, we needed to save basic search history data to our own API, so we could later analyze the data.
3. As items had multiple locations, we had a challenge to show “Filter by city” correctly as it was not possible with standard Algolia filters.

What was the team composition?

They provided us with 1 frontend (React) developer and 1 project manager. They worked in close contact to our development team of 3 people.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

The search experience is showing great usage metrics. Our users are doing thousands of searches every week. We also did the ProductHunt campaign for the new search and got 400 upvotes.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

PINKDROIDS initially proposed to go by their optimized process and use their tools to be most effective, but as we needed to involve our development team, we choose to use our toolset and processes. We used Slack for daily communication and JIRA for task management. We were on almost the same timezones and their English was perfect so there were no problems with communication.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

They are very technical guys with a high standard for quality. They will solve all the problems you throw at them and most importantly, they are nice people to work with.

Are there any areas for improvement?

We worked on the project for about 3 months. In that period we had no problems.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of a custom software development agency.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with PINKDROIDS?

We needed software development support.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They provided us with some team members to work on a couple of our projects. We’re building a website for a New York-based real estate company, which is a fully custom, ground-up implementation. They did the frontend with React, while we built the backend API through Contentful and did a lot of custom code on the engineering side. On another project, they worked on mobile development using React Native.

What is the team composition?

The project leadership rests with us, then they provide engineering resources. Currently, there’s only one, but it used to be three, who is directly incorporated into our team as if they’re own engineer.

We have another mode of operation where we give them requirements or specifications. They provide a single point of contact behind whom our engineers work to deliver what we need. We use both styles, depending on the project.

How did you come to work with PINKDROIDS?

They were recommended to us by a common acquaintance who I trust. It felt right after having a conversation with them. We started off with small tasks and took it from there.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent $80,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in July 2018 and the work is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Everybody is very happy with their work both internally as well as the end customers. They’re very flexible, competent, and trustworthy, as well as very forthcoming.

How did PINKDROIDS perform from a project management standpoint?

I’m happy with their responsiveness and documentation. We use Slack for daily communications and also schedule calls over Google Hangouts. On some occasions, we meet in person.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They have a high level of technical competence and are also transparent and honest. If they don’t know how to do something or if they think we’re not doing a great job in some areas, they’ll say.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They should keep doing what they’re doing and grow their team.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be upfront and honest about what you expect as you can trust that they won’t use the information against you. They’ll work to find something that works for both parties.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m one of two principals at a web design and app development firm. We’ve been in business for 18 years.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with PINKDROIDS?

We won a large municipal project with a very tight deadline. We needed to increase our capacity to complete it in time.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We use them as staff augmentation and utilized their unique tech stack, which included Django, Python, and React. It’s a large, mobile-responsive, non-native application system that will be open to the public. It has multiple systems that integrate with a backend database. There are several complex forms and a lot of connection to the backend system.

They helped us with all of the frontend. The whole system must be available in ten different languages, two of which read right to left. They also helped with PDF generation and other jobs and processes that move data from one place to another.

What is the team composition?

We started with two developers, a technical project manager, and one of their principals. After a few weeks, we increased the team to five developers until we met or MVP. We’re currently working with a team of three until we launch at the end of the summer.

How did you come to work with PINKDROIDS?

They reached out to us via email and may have found us through Clutch. They specialized in the tech stack we needed—which is an uncommon combination—so we scheduled time to speak with them.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent around $75,000 so far. The total cost will be about $100,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in March 2018 and the project is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We had a long list of requirements and an agile sprint planning board. Each week, we met to assign tasks to various developers. By the end of the first week, they were already asking for more work because they got through everything so quickly.

They were an unknown for us but it was clear from the beginning that their work was high-quality. They understood our business requirements and their productivity was much higher than we expected. The client is very happy with the frontend so far.

How did PINKDROIDS perform from a project management standpoint?

They make themselves available to us. We have a couple of weekly meetings to check in with sprints. They stay up late for their time zone to video conference with us. Their senior developer and project managers come online and we go through all the work that’s completed and what they’ll do next. We use Slack and a ticketing system to communicate outside of those calls and everything has been streamlined and efficient.

What did you find most impressive about them?

There was never any disconnect between their skill or their understanding of our needs. Their command of English and their comprehension of the context of the project was clear. They’re strong coders and they made good suggestions for techniques and procedures we weren’t using. They’re so much better than any other offshore or nearshore resource we’ve tried before.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Make sure you have the local groundwork and resources on your side. We had specialists and subject matter expertise on our side and had already completed all our discovery and strategy work before we started working with them.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CTO of Sonato, which is an early-stage startup in the hospitality space. We are building a platform for businesses like hotels and restaurants to manage their operations online.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with PINKDROIDS?

Our original platform was written in Python web framework, and we wanted it to switch it to another framework. We had already built up some of the codebase and needed someone to help us improve it.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

PINKDROIDS implemented the frontend, and we provided them with the designs. They built a number of features using Python, Django, JavaScript, and React. The end users of the app are the employees and the customer-facing side.

What is the team composition?

There were 6–10 developers.

How did you come to work with PINKDROIDS?

I looked for people on GitHub. I searched by the technology that I was going to use and found somebody who’d shown expertise within that base. PINKDROIDS didn’t exist at the time, but I found one of the founders of the company. He was working on a Django app, and because of that expertise, I reached out to him, interviewed him, and hired him. He started PINKDROIDS while he was working on our project.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent between $200,000–$1 million.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from July 2014 until March 2018.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We weren’t collecting any revenue online, but since their work, now we are. Everybody is happy with the system.

How did PINKDROIDS perform from a project management standpoint?

I was happy with their project management and availability. We used Slack to communicate. I worked with the various engineers depending on the feature they were building. If they were delivering it, they would talk to me, and I would QA it, accept it, or reject it, or say there are things missing.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They were always able to handle new requests and adjusted their work to fit our requirements.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They could grow in expertise in the domain that they’re targeting, like Python, so that they continue to hire great people.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Have a concrete problem for an engineer to solve. The more specific you can make it, the better the outcome will be.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the president of Adrius Group. We focus on technology development, consulting, and business services support for financial services companies in New York.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with PINKDROIDS?

We needed a contractor to help us develop a complex financial assessment platform for one of our clients.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They are developing our financial platform. It’s an assessment of various vendors and industries. It’s a very complex platform that requires multiple levels of user access, and triggers data sets and databases based on specific calculations. The backend is quite complex.

We have a frontend team with UX/UI and graphic designers, but PINKDROIDS also helped with the frontend.

What is the team composition?

The project manager was my main point of contact.

How did you come to work with PINKDROIDS?

Friends and business partners suggested that I work with them. PINKDROIDS is known for their backend work, and their flexible approach caught my eye. From the beginning, they’ve been very detailed, attentive to issues, and responsive to questions.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in January 2018 and the work is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Beta testers have been ecstatic that we turned their manual process into an automated platform. Everything has been positive. They show initiative, take control of the development process, and go above and beyond as needed. They’ve had a very positive impact on this project.

How did PINKDROIDS perform from a project management standpoint?

It has been excellent. A lot is driven by my team, but PINKDROIDS has learned a lot about project management. I have nothing but positive feedback.

They are very flexible, using what my team and my clients use. They use WebEx, email, and project management documents like Project Plan. We also use Slack for interactions between their team and ours. They are pretty good about providing documents, but focus more on developing and addressing the needs of the client within tight time constraints.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re very attentive, ready to get things going and resolve issues. They are transparent about any potential issues and project assumptions.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the technical founder of a small SaaS startup.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire PINKDROIDS?

We hired Pinkdroids to help with quickly bootstrapping a new SaaS software product before an investor demo deadline. The work involved not just standard SaaS web app technologies like React/Redux/GraphQL, but also help in designing the UX and features to build.

What were your goals for this project?

We focused on speed of delivery over any specific technical or business goals, aside from an agreed upon featureset.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We were referred by a friend. We did not look at any other vendors and were happy with Pinkdroids from our initial screening call.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

Pinkdroids helped bootstrap the frontend of our SaaS product in a very quick amount of time. As someone very technical myself, I was very pleased with their implementation and choice of technologies for the project.

What was the team composition?

Small team of me and Pinkdroids.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

We have not yet launched the product due to unforeseen circumstances, so it is difficult to say.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

We implemented little in this regard as it was a very small, quick project.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

They are an incredibly talented, technical bunch that also quickly understood our product and business.

Are there any areas for improvement?

None, perfect service from Pinkdroids!