Rather Labs

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Head of Operations of Startup Slang

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Web3 and eCommerce Agency

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Rather Labs to accomplish?

• Blockchain development
• Technical inputs
• Smart Contract and NFT architecture

SOLUTION

How did you find Rather Labs?

Referral

Why did you select Rather Labs over others?

• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost
• Referred to me
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from Rather Labs were assigned to this project?

6-10 Employees

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

Advanced Smart Contract Development for a Fortune 500 company in the USA

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

A dynamic product that was launched successfully to market

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

With constant scope creep from the client and an ever increasing degree of complexity, we prolonged the project countless times. However, RatherLabs was proactive, professional, and made the entire delivery process a smooth transition towards a successful launch for all parties and collaborators involved.

What was your primary form of communication with Rather Labs?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

The level of knowledge when it comes to blockchain and smart contract development work is second to none. Still my #1 choice and most referred third party i offer to my own clients, clients I can't serve, or close friends looking for project delivery with high standards. Have a single conversation with Franco or any other team member at Rather Labs. You'll find they're the most qualified the inidividuals to create your product as they also have highly successful products of their own.

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

Yes! Franco, Fede, or Santi - give me a call. We got some more projects to collaborate over. You know where to find me ;)

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Paediatric Oncologist and CEO of Charity of Tumaini la Maisha

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Tumaini la Maisha is the largest children's Cancer Charity in Tanzania and supports many aspects of children's cancer care including paying for the chemotherapy for every child.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Rather Labs to accomplish?

• To complete the development of the National Electronic Medical Record System for childhood cancer services
• To help implement the same programme - called CleverCancerCare
• To help complete a highly automated chemotherapy prescribing platform for children's cancer

SOLUTION

How did you find Rather Labs?

Referral

Why did you select Rather Labs over others?

• High ratings
• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost
• Referred to me
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from Rather Labs were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

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

Apologies as I am a paediatric oncologist and not a software engineer so I may not have the language to fully explain the incredible job that the team at RATHERLABS are doing to help us - ENTIRELY FREE OF CHARGE as part of their incredible CSR programme - develop the National Children's Cancer Electronic medical record system for the country of Tanzania.

We meet weekly and they provided detailed project management support. All new coding decisions are discussed and broken into stories and form an organised backlog of tasks. They are helping with the actual coding. They have provided a quality assurance engineer to do detailed testing and have committed to helping with the DevOps Section of the implementation of the service. Their commitment to quality and timely delivery of their work is honestly extraordinary.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

They have completed a quality assurance assessment and produced a detailed report. They are coding and developing the application so it is obvious to see the incredible progress being made. They are also extremely responsive whenever a question arises of a clarification is needed.

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

Genuinely - incredible. They are reliable, systematic, quality driven and always open to include additional functions and work. They have taught me a lot about how to break down a complex problem into manageable sensible units.

What was your primary form of communication with Rather Labs?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

As a charity we work with a lot of people who donate their time and we are always grateful but it is not always possible to prioritise our needs. This is an organisation who has treated the work we are doing with the top most priority as if we are paying a large amount for their service.

From the top management to the newest member of the team - their attention to detail, commitment the very best and highest quality solution - including at times breaking and rewriting code if they discover there is a more streamlined way to approach an issue - and their incredibly easy and kind way of communicating.

it is always an absolute pleasure to meet with the team and I can genuinely say they are an extra-ordinarily professional organisation who are willing to use their immense talents to help some of the poorest and most vulnerable in the world.

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

Literally - Not. One. Thing. They should be incredibly proud of the team and their working ethos. It would be hard to match them.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I’m the CO-CEO and COO of Hatom Labs, the first decentralized Lending Protocol on the Elrond Blockchain.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Rather Labs, Inc., and what were your goals?

We wanted to create Hatom Protocol, the first decentralized Lending Protocol on the Elrond Blockchain, that allows users to lend and borrow their crypto assets in an over-collateralized manner. We’ve also extended the project's scope to the development of a Staking Module directly linked to the Lending Protocol, along with other infrastructures essential to the well functioning of our decentralized application.

SOLUTION

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

After setting out to create our Lending Protocol, we have decided to comb the internet looking for the right development team to implement our vision. Developing a Lending Protocol from scratch seemed daunting for every prospective development team. Most teams we’d contacted had provided us with unrealistic R&D timelines, and it didn’t seem like they had the required competencies.

We knew that Rather labs were different from their portfolio and expertise, so we messaged them on their website and booked a meeting over Google meet; it became clear after the meeting that they were the real deal and that all the praise and good reviews they received were well-deserved. To sum up, we felt a good synergy about discussing our vision, and they were onboard and thrilled to embark on this journey with us.

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

The project scope required weeks of extensive and heavy research and development, followed by documenting and designing the architecture of all the smart contracts and then building and deploying them, QA, and comprehensive testing. We then developed the first version of the Lending Protocol, including all the previously mentioned elements and a solid front- Web 3.0 integration.

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

I’ve worked closely with different members of the team: Federico C. (CEO), Franco S. (CTO), and Ramiro V. (Senior Blockchain Developer), to name a few. We’ve been assigned a front-end developer, 3 senior Blockchain developers, a project manager, and manual quality assurance. I would like to highlight that the team is highly competent, resourceful, always on the pulse, and ready to address any situation that might arise promptly.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We’ve developed an initial MVP of the Lending Protocol on the Devnet that’s undergoing multiple audits, preparing for our Mainnet Launch.

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

They were always on top of every task and assigned the required workforce to develop our project. We had dedicated weekly sync calls to track the project's progress, along with Slack and Trello channels for effective communication. They are very effective from a management standpoint.

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

They’ve respected the timeline and roadmap set and hit every milestone. Now that the launch is just around the corner, we feel impressed with their achievements. They have not only gotten used to but mastered the Elrond Blockchain, which is worth praising.

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

I think there is huge room for improvement in their marketing and communication in their social media channels because they are not getting the credit they deserve.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the senior product manager at Nervos Network, a public blockchain. It’s similar to how bitcoin works, and we post smart contracts, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and so on. I oversee everything related to video games and metaverse.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Rather Labs, Inc.?

We wanted to design a video game called Celebrity Smackdown. Specifically, we wanted to achieve two things: building a fun video game that took advantage of social trends and delivering a new NFT standard, which would allow us to go and take external data from different oracles or data feed that impact the underlying asset. In summary, we wanted to shift these two products.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

The scope of work has boiled down to a couple of things. The first was on the NFT standard itself — those requirements included research development, QA, tests, and deployment of the smart contracts. It took an average of three months. Then, we had the actual video game development cycle, which included front- and backend design, infrastructure testing, and integrating the blockchain’s team research. We worked on a different game on the third project, which included website design, contract integration, and UX/UI development.

Rather Labs has used Unity and Nervos as the core technologies. To play the game, users have to buy NFTs through our marketplace. Once they go in to play the game, they can log into the game portal on their phone or computer, and we read the content of their crypto wallets. Then, they can start playing with the cards.

What is the team composition?

I’ve worked with Franco (Co-Founder & CTO) since the beginning. The management team isn’t as involved, but if something goes wrong, they immediately address it.

How did you come to work with Rather Labs, Inc.?

We decided to go with Rather Labs because we had a working history with the founders. I used to manage their previous company, so I knew their engineering quality. They did great work when I worked with them and were very competent. Also, I started a company with Franco, so I loved working with them — they were just wizards.

All in all, they were our first pick as service providers to help us bring our vision to life.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent around $250,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working in August 2021, and our relationship is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We’re growing our follower base every month on the social media front. We’re around 4,000 followers on Twitter and 7,500 people in our Discord channel, which is a pretty big metric in crypto. From the game, we’re around $15,000–$18,000 a month in sales since October, so we’ve been doing well with that. Additionally, we’re doing about 250 BitAUs, which is pretty good for a crypto game, especially since it’s brand new.

We’ve had a couple of bugs. One time, a bug affected the smart contract part, such as the asset transfer. If there’s an issue with the game, they just fix it immediately. It usually takes about a week to fix a bug, so it’s done in one sprint cycle.

How did Rather Labs, Inc. perform from a project management standpoint?

We combine Slack and Google Hangouts to communicate. We have daily standup meetings and one at the end of the week to understand what’s happening and what we could’ve done better. Overall, the team is pretty responsive.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’ve figured out the Nervos blockchain, which is a pretty difficult one. However, they’ve been able to master it and find new engineers to write it.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Maybe a couple of things on the marketing front. It’d be great for us and our community management if they had people who speak English as their first language on the marketing campaign. I say this because some stuff gets lost in translation. For example, I talk to management in English, and they pass it to someone else in Spanish. By the time it hits Twitter, the message is entirely different than what we asked for.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Tell them precisely what you want them to do; be very intentional in your project. Also, find a young person to market the product.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the founder and CEO of a fast-growing startup based on the USA.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Rather Labs, Inc., and what were your goals?

We needed to develop the PoC for our product really fast. We had been trying contractors without success. Agencies, too long or too expensive. RL behaves as if they were an in-house team, with the dedication and celerity you would expect from employees. If it hadn't been this way, we wouldn't have continued more than a few weeks.

SOLUTION

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

They were very quick to answer, and very committed to the impossible deadlines we proposed. And they hit them. They built the product in 1/10th of the time that other alternatives proposed and they built is really robustly and good quality. They understood the trade-offs between quality and speed that a startup faces perfectly well.

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

They designed the MVPs for our smart contracts and the SaaS product for our core business. Blockchain, web-apps.

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

5 people, one project manager/CTO, two full-stack developers, one blockchain engineer, one UX/UI designer

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We reduced the time to onboard clients by 6x and the cost of onboarding by 7x.

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

Slack, Trello, Google Meets. Very fluid.

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

We had direct access to the whole team, which made communication very easy. The most salient attribute they have is to understand when things are time-sensitive and being able to hit the tight deadlines.

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

Just keep in the same path.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the founder CEO an application for crowdfunding solidarity. DURING our years of life we have seen that many nonprofit organizations have stopped existing because they didn't have the necessary resources to achieve their goals.

To solve this problem- we HAVE created a web application -where we gather resources through donations.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Rather Labs, Inc.?

Raher Labs helped us plan our entry into the blockchain ecosystem at different stages of development.

SOLUTION

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

Prior to hiring Rather Labs, we conducted a research to make the decision to hire this company. Factors that tipped the scales in favor of Rather Labs over its competitors:

• The CEO of Rather labs is a graduate of the founder institute program.
• They created NFT from several world-renowned artists.
• They have more than 5 years working in the blockchain ecosystem which makes them pioneers in this new technology.
• They have a staff of more than 40 professionals working and the assistance is immediate.
• The technical team has phds and masters graduates from the Balseiro Institute, the most reputable educational institution in latam.

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

• Development of MVP app.
• Development of solidarity crowdfunding platform.
• Q2- 2022: Upcoming blockchain development to achieve transparency of the destination of donations and creation of its own currency.

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

They provided a team of 2 people: a blockchain engineer and a UX/UI designer. The blockchain engineer architected the solution and the designer worked on a figma prototype.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Not yet.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

They were punctual and effective in our meetings, the material they presented was very simple to understand. They delivered on time and on budget.

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

Working with rather Rather Labs has saved us a lot of time and money, their expertise has to do with blockchain and thanks to this we were able to give closure to our business model.

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

I have no negative points to cite at this time.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Sr Manager Financial Operations of Sunrock DG

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Commercial Solar Developer and Financier

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Rather Labs to accomplish?

• Design cloud based custom API application and data warehouse setup
• Reporting

SOLUTION

How did you find Rather Labs?

Referral

Why did you select Rather Labs over others?

• High ratings
• Pricing fit our budget
• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost

How many teammates from Rather Labs were assigned to this project?

6-10 Employees

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

Set up cloud data warehouse and build a custom application for API connection to existing SaaS project management and CRM systems. Deliverables included data structure and setup, API data exchange based on specific triggers, Reporting dashboards and change order management.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Successful setup of data warehouse and connection of CRM to project management software and reporting dashboard.

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

The RL team's communication was on point always communicating deadlines, requesting information and driving the project forward. Yes they did deliver on time and they were always responsive to our needs. Moreover, they asked thoughtful questions to assist in developing a better product.

What was your primary form of communication with Rather Labs?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

1. Communication 
2. Ability to work remotely 
3. Ability to deliver a quality product on time.

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

We were very happy with how the team reacted to our needs and handled some scope changes during the project. We do not have any areas for improvement at this time.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the CTO of a consumer products company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Rather Labs, Inc., and what were your goals?

We hired Rather to help us build the MVP of our platform

SOLUTION

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

We selected them due to their expertise in blockchain

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

They are helping to develop our MVP of our platform. Key deliverables will be the platform completed specific to the mocks.

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

There were 5 people on the team. Two frontend, two backend and a project manager

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We are anticipating a September 15 launch date. Deliverable will be the MVP production ready

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

Their project management style is one meeting a week and communication internally

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

We like their ability to be flexible in what we have asked of them.

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

The only area of improvement I can recommend is more communication. It can very stressful to see progress going along without as many updates